Abstract
We have stitched together a foundational core of theoretical frames in the sociology of race and ethnicity to keep our fingers on the pulse of the era in which we live. Characterized as “modernity,” this epoch, a blip in human history really, is structured by racial colonial capitalism. In our toolbelt we have systemic racism theory, color blind racism, intersectionality, racial contract theory, double consciousness, post-anti-and-de-colonial theories, critical race theory, and several others. And yet, we still have a ways to go to develop a sufficient theory of anti-Blackness. Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society takes us a giant leap forward.
The book presents a potent blend of theoretical richness and deep emotional resonance. Written in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, a period marked by enforced isolation and the harrowing spectacle of Black death on all forms of media, Bodies Out of Place carries a sense of immediacy, relevance, and urgency. The work distinguishes itself in the subfield of race and ethnicity by extending its analysis beyond the monolithic concept of racism. While other forms of racism, including anti-Asian hate, Latinx racism, and anti-indigenous, are all rooted in distinct histories and geographical contexts, and manifest in their unique ways, racism uses different languages and takes on different forms. It is acrobatic like that. Combs’s important work hones in on anti-Black racism as a singular phenomenon, illuminating how it is specifically enacted upon Black bodies. Underlying the premise of the book, anti-Black racism does not have a comparison. It is not “just like” anything else.
Bodies Out of Place deconstructs how anti-Black racism works particularly in the United States. Rejecting the individual level “few bad apples” narrative Combs sets out to “demonstrate how anti-Black racism operates not on a continuum between structural and individual levels but on an interconnected loop” (p. 28). She artfully weaves storied examples of recent and historical events with social theory to explain how this “loop” works on multiple dimensions, including historically, psychologically, spatially, rhetorically, and more. Chapter 2 lays out the eight-point theoretical framework that serves as the chassis of the book. In Combs’s formulation, Bodies Out of Place theory:
Begins with the premise that racism is systemic and deeply ingrained in society;
Recognizes that physical integration is often falsely equated with social integration;
Posits that Whites have a possessive investment in whiteness and that their claims of colorblindness serve three purposes: denying their White privilege, denying the existence of racism, and circumventing their complicity in continuing racism;
Identifies symbiotic macro and micro connections to racism;
Asserts that context matters, and it is that context, not what people say, that is most instructive in determining beliefs and attitudes;
Perceived out-of-place bodies evoke a response; such responses cumulatively work to affirm and reinstate the old Jim Crow social order;
White logic is used to justify the pushback response (or failure to respond or intervene);
Is necessarily intersectional in its nature and applicable across multiple social structures.
Combs also gives us workable concepts to usher in our analyses of anti-Black racism, such as “historical fear factor,” “Blackout,” and “Massah Has Spoken,” so that we name these occurrences with precision. The historical fear factor frame, for example, relies “on stereotypes, historical inaccuracies, and false perceptions in order to legitimate and substantiate their need to employ protectionist responses against a manufactured danger” (p. 79). By now, everyone in the world has seen this play out countless times on social media when “fear” is weaponized for no other reason than to control Black bodies. Whether it be to make them move, give up their belongings, be quiet, be humiliated, or simply disappear. According to Combs, “They use these feelings to evoke notions of threat. Then, once raised, they construct a compelling need for action against the perceived bad actor. They justify that response by intimating that it is for the purported purpose of defense of others, self-defense, or self-preservation” (p. 79). This age-old response goes back to the White woman who lied on Emmett Till, to the White family that lied on George Stinney Jr., to Darren Wilson, the White cop who claimed that the 18-year-old unarmed Mike Brown was so big and scary that he had to shoot him with his hands up a dozen times from several feet away. It’s the “stop resisting arrest” of it all.
The historical fear factor also plays out in ways that are non-physical, yet violent, nonetheless. It is when Black women are repeatedly typecast as “threatening” or “scary” in the workplace, especially in white-collar corporate settings. White women often weaponize this “fear” by going to an authority for protection because they claim to be too “scared” to resolve the issue directly with the Black woman, leaving her isolated and hyper surveilled in the workplace. As Combs highlights, historical fear of race-mixing (an act overwhelmingly initiated by White men during slavery and Jim Crow) was enough to cause white flight in the 1960s. The fear of a White child falling in love with a Black person as opposed to a White person using a Black body for personal sexual gratification was unfathomable. In a sub-section titled, “The Formula for Killing Black People (and Getting Away with it)—which I called in my head “how to get away with murder”—Combs elaborates on the racial scripts used over and over again to legitimate this fear. Here, she uses the Darren Wilson court case as exemplar. Unfortunately, the United States is replete with data and examples to prove the Bodies Out of Place theory correct.
The best part about the book is that it is relatable. Although it is a thoroughly researched academic text, Combs shoots from the hip and speaks from her heart. It is full of real-life examples and stories about everyday Black folks facing anti-Black racism while working, grocery shopping, walking, playing, eating at restaurants, bird watching, driving, you name it. In an anti-Black society, Black people are dehumanized and depersonified into mere Black bodies. This allows for a grand theater of violence to take place on the apocryphal stage of U.S. democracy. Black people are treated as bodies out of place at the grocery store, in our own neighborhoods, at the workplace, and at school—here, there, and everywhere—while those who do not occupy the skin we are in standby in wonder, doubt, confusion, and in some cases delight. Combs uses these stories to expose the scripts and formulas used repeatedly to justify, rationalize, and get away with perpetrating these harms toward Black people without repercussion.
I will be assigning this book in my sociology graduate course at Emory University, “Racial Colonial Capitalism” next year. If you are a race scholar or a steward of Black Studies, I highly recommend you consider this text for your future courses. Finally, thanks to David Brunsma and David G. Embrick for launching the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity Series with University of Georgia Press. This is an important outlet for sociologists who study race, racialization, and racism to place their most serious work.
