Kind Of Racism Research Articles

“Not in Our Daycare”? Commitments and Obstacles to Antiracism in Finnish ECEC

AbstractThe aim of this article is to contribute to the under-researched topic of racism in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) by posing three questions: What kind of racism do ECEC teachers recognize in ECEC? How are teachers committed to opposing racism in their work? What kind of obstacles to committing to antiracism are recognized in ECEC? These questions are answered through discourse analysis on interviews with six Finnish ECEC teachers. This article demonstrates how racism is evident in many forms in early education, such as racist assumptions, all-White learning material and structures. The teachers recognized the urgency to resist racism in their work. They committed to antiracism through conscious pedagogical solutions, e.g., broadening representations in learning materials and critically reflecting on their privileges and racialised stereotypes. Yet adopting an antiracist approach in ECEC faces obstacles, such as the hectic everyday work, difficulty intervening in racist situations, and co-workers’ lack of self-reflection in multi-professional teams. Thus, it is vital to find ways to recognize racism in multi-professional teams, to improve the ability for self-reflection, and to ensure that teachers have the resources to continue their work against racism.

Racism Phenomenon Portrays in Till Movie by Chinonye Chukwu

This research aims to find what kinds of racism are shown in the Till movie, the amount of racist phenomena that occur in the Till movie, and the black people respond to racism in the Till movie. The writer used qualitative methods with a semiotic approach focusing on language signs of racism. There are two data-collecting techniques: Primary Data and Secondary Data. Primary data is from a video of the Till movie, and secondary data is from the literature review. The writer found six types of racism found in the Till movie. There are Interpersonal Racism, Institutional Racism, Structural Racism, Societal Racism, Discrimination, and Violence. In total, seventeen phenomena of racism occur in the Till movie. There are several black people's responses to the racism they experienced in the Till movie. The reactions are understanding and compassion, community solidarity, celebration, pride in our culture, assistance and guidance of younger generations, advocacy and activism, and support from different races.

“İslam da Müslüman da Bir Irk Değildir”: İslamofobi, Irkçılık ve İfade Özgürlüğü

There are objections to the definition of Islamophobia as a form of racism. Objections center around two main themes of Islamophobia: “Islam” and “Muslims”. Some detractors argue that the former should not be given protection against various debates and criticisms that should be considered legitimate within the scope of freedom of expression. They assert that statements such as “Muhammad is a pedophile and married a nine-year-old girl”, “Islam was spread by the sword” or “Wearing the veil dehumanizes, humiliates and objectifies women” should be considered as theological debates that should be seen as legitimate within the scope of freedom of expression and that these rights of criticism should not be restricted by defining Islamophobia as a form of racism. For others, the latter cannot be considered a racial minority because being a Muslim is a religious identity that is seen as being voluntarily chosen. While this approach regards gender and racial identities as innate or involuntary identity categories, it assumes that being a Muslim is related to one's own will and therefore Muslims need or should have much less legal protection than these other identity categories. This paper argues that definitions other than racism would miss a vital issue, one that helps capture and understand how Muslims and those who are simply perceived as being Muslim are excluded, subordinated, and exploited with reference to phenotypical and cultural differences. This is the issue of racialization of Muslims. This study aims to explore the following questions: What should be the legal limit of freedom of expression? Is it possible to distinguish Islamophobia from reasonable criticism of Muslims and Islam? Does racism really depend on the actual existence of races? If the hostility to Islam and Muslims can be regarded as a form of racism, then, what kind of racism might it be? What are its specific qualities, how does it function? How have Muslims been racialized? To answer these questions, this paper draws on a study of Islamophobia experiences of thirty-nine first and second-generation young Turks aged between 18-35 in London in 2019. I aimed to recruit respondents that were diverse enough to represent the variation known to exist in the Turkish community of London. I selected the semi-structured in-depth interview method as the means by which the data would be collected. I employed thematic analysis to identify and analyse patterns of meaning in the dataset. This study has made clear that Muslims are racialized not based on biological or phenotypical features, but also ethnic and cultural features. I argue that making sweeping generalizations is more likely to be Islamophobic. One should have the right to critique ideologies and religions, but the manner and decorum in which individuals express themselves are vital. The speech should not intentionally demonize a religion, or humiliate, devalue, or stigmatize a diverse group of people. Moreover, being Muslim is not a racial identity reflects the idea that race is the pre-condition for racism and confines racism to a narrow understanding. Every racism, whether biological or cultural, is cultural in its essence and the main target is cultural, social, and religious differences attributed to bodies (individuals). Therefore, perceived religious affiliation rather than religion itself is at the center of anti-Muslim racism. Regardless of physical appearance, nationality, ethnicity, or economic situation, Muslims are homogenized, humiliated, and marginalized through Islamophobic discourse and practices in their daily lives. This article contributes to a better understanding of why Islamophobia should be evaluated as a form of racism. It is hoped that in assessing the discourse and behavior towards Islam and Muslims, the focus will be shifted from everyday political debate or hostility to religion, fear of religion, anti-Muslim hatred, and prejudice to the fact that Muslims are racialized.

