Incorporating Race: Critical Theory and Social Facts.

This paper articulates the relationship between social science and critical theory in a problem-oriented approach and how that approach can best promote the end of racial democratization in the case of the US. I discuss the role of social science in identifying and constituting the publics to which critique is addressed and the relation of both dominant and subordinate racial groups to the possibility of racial democratization. In particular, I advocate that critical theory should give more attention to the sources of racial hierarchy within white practice and the contradictions experienced by racial elites within that practice. These instabilities within racial hierarchy, as experienced by agents, can provide practical reasons for elites to participate in a politics of racial democratization. This attempts to address the under-theorized questions of how dominant publics relate to critical theory?s practical interest in social change and how stable egalitarian advancements are achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]