CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDY

The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Division of SSSP brings together scholars, activists, and community members committed to confronting the ongoing realities of racial inequality, segregation, discrimination, and systemic racism, both hidden and overt. Today’s political climate, entangled with fascism, genocide, and ongoing land dispossession, has intensified these challenges. Powerful anti-racist and anti-xenophobic movements have gained momentum locally, nationally, and globally. Therefore, we need to work to dismantle the unequal structures that uphold colonialism and white supremacy across North America, including the United States and Canada, and support the political actors and organizations invested in creating equitable racial futures locally and globally.

Our division’s vision is a society free of racial, ethnic, and all other forms of oppression and discrimination. In a world where the many expressions of racism are often downplayed, ignored, or propagated through more invisible and “cultural” expressions, we see it as both a moral charge and a scholarly imperative to remain vigilant in our quest to study, understand, and make visible the latent and hidden operations, mechanisms, and effects of racism and to speak out against it. Our collective goals revolve around gaining higher levels of inter- and intra-racial understanding, substantive cooperation, and intimate camaraderie toward dismantling racial inequality and injustice and toward a radical transformation that upholds equity, justice and belonging for all. We utilize various sociological models to address racial and ethnic inequality and injustice as well as colonialism at all levels, investigating governmental policies, practices of social institutions, representations through media and culture, and individual and group interactions.

We envision the structures rooted in equity, where the unequal relations that sustain racial injustice are actively dismantled. We work toward a future in which the histories, cultures, and knowledge of racialized communities are fully valued rather than marginalized. This vision demands an honest reckoning with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, including land dispossession, and a commitment to reconciliation grounded in accountability and structural change. Furthermore, we implore all members of this section to understand the struggle that racialized groups often endure and to join the fight to alleviate the causes of human suffering, through our scholarship, teaching, and service to the community and beyond.

We encourage members and allies to engage with books and resources from the suggested (but by no means exhaustive) list of readings below, as well as activists on the ground. Division members are also encouraged to join our Facebook community (https://www.facebook.com/groups/sssp.drem/). There, we share information related to our larger interests and investment in the alleviation of racial and ethnic social problems.  

Division mission statement edited in November 2025 by Foroogh Mohammadi, Acadia University, Critical Race and Ethnic Study Division Co-Chair, 2025-2027.

Some Readings:

Alba, Richard and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press.

Allport, Gordon. [1988] 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reprinted, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Ayyash, M. M., & Wildeman, J. 2024. Canada as a Settler Colony on the Question of Palestine. University of Alberta Press.

Bell, Derrick. 1992. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books.

Bhattagharyya, Gargi. 2018. Rethinking Racial Capitalism. Questions of Reproduction and Survival. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Blauner, Robert. 1972. Racial Oppression in America. New York: Harper and Row.

Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market.” American Sociological Review 37:547-59.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review. 62(3): 465-80.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2004. “From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(6): 931-50.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2013. Racism without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 4^th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2008. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. University of Minnesota Press.

Cox, Oliver Cromwell. 1970. Caste, Class or Race. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903 [2006]. The Souls of Black Folk. West Valley City, UT: Waking Lion Press.

Feagin, Joe. 2000. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparation. New York: Routledge.

Gans, Herbert. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2:1-20.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2004. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origin. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hall, Ronald. 1995. “The Bleaching Syndrome: African Americans´ Response to Cultural Domination Vis-a-Vis Skincolor.” Journal of Black Studies, 26: 172-183.

Jordan, Winthrop. 1974. The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kim, Claire Jean. 1999. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” Politics and Society, 27(1): 105-138.

Lee, Jennifer and Frank Bean. 2004. “America’s Changing Color Line: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity and Multiracial Identification.” Annual Review of Sociology. 30:221-42.

Lewis, Amanda E. 2003. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Maynard, Robyn. 2025. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Halifax: Fernwood Press.

Murguia, Edward and Rogelio Saenz. 2002. “An Analysis of the Latin Americanization of Race in the United States: A Reconnaissance of Color Stratification among Mexicans.” Race & Society, 5:85-101.

Myrdal, Gunner. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers

Nelson, Alondra. 2011. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 2014. Racial formation in the United States. New York: Routledge.

Park, Robert Ezra. 1950. Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Portes, Alejandro and Ruben Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait, 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Razack, Sherene H. 2023. Nothing has to make sense: Upholding White Supremacy through Anti-Muslim Racism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Treitler, Vilna Bashi. 2013. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Waters, Mary. 1990. Ethnic Identities: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Waters, Mary and Tomas Jimenez. 2005. “Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges.” Annual Review of Sociology, 31:105-25.