Greek Myth and Fantasy as Portrayed in "Black Swan" Movie Script by Andrez Heinz

This study aimed to analyze racism in The Man Who Knew Infinity movie using Paradies, Harris, and Anderson's theory. The Man Who Knew Infinity released in 2016 is a film directed by Matthew Brown that features the character of a genius mathematician from India named Srinivasa Ramanujan who wants to publish his formula about mathematics at Trinity College. As an Indian, Ramanujan experienced various acts of racism committed by the British, both mentally and physically. This study used a descriptive qualitative method. The data was collected through four steps, such as watching, screenshotting, note-taking, and identifying the data. The result of this study showed that the main character experienced racism because of his race and nationality. The kinds of racism that the main character experienced namely stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

Representation of Racism in "The Man Who Knew Infinity" Movie by Matthew Brown

This study aimed to analyze racism in The Man Who Knew Infinity movie used Paradies, Harris, and Anderson’s theory. The Man Who Knew Infinity released in 2016 is a film directed by Matthew Brown that features the character of a genius mathematician from India named Srinivasa Ramanujan who wants to publish his formula about mathematics at Trinity College. As an Indian, Ramanujan experienced various acts of racism committed by the British, both mentally and physically. This study used a descriptive qualitative method. The data was collected through four steps, such as watching, screenshotting, note-taking, and identifying the data. The result of this study showed that the main character experienced racism because of his race and nationality. The kinds of racism that the main character experienced namely stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism - Gideon Reuveni and Diana Franklin

Reviewed by: The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism ed. by Gideon Reuveni and Diana Franklin Paul Lerner The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism. Edited by Gideon Reuveni and Diana Franklin. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2020. 332 pages. $34.99 (paper). In 1989, Fritz Pinkuss, chief rabbi of the Congregação Israelita Paulista in São Paolo, Brazil, returned to his native Heidelberg and lamented the disappearance of German Jewry, noting the few remaining traces of its once thriving cultural and religious life, the vanishing of its institutions, structures, memories, and legacies. With these words, he was evoking Leo Baeck's famous assertation in the aftermath of the war that the Nazi regime and the Holocaust had brought an end to centuries of German Jewish history. Not long after Pinkuss's lament, however, it became clear that those pronouncements were premature. Neither Pinkuss nor Baeck could have predicted the remarkable resurgence of Jewish life in a reunified Germany; nor could they have foreseen the repopulation of hollowed out Jewish institutions by new waves of émigrés and expats from the former Soviet Union, Israel, and North America. How do the Jewish cultures and communities in Germany today, which consist of a great number of Jews with eastern-European backgrounds, connect to the longer German Jewish past? How does that past look at a moment when the disappearance of the last Holocaust survivors is so close at hand, and when the influx of Syrian refugees and broader immigration patterns have begun to shift perceptions of the homogenous ethnic bedrock of German national identity, even as the backlash against those refugees fuels a resurgent radical Right? How is Israel entangled in this matrix, as a flashpoint of political controversy, and alternately as a projection of philosemitic identification? What, in short, are the geographical, spatial, and temporal boundaries of German Jewish history, and how are those boundaries changing at a time when Holocaust memory is almost completely mediated by recorded testimonies and institutions in an increasingly diverse and globalized Germany? These are among the questions posed throughout this excellent volume, a collection conceived in celebration of the twentieth [End Page 418] anniversary of the official inauguration of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. Beyond demarcating this noteworthy milestone, The Future of the German-Jewish Past does the sub-field of German Jewish Studies an important service by bringing together the contributions of a range of international voices, from younger scholars to established professors, including public-facing historians, memoirists, and academicians in the humanities and social scientists. Taken together, these essays offer glimpses of the exciting new work being done today and catalogue the range of approaches, topics, and methods that animate the study of the "inexhaustible richness of the German-Jewish interrelationship" (xxii), which makes this area of research as vibrant and challenging as ever. What ties many of these works together, beyond the subject itself, is a shared self-consciousness about the ways history writing as practice is itself embedded in historical processes—fittingly so, given the intense historicism of generations of German Jewish scholars and writers. Several focus on often overlooked questions about the raw material of history, how sources are collected and archived, for example, or how museum exhibitions address different audiences and community and municipal pressures. Many of the contributors historicize themselves both concerning their place in evolving disciplinary landscapes and in the context of ever-changing Jewish presents and futures in a Germany marked by both flourishing Jewish life and resurgent antisemitic violence, in cityscapes where pedestrians literally stumble over memorials to the genocidal past, but often partake in a collective blindness toward other kinds of racism and hatred in the present. This rich intellectual thicket makes the volume useful for scholars beyond German Jewish Studies and indeed to anyone interested in considering the limits and possibilities of history, relationships between scholarly history and public memory, trauma and its aftereffects, and antisemitism, ethnicity, and race in the past and present. The volume's 20 chapters (following an informative introduction by co-editor and institute director Gideon Reuveni) are...

