Brewing Up Race

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the whiteness of craft beer. When one looks at the deep history of beer and its origin stories in the 'new world,' one realizes that beer in the United States has always been bound up with race, racism, and the construction of white institutions and identities. Given the very quick and meteoric rise of the craft beer industry, especially in the United States, as well as the myopic scholarly focus on economic and historical trends in the industry, there is an urgent need to take stock of the intersectional inequalities that such realities gloss over. The chapter then outlines the book's guiding theoretical perspectives. These include race and the founding of the United States; racial ideology and the boundaries of Americanity; the production of (beer as) culture; and cultural diversity and brewing.