The Racial Vernaculars of Development: A View from West Africa

This article argues that the vernacular of development, as deployed in and about African communities, is a racial vernacular. It is a racial vernacular of development because it is deployed within, in this case, the resource extraction industry (as well as within the broader development enterprise) in ways that sustain racial thought, index particular racial meanings, and prescribe social practices. How do we understand the processes through which racial codes are embedded and naturalized in practices ranging from the management and bureaucracy of resource extractions to the power structure of the world system that places African sovereignty below Western nongovernmental organizations and corporations? The development complex incorporates the unequal material relationships and processes that structure engagement between the Global South and the Global North, and its racial vernacular is the primary discursive scaffolding for these relationships. [development, race, resource extraction, Ghana]