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We are currently witnessing a turn to racism and anti-racism in Latin America. The recognition of racism is not new, but the attention and challenge to racism, in such an orchestrated way, is. What are the signals of such turn to racism and anti-racism? What are the overall lessons for Latin America and from Latin America to global antiracist efforts? This introduction looks at the arguments of the articles in this special issue to highlight how issues of racial visibility, naming racism, racial data, legal rights and recognition, entrepreneurship, mestizo identity, the possibilities of alliances, racially-aware struggles against class (and gendered) oppression, are key to understanding this turn. While we do not claim that these articles cover the full extent of this turn in Latin America, we suggest that analysing how this turn appears in Latin American opens useful ways of thinking about anti-racism more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has racism become a wicked problem, or it persists because of deficient anti-racism and/or unintentional or wilful neglect? This article examines neglect and denial as cognitive and functional features embedded in structural racial inequities. Denial and neglect, often analysed in socio-political discourse, are related yet distinct concepts, while neglect remains an underexplored feature of racism. I argue that denial and neglect embody key epistemic omissions enabling new racism to thrive unimpeded. Drawing on colourblind, White ignorance, and racial apathy literature, I conceptualize "racism as neglect" to draw attention to persistent yet insidious, often discounted racial inequities permeating the Global North. Understanding neglect and denial, and how they operate through minimization, ignorance, silence, or indifference, is crucial in tackling racism occurring in ideas, behaviours, and policies, and in omissions of anti-racist actions. Combating racism requires producing evidence of racism and pressing society to abandon evasion of responsibility and take effective actions against structural racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction discusses responses to ethno-racial discrimination in a hostile political environment, colour-blind France. The article presents the current characteristics of the French case, including data measuring ethnoracial discrimination. We outline the on-going role of state institutions and their agents in disqualifying minority claims, but also the recent turn against Islam and the hostility towards new movements against structural racism. We discuss how colour-blindness constrains both local policies and movements. We examine the consequences for individuals that experience discrimination and the collectives that fight against it. We highlight the various strategies that they adopt such as discretion, infrapolitical mobilization as well as tactical re-framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, 848 Moroccan railway workers had the French national train company convicted for national origin discrimination. In the French context, this fight and the judicial outcome are remarkable. The absence of class action and the colour blind environment have historically limited mobilization against racial discrimination. This article examines the conditions of this success despite the institutional context. Some peripheral actors tried but failed to impose a racial and post-colonial framing. Only the "national origin discrimination" framework enabled the achievement of the legal case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colour-blindness is a prominent concept across disciplines in the US but is less prominent and still an emerging and under-utilised conceptual tool in the European and Swedish context. Existing research measures colour-blind attitudes – defined as the belief that race does not matter. In this paper we examine what happens when we translate these US measurements and understandings of colour-blind attitudes to the Swedish context? We present the results from two quantitative studies conducted between 2009 and 2020 in Sweden. Based on these results, we discuss the possibilities, limitations, and implications of replicating the theoretical concepts from the US in the Swedish context and propose possibilities for measuring colour-blindness quantitatively. The paper thereby not only contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion on understanding colour-blind attitudes in the European context but also highlights the prominence of colour-blind racial attitudes in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the civil rights policy regime during the 1960s in the U.S. formalized the transition from the pre–civil rights era to the civil rights era. As we see in this paper, the subsequent post–civil rights era has been shaped by increasing challenges against principles of civil rights law, chiefly by political conservatives. Indeed, opponents have had significant success in undermining key parts of the civil rights policy regime. Conservatives and others have sought to usher in an era of "color-blind" policy. Basic civil and political rights were thought by most to be questions of "settled law" in the aftermath of the relatively successful civil rights movement. However, "color blind" political opposition has challenged this assumption. Ironically, this means that there is a yet unsuccessful battle to cement foundational civil and political rights in the United States. Following Marshall, this further deters the development of more egalitarian social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a novel contribution to the academic debate on Brexit and racism. It emphasizes the need to distinguish different manifestations of post-racial xeno-racism in the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum as either direct, structural or cultural violence. This distinction of different types of violence is important for everyday and academic contexts, because it affects the ways in which racist behaviour is identified and addressed. Cultural violence in the form of nationalist defensive, anti-immigration statements is the most common type of racist violence that we found in our analysis. Yet, it also tends to be more readily dismissed as "not racist" by its perpetrators and targets, and contributes to feelings of subdual and powerlessness amongst the