Nodality

In critical race theory, nodality is a framework for understanding how racialized groups are organized into relational nodes within a wider structure.

Description

Each racial group is a node in a polyhedron, connected to all other nodes, with the white node in the center. Nodality critiques the two-dimensional black-white binary, polypolarity, and triangulation theories of race in favor of a multidimensional model. Instead of understanding racism as unidirectional from white to Black, nodality conceives racism as multidirectional between differentially racialized groups.

There are four main forms of nodality:

1. Relational nodality says that all racialized groups are relational and connected rather than isolated, and each group influences the others.
2. Regulatory nodality says that the white node regulates the other nodes through differential racialization.
3. Inflationary nodality says that, over time, non-white groups transitioning into whiteness become white through white inflation, preserving the contrast value of whiteness as property.
4. Peripheral nodality says that Black and Indigenous people, as nodes on the periphery of the polyhedron, are situated in sites of critical resistance.