Racecraft is not without its flaws, though it’s certainly not without its merits. Perhaps I ought to start this review with those positive aspects.

The thesis is solid. The book explores the relationship between race and racism (proposing that racism creates race rather than the other way around) and coins the term “racecraft” to describe this process of manifesting race. The authors provide many examples of racecraft in action, both historical and contemporary. They go so far as to suggest that slavery preceded racism as we understand it today, arguing that black people were dehumanised and treated as property first, and then that inferior status was attributed to their race.

The witchcraft analogy works well – the “illusion of race,” a framework of “truth” based on assumption and confirmation bias rather than biology. I was pleasantly surprised that witchcraft wasn’t just dismissed as nonsense – “a middle ground between science and superstition” is a good way of explaining it.

Beyond the core premise of the book, however, things start to get a little muddled. The authors make it clear that they don’t like race being described as a social construct, which seems odd to me. After all, they use phrases like “an invisible realm of collective understandings” to describe racecraft, and repeatedly point out that race has no biological basis and is constructed? socially? I’m left with this feeling that I must be missing something, because otherwise this is a glaring contradiction.

There’s also opposition to the idea of reclaiming race as an identity, ie: celebrating blackness. The authors almost seem to call for a so-called “colourblind” approach, a complete rejection of race as a concept... but then they also reject that idea, so I’m not sure what they’re trying to say.

In the end the book didn’t feel like it was really saying anything. There was an excellent breakdown of race, racism, and racecraft, and a ton of examples presented and explored, but then...? It felt like it was building to something, some kind of call to action that never came. The conclusion felt rushed and lacking.

At one point I thought I’d give this book five stars, but I’ve since lowered that rating to four. Despite a very strong start, the book lost steam in the latter half. Overall Racecraft is good and worth reading, but the contradictions and overly academic writing made it a bit confusing at times.