Postscript: Four Ways Race and Capitalism Can Advance Urban Sociology

Abstract

If the study of racial capitalism is to have maximum impact on urban sociology, it is well positioned to do so especially for the study of urban racial inequality. At first glance, the study of racial capitalism and urban racial inequality may appear to have an enormous gulf between them. Many strands of research on urban racial inequality contain heavy elements of both pragmatist and positivist epistemologies. “Policymakers” are often the target audience in this field where urban sociologists aspire for objective and scientifically rigorous analysis to produce knowledge for local and Federal government technocracies. In contrast, urban scholars of racial capitalism often approach their work with an emancipatory epistemology that aspires to dismantle capitalism or achieve liberation for oppressed groups. The state is not the primary audience for many scholars of racial capitalism. This makes for a wide epistemological gap to bridge. The excellent articles in this special issue, however, raise four essential tensions that urban sociologists (pragmatic, emancipatory, or otherwise) cannot ignore if the field wants to innovate or pursue integration with other existing sociological paradigms. It should not be controversial to argue that amid a global pandemic, worsening climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and Russian destruction of Ukrainian cities, that the various strands of urban sociological research on race could stand to benefit from engaging in some reflexivity on how to innovate. To that end, readers who are new to the racial capitalism framework may find it helpful to think about it in relation to Du Bois’s ([1935] 1998) work on Reconstruction. Rather than aspiring for reductions in racial inequality through technocratic policy nudges or reformist policies, the articles in this special issue illuminate racial capitalism’s usefulness for thinking about how to reconstruct cities and their positions within racialized political economies. Each article invites the reader to place their pragmatism on the shelf for a moment and think differently about taken-for-granted urban social processes that blind scholars from understanding the mutually constitutive roles of race and capitalism in producing city problems. This goes beyond the co-opted trope of a search for “root causes,” as positivist notions of cause and effect are less useful if scholars accept the premise that U.S. cities’ formed with racism and economic exploitation baked into their foundations. Racism and economic exploitation, therefore, are not to be examined like removable cancer cells, but as building blocks of U.S. cities that must be dismantled in order for cities to be reconstructed. Advancing such a perspective to the study of cities requires critical reflection on ways the field can move forward. In this essay, I identify and elaborate on four ways that 1101432 CTYXXX10.1177/15356841221101432City & CommunityVargas research-article2022