AN ANALYSIS OF RACISM IN THE FILM OF THE GREEN MILE BY FRANK DARABONT

This research analyzes the forms of racism in the film The Green mile by Frank Darabont. The Green Mile tells about the experience of a warden who has a prisoner who comes from black people and has magical powers within him. This research shown the treatment of racist forms experienced by minorities. The purpose of this research is first, to find out the types of racism found in the movie. Second, to find out the resistance shown in the movie. This study uses a semiotic approach by Charles Sanders Pierce. The method used is descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data in this research. The data sources are taken from dialogues and scenes in the film The Green Mile by Frank Darabont. The finding in the research are first, kinds of racism that occur in the green mile films are internalized racism, interpersonal racism, and institutional racism. Second, the resistance that shown in The Green Mile films are closed resistance and open resistance.

Collective Healing to Address Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery: Opportunities and Challenges

In this article, we show how pathways to justice and reconciliation pertaining to the transatlantic slavery should begin with collective healing processes. To illustrate this conclusion, we first employ a four-fold conceptual framework for understanding collective healing that consists in: (1) acknowledging historical dehumanizing acts; (2) addressing the harmful effects of dehumanisation; (3) embracing relational rapprochement; and (4) co-imagining and co-creating conditions for systemic justice. Based on this framework, we then examine existing collective healing practices in different contexts that are aimed at addressing legacies of transatlantic slavery. In doing so, we further identify challenges and pose critical questions concerning such practices. While globally there are, and have been, many different kinds of racism and slavery, and even though transatlantic slavery has many features specific to it, nevertheless, we hope that this exploration of collective healing will be illuminating for other situations where acts of brutality have served to demean and dehumanize.

Ghassan Kanafani: The Palestinian Voice of Resistance

Ghassan Kanafani is a Palestinian writer who is has raised his voice against injustice and tyranny of Zionist regime in his writings. He is the voice of subaltern or voice of voiceless and through his writings one can easily trace out the struggle which he has undergone throughout his life but has been firm in his resolution to speak against any kind of injustice done against his countrymen. Kanafani have tried to highlight issues related to humanity through his writings. So in depiction about issues related with humanity his perspective is to raise his voice against all kinds of racism, imperialism and atrocities. In his works he has depicted characters who are trying to uplift themselves from all kinds of colonial encounters. Characters who are trying to assert their autonomy in adverse situations, who are trying to liberate themselves from various kinds of exploitation, oppression, persecution and inhuman activities, are part of their writings.

