Race as such, as a category. Been pondering about whether it is something to be abolished in the same sense as one might speak of gender abolition or class abolition. Looking for refinement on this thought if possible. Thanks!
Autobiography of Malcolm X is a good historical look at, well, Malcolm X’s experience.
Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a good race primer for white people, particularly Americans.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, and it deals a lot with intersectionality in class analysis more-so than specific theories of “racial abolition,” though a foundation in intersectional class analysis will, in my opinion help build an understanding of the drive for cultural autonomy, mutual respect, and the inherently capitalist framework of “race” as a category. That is to say, that in a society working towards an elimination of class disparity, then race as a class category will inevitably and necessarily be eradicated, leaving cultural and ethnic differences but not “race” per se.
Intersectionality, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge; Women, Race, and Class, Angela Y. Davis; Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Harsha Walia; Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Ruth Enid Zambrana, and Patricia Hill Collins; Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place, and Irish Women, Bronwen Walter; Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives, Donna Murch; Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation, Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin, and Heather A. Brown; Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas; Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins; Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity, and Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Mahmood Mamdani; Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics, Kevin Ochieng Okoth; Reconsidering Reparations, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò; The Settler Complex: Recuperating Binarism in Colonial Studies, and Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race, Patrick Wolfe; Eurocentrism, Samir Amin; Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, Sara Ahmed; Orientalism, Edward W Said; Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)Colonial Plantation Space: Connecting Ireland and the Caribbean, Eve Walsh Stoddard; Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon; Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence; Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, Patricia J. Williams; Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui; Weaving Transnational Solidarity, Katherine O’Donnell; Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua; Prison of Grass: Canada From a Native Point of View, Howard Adams; As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; Marxism and Native Americans, Ward Churchill; The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal, Afua Cooper; The Fourth World: An Indian Reality, George Manuel and Michael Posluns; Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, Robyn Maynard; The Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi; As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation, William C. Anderson, Miriame Kaba, and Zoé Samudzi; Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World, Sylvia Wynter;
I’ve yet to read it, but Racecraft by Karen E Fields and Barbara J Fields was highly recommended by the Why Theory podcast
Thanks all for the recommendations. In my search I also found Racial Formation in the United States by Howard Winant and Michael Omi.