latter. Our arguments are based on findings from 15 semi-structured interviews that we conducted in 2017 with British and non-British residents of Great Yarmouth, a seaside borough in East Anglia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversation with recent works on the rise of right-wing populism, racism and crises across Europe and beyond, this article critically examines the ongoing reconfiguration of racism in Italy. By drawing on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we argue that this reconfiguration is part of the emergent political and cultural reference of postraciality. Accordingly, we organize an archive of Italian postracial racism in two main chronological sections: from 2002 to 2008, the consolidation of a neoconservative block, openly anti-Islam and anti-migration, and fuelled by gender-based arguments; and from 2009 to 2018, the intensification of an "extremization" of racism and its postpolitical denial. In providing the first systematic analysis of postracial Italy, we aim to encourage both reflexive praxes tackling reconfigured racisms, and further national and supranational archives of the postracial present. Accordingly, in the conclusion we point at emergent race-conscious, anti-racist initiatives which oppose postracial racisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides the author's reply to the four book responses by Dreher, Georgiou, James and Saha. The discussion focuses on how their analytical engagement with the book's treatment of the ambivalences of digital media culture raise pertinent questions for focusing on anti-racism in media work and practices. It does so while reflecting on the extraordinary conditions of antiracist protest and revolt during which it was written in June 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have not examined to what extent racial minority students experience inclusion in diversity when they become the largest population on diverse campuses. Comparing the narratives of 26 Asian Americans on two campuses, one where they are the majority and one where they are not, reveals that numerical representation is salient for perceptions of inclusion in diversity. A focus on numerical representation supports the claim among critics that diversity is colorblind. Concurrently, Asian Americans on both campuses felt that they were not included in diversity. They explained their exclusion from diversity as the result of their cultural values and how others perceive them as the model minority. When understood alongside narratives of cultural values and the model minority myth, diversity becomes a way of signaling a racial hierarchy through a process of racial triangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mainstream historiography's postcolonial indifference has been heavily contested, a profound engagement with how race relates to racism in Switzerland seems far-off. As the country's direct democratic system relentlessly allows for race to be mobilized, Swiss racial denial results in an inability to productively name and contest racism. This would be particularly pertinent, as racism has not only been normalized by right-wing popular initiatives but also by a state-sponsored climate in which any attempt of naming racism is deemed excessive or hysterical. This article explores the effects of anti-racialist 'anti-racism' on public debates about racism in Switzerland. It has been argued that, in wake of the UNESCO consensus, anti-racialism has been established as the dominant paradigm of anti-racism across Europe. Through an analysis of Swiss state anti-racism, I will propose that an unexamined commitment to the anti-racialist tradition actively contributes to the difficulty of naming and combating racism in Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Canadian Experience" is a paradox for many immigrants in Canada and contributes to their exclusion from the labour market. Through an analysis of Canadian English print media, from 2006 to 2011, we illustrate how "Canadian Experience" discourse places the responsibility of immigrant labour market integration on immigrants themselves and constructs their experiences of exclusion as non-racial. This is theorized as a "post-racial" strategy that relies on anti-racialism (avoidance of racial references) to deny the existence and effects of racism, thereby allowing the Canadian public to maintain its façade of innocence but perpetuates "racism without racists". The discourse de-historicizes postcolonial racial hierarchy and promotes a de-racialized neo-liberal model for immigrant inclusion. This has implications for anti-racism and settlement service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent theories of the US racial order contend that phenotypically light Latina/os will elevate to an honorary White category as a result of their socio-economic advantages over darker Latina/os. Accordingly, light Latina/os are presumed to adopt colour-blind racial ideology to cement their elevated racial status. This study is among the first to examine the relationship between skintone and Latina/os’ colour-blind ideology adherence with nationally representative data. I examine these relationships with data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, and test the robustness of findings across two alternative national data sets: the 2014 General Social Survey, and the 2006 Latino National Survey. Across data sets, different measurement approaches, and time periods, this study finds no evidence that skintone shapes Latina/os’ levels of colour-blind ideology adherence. The study concludes by considering why the racial ideology of light Latina/os is non-concordant with their elevated socio-economic status in relation to darker Latina/os. