The Sociogenetics of Race

Abstract

Building on Frantz Fanon’s sociogeny, this work argues that Blackness is not ontological; instead, it is sociogenetic. That is, race has been ontologized by Whites, via slavery and White supremacist ideologies, and reified by Blacks through their embrace of the othering terms by which they were discriminated against as their practical consciousness (i.e., culture). Whites, in turn, have re-ontologized blackness, around Black practical consciousness and consumptive tastes fueled by their (Black) reification of the othering terms by which they were discriminated against as culture, for the purpose of generating surplus-value, through diversified consumerism, for their postindustrial (finance) economies.