Race and Racism(s): Current Debates in Global and UK Theorisation and Empiricism

Abstract

The global responses to recent current events drawing attention to systemic racial equality in the spring of 2020 highlight the continued salience and importance of race and racism in contemporary societies. Why Race Still Matters and Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation are thusly timely publications as many individuals, organisations, and institutions are beginning to question their own roles in upholding racist systems, making public declarations stating this acknowledgement, and -as time will tell -putting antiracist practices into action to counteract systemic racism. Although the killing of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA on 25 May 2020 sparked the latest global protests, the underlying issues of systemic racism are not uniquely US problems. Both race and racism persist, reproducing legacies of colonialism that are present in societies all over the world. Decentring the USA, Why Race Still Matters applies a global lens to theorisation on race and racism, while Ethnicity, Race and Inequality examines the subjects empirically within the UK context. Taken together, these two works add important sociological perspectives to global race scholarship in their examinations of the discourses and practices of race and racism in the present day.Why Race Still Matters uses a transnationally informed race-critical lens to provide forensic analyses of why and how race has been and continues to be globally significant. Alana Lentin's main thesis is that race 'matters' because those who are racialised as non-White are harmed by the power wielded in its name via ideas and operationalisation.

A Dialectic of Race Discourses: The Presence/Absence of Mixed Race at the State, Institution, and Civil Society and Voluntary and Community Sector Levels in the United Kingdom

“…In Why Race Still Matters, Lentin (2020) develops the social framing of race as a way to move beyond the "race as social construction" tautology and further examine implications of its socio-political development. She posits race and racism(s) as separate but linked political projects that act as technologies of White supremacy to construct and maintain notions of human difference (Lentin 2020;Njaka 2021). I propose that racialisation-as distinct from race and racisms-is an additionally linked political project that also works within this framework of White supremacy, as it is the location for the dynamic shifting and contesting of meanings for race and racisms within societies (Njaka 2021).…”

“…She posits race and racism(s) as separate but linked political projects that act as technologies of White supremacy to construct and maintain notions of human difference (Lentin 2020;Njaka 2021). I propose that racialisation-as distinct from race and racisms-is an additionally linked political project that also works within this framework of White supremacy, as it is the location for the dynamic shifting and contesting of meanings for race and racisms within societies (Njaka 2021). Through this reimagination of race as a power and technology of White supremacy, we can liberate ourselves from the superficial circuity of "social construction" and better understand the logics, functions, and repercussions of race in the social world.…”