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what white, middle-class parents report saying to their children about racial tension and racial protest when events like Michael Brown's death and the Ferguson protests are the top news stories. The data come from interviews with forty white, middle-class parents in 2014-15. The study results indicate that few parents recalled speaking with their children about racial tension or racial protest even when such discussions were highly visible in the news and on social media. I argue parents' silence stemmed from a desire to create a protected, worry-free childhood combined with an inability to understand how such subjects related to their white life. However, not all parents were silent. Twelve participants reported speaking with their children about these subjects via a neutral or a defensive colour-blind frame. Only two participants drew attention to issues of power and privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sheds light on a neglected urban process in our heavily racialized and polarized contemporary societies: the slow emergence of an urban post-racial generation through artistic collaboration that is both locally rooted and transnationally connected. On the one hand, race and racism clearly still matter at the social and political levels. But, on the other hand, a part of urban youth transcends ethnic, racial, gender, class and religious boundaries in their daily lives. Used to living together whatever their assigned identity, they challenge, more or less consciously, mainstream racism and ethnicism through an active and intense collaboration in assorted artistic projects in various disciplines (music, dance, theatre, etc.). The paper, based on qualitative empirical data collected in two Belgian cities (Brussels and Liège), will document the existence of this “post-racial” generation and underline the necessity of studying it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sheds light on a neglected urban process in our heavily racialized and polarized contemporary societies: the slow emergence of an urban post-racial generation through artistic collaboration that is both locally rooted and transnationally connected. On the one hand, race and racism clearly still matter at the social and political levels. But, on the other hand, a part of urban youth transcends ethnic, racial, gender, class and religious boundaries in their daily lives. Used to living together whatever their assigned identity, they challenge, more or less consciously, mainstream racism and ethnicism through an active and intense collaboration in assorted artistic projects in various disciplines (music, dance, theatre, etc.). The paper, based on qualitative empirical data collected in two Belgian cities (Brussels and Liège), will document the existence of this “post-racial” generation and underline the necessity of studying it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author replies to comments on his book "Are We All Post-Racial Yet?" Topics discussed include the role of post-raciality in renewing racism, the proliferation of racial violence, and how victims of racism become perpetrators. Also mentioned are the denial of racism and the role of technological developments on racism.

In this Rejoinder we seek to address the key issues raised by the four commentaries on our edited book. We focus on the question of the shifting boundaries of the field of race and ethnic studies, the absences and gaps in what is covered, the limits of the post-racial, and the whitening of sociology. In conclusion, we suggest some alternative ways in which we would seek to address them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on the chapters by Brett St Louis, Michael Banton, Matthew Hughey, and David Goldberg, I explore the contribution of Murji and Solomos’ volume,Theories of Race and Ethnicity, to ongoing debates on the meaning of the post-racial. I draw on Goldberg's interactive relationality as a means for thinking about the continued significance of race both for scholarship on its material effects and for developing practices of anti-racism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the spirit of ‘furthering debate and reflection’ in this response toTheories of Race and Ethnicity, we consider here the pertinence of the theme of resistance that occupies particular chapters within the collection and that has been central to key works within the wider race critical scholarship. Yet, when the larger field of contemporary race study is considered, we also note that other contiguous concerns – including capitalism, religion, nation, and war – are key factors in thinking through racism. Here, we further elaborate on how future theorizations of race and ethnicity must engage with these domains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines racism's ‘debatability’ by looking at the interpellation of public acts of racism. The idea of racism as an event appears crucial to the judgment of its legitimacy. By examining racism as a disjointed series of public events that are often accompanied by elisions of the connections between racist ‘eruptions’ and systemic conditions, I shine light on what is meant by racism today. Racism can be theorized dually as both frozen and motile. This is due to emphasis being placed on what race is taken to be, rather than on what it does. Confusion over how to formulate anti-racism is based on this misconception of race at the core of much anti-racist thought, leading to an obscuration of racism. Critically examining some contemporary anti-racist activity, I briefly assess the role played by those who challenge racism in legitimizing or negating official interpretations of racism in contemporary Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In writing on ‘John Rex's Main Mistake’, Michael Banton reveals more about Banton than he does about Rex. I use Banton's discussion of the differences between his own and John Rex's ‘mistakes’ to explore why, in my view, race continues to have analytical purchase in a purportedly ‘post-racial’ age [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The significance of class is increasing in the USA, in the sense that economic inequality is rising within the black and Latino populations as well as among whites. Growing inequality is associated with increasing disparities in lived experiences. Is class also increasingly significant in political life? Survey evidence shows that the answer is yes: compared with previous decades, well-off blacks and Latinos are less strongly liberal in some policy preferences and feel more politically efficacious, while poor blacks and Latinos tend to move in the opposite direction. Well-off non-whites have not, however, lost any commitment to racial justice or identity, so the USA is not becoming ‘post-racial’. Given the complex patterns of change and persistence in opinions, Wilson's arguments about when and how race is significant remain as important and controversial as when first expressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