Racialism Slavery As Reflected In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poems To Social Life

Slavery to Social life's Racialism analyzes the disclosure of a black-life tragedy of slavery and racism in their social life. The author takes data from Dunbar's poems: We Wear the Mask, The Debt, Sympathy, Life's Tragedy and The Paradox. In these five poems the author analyzes how slavery that has taken place in America on the basis of the five poems of Dunbar, some kind of racism that the author finds in the five poems of Dunbar, and the result of social slavery to the black social life in America that the author finds in The five poems of Dunbar. This research method is descriptive qualitative, which try to explain about correlation between writer life background which pour through poetry and its influence to human social life. In analyzing the five poems of Dunbar, the author uses a psychological approach that discusses the psychology of human personality which is the theory of Sigmund Freud including the id, ego, and the human superego. The main source of data obtained from the five poems Dunbar namely: We Wear the Mask, The Debt, Sympathy, Life's Tragedy and The Paradox. Other sources come from articles and internet books. From the analysis of the five poems of Dunbar, the authors found that (1) Slavery and human rights abuses against blacks in America are reflected through the five poems of Dunbar. (2) The author finds some form of racism such as the occurrence of discrimination and persecution that caused the suffering of blacks in America on the basis of the fifth poems of Dunbar and (3) There have been proven consequences of the slavery experienced by blacks in America that the author has discovered from the fifth Dunbar's poetry is like feeling oppressed or experiencing the mental stress that causes blacks in America to suffer.

Islamophobia: The Bigger Picture

This article maps the emergent field of Islamophobia Studies through a discussion of recently published monographs, representing the broad spectrum of theoretical and analytical approaches to the phenomenon. Strengths and deficiencies in recent works of Nathan Lean, Deepa Kumar, Chris Allen, David Tyrer and Anne Norton are discussed. I argue that in different ways, a more thorough engagement with critical and Marxist theories of racism could contribute to a more accurate understanding of the phenomenon. This, however, is predicated on recognising and theorising Islamophobia as racism – albeit one ‘without races’ – and a discussion about its differences from and similarities to other kinds of racism.

DA BRANQUIDADE DO ESTADO NA OCUPAÇÃO DA CIDADE

O artigo busca argumentar como a branquidade do Estado operou e opera na ocupação da cidade de São Paulo, a partir de experiências etnográficas com movimentos de luta por moradia. Por branquidade do Estado entendo os vínculos entre os diferentes tipos de racismo presentes em algumas práticas e concepções estatais, especialmente no que diz respeito à política urbana e à repressão policial. A branquidade do Estado, enquanto modo de funcionamento, vincula-se à heteroclassificação racial realizada pelo próprio Estado, atrelada à propagação do não reconhecimento das relações sociais como racializadas. Não obstante, a branquidade do Estado é constantemente desafiada e confrontada por pessoas e grupos não brancos e seus modos de ocupar as cidades, como o footing, as ocupações de prédios e os rolezinhos.

Is it cultural racism? Discursive exclusion and oppression of migrants in the Netherlands

Like elsewhere in Europe, a discourse that is hostile to migrants in general and Muslims in particular has emerged in Dutch politics and media. Can we understand this Dutch migrant-hostile discourse as a kind of racism, i.e. cultural racism? The authors studied this discourse (Dutch political and media texts) and its impact on the lived experiences of Dutch Moroccan Muslims in work settings (21 interviews). They found little evidence of the concept of cultural racism as long as it maintains notions of biological or genetic hierarchy, while it becomes redundant once it abandons such notions. Alternative concepts like cultural essentialism and cultural fundamentalism are sufficient to understand this discourse as well as its impact on Moroccan Muslims’ lived experiences. Cultural fundamentalism has become successful because it belongs to a different category than racism.

