A Note on Race and Politics in the United States

The impetus for this brief commentary derives from the idea that the politics of race in the United States continues to be a public affairs issue. Given that it is important for political scientists to debate race and politics in the United States, as a multifaceted area of American politics, the Journal of Political Science and Public Affairs provides an open forum for different methodological approaches and diverse perspectives and positions on race and politics. 

In fact, we are witnessing a time where race, in terms of its metonymic intensifications, is analysed and discussed through a variety of coded signifiers such as culture and class. Hence, any effort to stage ast and off that race matters or not in the United States would have to recognize the ontology and epistemology of race and its modalities of visual performance,that is, not what race is, but what race does. Race is something that is ascribed to blacks and other non-whites. Whites, on the other hand, are unraced and unmarked, which positioned whites as members of the dominant group.