No other book in modern sociology is so well known but yet so roundly dismissed as William J. Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race. Its major thesis is supported, however, by a great deal of credible and systematic evidence. Its historical analysis is notably informative and prescient in predicting rising class inequality. The Declining Significance of Race remains vitally important reading for enhancing our understanding of inequality in contemporary America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay takes a step towards establishing a more informed dialogue about race/class dynamics in structuring the life chances of blacks in contemporary America by revisiting William Wilson's declining significance of race thesis, the most important sociological theory that addresses this issue. Specifically, it explicates the thesis and critiques labour market analyses that purport to examine it. Too often mis-specifications of the parameters of the thesis and the absence of seriously engaging its historical and structural-level subtleties have produced erroneous interpretations including, most conspicuously, that Wilson denies any role to prejudice/discrimination in structuring life chances of blacks. I maintain that better capturing the parameters of Wilson's argument and engaging its subtleties is critical to moving forward in establishing an informed and more consensually held understanding of race/class dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we bring together the literatures on frame analysis, the meaning of race and campus racial climate to analyse the race frames – lenses through which individuals understand the role of race in society – held by white students attending elite US universities. For most, the elite university experience coincides with a strengthening or emergence of the diversity frame, which emphasizes the positive benefits of cultural diversity. Still, many also hold a colour-blind frame, which sees race groups as equivalent and racial identities as insignificant. We highlight the ambivalence that these divergent frames create for student perspectives on affirmative action and interracial contact on campus. Our findings demonstrate the mutability of race frames. We also highlight the impact that institutions may have on individuals' race frames. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with forty-seven US-born white undergraduates attending Brown University and Harvard University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that social context plays in mediating racial socialization in upper-middle-class white families. Outcomes of white racial socialization, as well as the process itself, depend in large part on the distinctive racial contexts designed by parents in which white children live and interact. I examine variation in white middle-school-aged children's common-sense racial knowledge and discuss the importance of exploring the social reproduction and reworking of racial ideologies and privilege in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between racial contestation and colour-blind ideology adherence. Using the first nationally representative study to ask respondents directly about personal racial identity and external racial ascription, I compare the racial conceptualizations of contested and non-contested whites. Contested whites are individuals who identify racially as white, but who are perceived by others as non-white. Contested whites find themselves at the margins of whiteness, betwixt and between categories of racial dominance and racial marginalization. One might hypothesize that because contested whites are socially perceived as non-white, that they would be more aware of racial marginalization in social life, and would therefore exhibit more progressive racial views. However, this study finds that the opposite is true. Results of ordinal logistic regression analyses suggest that individuals placed at the margins of whiteness may seek to legitimate group membership as white by expressing similar and sometimes even amplified notions of colourblindness than their non-contested white counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declarations of the end of race ignore the continuing impact of racism upon socio-economic inequality in ‘racial states’. Nevertheless, the idea of post-racialism has gained ground in a post-9/11 era, defined by a growing suspicion of diversity. Clearly racialized, this suspicion is couched in cultural-civilizational terms that attempt to avoid the charge of racism. Hence, attempts to counteract the purported failure of multiculturalism in Europe today pose culturalist solutions to problems deemed to originate from an excess of cultural diversity. This is part of a deepening culturalization of politics in which the post-race argument belongs to a post-political logic that shunspoliticalexplanations of unrest and widening disintegration in favour of reductive culturalist ones. The culturalization of politics is elaborated by relating it to the displacement of the political that originated with the nineteenth-century ascendance of race, thus setting ‘post-racialism’ firmly within the history of modern racism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From the ‘Reagan Revolution’ to the election of Obama in the USA; from the populism of Enoch Powell and Thatcher to the rise of the British National Party in the UK; and from the backlash against multiculturalism in both Australia and Canada, westernized nations with colonial histories and unequal relations between a powerful white class and a subjugated non-white class now witness a strikingly adamant discourse and movement: growing numbers of white people claim that they are racially oppressed and seek redress against policies, laws and practices that they believe discriminate against them. I critically examine the white backlash in the ‘post-racial’ era (1960s – present) of the USA by reviewing the extant scholarship on the white backlash, by highlighting landmark legal cases and media spectacles that represent claims of white racial victimization, and by arguing that white victimization discourse is an integral mechanism in the formation of contemporary white racial identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The articles in this volume reflect upon a very specific moment in the social architecture of British society: a moment that brings financial meltdown together with some