Conceptualizing Racism is a provocative book that confronts the language we use to discuss and understand racism. Author Noel A. Cazenave argues that American social science has, since its inception, practiced linguistic racial accommodation that blurs our understanding of systemic racism and makes it difficult to effect meaningful change. Conceptualizing Racism highlights how words matter in racism studies. The author traces the history of linguistic racial accommodation through the development of sociology as a discipline and illustrates how it is at play today, not only within the discipline but in public life.

By Noel A. Cazenave

Prologue: Sociology as Autobiography
Introduction: Racial Accommodation and the Misconceptualization of Racism

Understanding Linguistic Racial Accommodation and ConfrontationLinguistic Racial Accommodation from Slavery to the Civil Rights Movement Linguistic Racial Accommodation and Confrontation from the Civil Rights Movement to The Declining Significance of RaceTheoretical Fragmentation: The White Backlash and Its Legacy of Failure Defining Racism: Beyond Mini-Racism and the "Race" as Agency ConceptConfronting Racially Accommodative Language by Conceptualizing Racism as a System of Oppression
Conclusion: Lessons Learned and Challenges Remaining: Toward a More Honest Conceptualization of Racism
Epilogue: Unfinished Business in Confronting Racially Accommodative Language