sizeable shifts in the racial and ethnic landscape of the UK. As a ‘neo-liberal revolution’ heralds the end of public services and the end of the welfare state, it proclaims ‘the end of race’ as well. But cultural retrenchment and coded xenophobia have also been sweeping the political terrain, accompanied by ‘new racisms’ and ‘new racial subjects’ that only close contextual analysis can unpick. Against those who suggest that we live in a post-racial time, the research presented offers friction. By focusing on particular locations in Britain at a particular moment, the articles explore local stories of ‘race’ and racism across changing sociopolitical ground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can the theoretical insights of post-racialism contribute to the development of a progressive anti-racism? Drawing on interviews with anti-racist organizations in London, this article explores the translation of the theoretical insights of post-racialism into anti-racist praxis. Theoretically informed and empirically engaged, this article argues that post-racialism faces its own set of paradoxes and practical dilemmas complicating the process of deriving post-racialist practice(s) from post-racialist theory. The article concludes that, in spite of the challenges, the powerful questions that post-racialism raises create a much needed ethico-political space for critical reflection on the concept and category of race. Ultimately, post-racialist insights may refine understandings of the discriminatory practices performed in the name of race and point towards a methodological approach of working with and against race in anti-racism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gilberto Freyre conceptualized racial democracy to describe Brazil's non-racist and harmonious multiracial society in the early 1900s. I suggest there are three views for assessing racial democracy in scholarly literature: achieved Brazil is a multiracial non-racist society; oppressive Brazil is a racist society with strained interracial relations; and aspirational Brazil is a multiracial racist society that aspires to be non-racist. I then argue that exposure to US racial ideals via migration influences Brazilians' perceptions of racial democracy. I demonstrate this using interviews with forty-nine Brazilians who migrated to the USA and returned to Brazil and twenty-four non-migrants who did not migrate, in Governador Valadares, Brazil. My findings indicate that more returnees and non-migrants perceive Brazil as a multiracial racist country, which is consistent with the aspirational view of racial democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico and Peru, denigrating racial humour about blacks and indigenous populations is prolific, despite the existence of colour-blind national ideologies (which minimize or negate the existence of racism) and social norms that silence various forms of race talk. This article draws on interviews and participant observation from these two countries to analyse the popular uses and interpretations of racial humour, and their consequences for racial ideology. We illustrate how racial humour serves to reproduce Mexican and Peruvian national ideology and reinforces the countries' racialized systems of domination. In this article, we identify three mechanisms involved in this process: ‘going along’ with jokes; framing racial humor as benign; and using laughter to ‘soften’ racism. Taken as a whole, our analysis reveals how racial humour works to maintain colour-blind ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with the French sociologist, member of the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues (IRIS) and journal editor Eric Fassin is presented. When asked to define a public intellectual, he compares the French intellectual (intellectuel) to the American intellectual. Fassin discusses race in France, commenting that the country is not racially colour-blind. He explains the relationship between race and sexuality, including in regard to what is referred to sexual democracy.

The article discusses the study of race and skin colour and the relationship between them within the field of sociology, particularly focusing upon an article in the journal by sociologist Michael Banton. The author analyzes Banton's thoughts on the difference between the concepts of skin colour and race, Banton's contention that men prefer lighter-complexioned women for sexual partners and that women do not pay so much attention to the skin colors of sexual partners, and empirical evidence concerning human association based on skin colour. The article also examines the concept of utilizing a so-called colour scale to glean empirical sociological evidence. The article also discusses a post-racial approach to sociology.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), an American legal theory, has been known for bringing race into left-wing legal analysis and for introducing power- and domination-related arguments into more traditional civil rights scholarship. So far, continental European legal literature has barely heeded CRT. This article seeks to assess CRT's potential contribution in analysing the relationship between race and law in the European context which is characterized by the invisibilization of race and by the narrow legal view of what constitutes racism. The case of French Republican colour-blindness illustrates the European model's contradictions with regard to the (non-)use of race. Instead of eliminating race, a more race-conscious legal analysis, as proposed by CRT in the United States, better addresses the lived experience of racism by people of colour in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the United Nations' (UN's) 2013 report on the U.S.'s adherence to the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the book "Beyond Discrimination: Racial Inequality in a Postracist Era," edited by Fredrick C. Harris and Robert C. Lieberman. Topics, including postracialism, racial inequality in the U.S. from the 1970s through the early 21st century, race discrimination against African Americans and the academic achievement gap between whites and African Americans, are discussed.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including trends in migration, postracialism and the sociology of Asian Americans.

An introduction to a series of comments on the book "Are We All Postracial Yet?" by David Theo Goldberg.