Race, Genomics, and Philosophy of Science

Race, Genomics, and Philosophy of Science

Race, Genomics, and Philosophy of Science

Race, Genomics, and Philosophy of Science

Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a “Postrace” Era

Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a “Postrace” Era Evelyn Alsultany (bio) After 9/11 a strange thing happened: there was an increase in sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims on US television. If a TV drama or Hollywood film represented an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the story line usually included a “positive” representation of an Arab or Muslim to offset the negative depiction. Dozens of TV dramas portrayed Arab and Muslim Americans as the unjust target of hate crimes or as patriotic US citizens. President George W. Bush was sure to distinguish between Arab and Muslim “friends” and “enemies,” stating “the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.”1 News reporters interviewed Arab and Muslim Americans, seemingly eager to include their perspectives on the terrorist attacks, careful to point out their experiences with hate crimes. Yet at the same time that sympathetic portrayals of Arab and Muslim Americans proliferated on US commercial television in the weeks, months, and years after 9/11, hate crimes, workplace discrimination, bias incidents, and airline discrimination targeting Arab and Muslim Americans increased exponentially. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims multiplied by 1,600 percent from 2000 to 2001.2 In just the first weeks and months after 9/11, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and other organizations documented hundreds of violent incidents experienced by Arab and Muslim Americans and people mistaken for Arabs or Muslims, including several murders. Dozens of airline passengers perceived to be Arab or Muslim were removed from flights. Hundreds of Arab and Muslim Americans reported discrimination at work, receiving hate mail, and physical assaults, and their property, mosques, and community centers vandalized or set on fire.3 In the decade after 9/11, such discriminatory acts have persisted. [End Page 161] In addition to individual citizens taking the law into their own hands, the US government passed legislation that targeted Arabs and Muslims (both inside and outside the United States) and legalized the suspension of constitutional rights.4 The government’s overt propaganda of war was palatable to many citizens on edge and regarded with suspicion by others as the government passed the USA PATRIOT Act, initiated war in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, and explained the terrorist attacks to the public by stating “they hate us for our freedom.” Given that Arabs and Muslims have been stereotyped for over a century, given that 9/11 was such an opportune moment for further stereotyping, given that the US government passed domestic and foreign policies that compromised the civil and human rights of Arabs and Muslims, and given that demonizing the enemy during times of war has been commonplace, why would sympathetic portrayals appear during such a fraught moment? As overt war propaganda has become increasingly transparent and ineffective over the decades since World War II and the Cold War, the production and circulation of “positive” representations of the “enemy” have become essential to projecting the United States as benevolent, especially in its declaration of war and passage of racist policies. Positive representations of Arabs and Muslims have helped form a new kind of racism, one that projects antiracism and multiculturalism on the surface but simultaneously produces the logics and affects necessary to legitimize racist policies and practices.5 It is no longer the case that the other is explicitly demonized to justify war or injustice. Now the other is portrayed sympathetically in order to project the United States as an enlightened country that has entered a postrace era. The representational mode that has become standard since 9/11 seeks to balance a negative representation with a positive one, what I refer to as “simplified complex representations.” These are strategies used by television producers, writers, and directors to give the impression that the representations they are producing are complex, yet they do so in a simplified way. These predictable strategies can be relied on if the plot involves an Arab or Muslim terrorist, but are a new standard...

Enacting Inclusivity Through Engaged Pedagogy: A Higher Education Perspective

The purpose of this article is to describe a curricular change process used to incorporate inclusivity and diversity in a Higher Education Ph.D. program. The efforts of faculty members and students to practice engaged pedagogy as advocated by bell hooks are also described. Accounts from two agents, a professor and assistant professor working in the graduate program, of the re-envisioning and development processes focus on three types of changes: strategic administrative actions, curricular change, and pedagogical change. The authors use critical race and feminist perspectives and personal narratives to describe their experiences and how these led to incorporating radical and transformative perspectives in the classroom as they worked collaboratively with students to recognize various kinds of racism, sexism, and inequalities in their lives at the university and in society. Students were supported to find dissertation methodologies and topics consistent with their values.

Is xenophobia racism?

The outbreak of anti-immigrant violence in May 2008 in South Africa has prompted a set of theoretical questions and a reappraisal of theoretical suppositions. While the attacks have in the main pervasively been presented as xenophobia, I argue in this paper that what is termed xenophobia is in fact racism—New Racism—practised by people of the same population group, which has characterised post-apartheid South African black social relations. These are implications of decolonisation and difficulties of assimilating and integrating black African immigrants into the new South Africa. On the other hand there is increased culture contact and intermixing as a result of the accelerated presence of people of other identities. There are of course conceptual and definitional limitations of the term xenophobia in describing the complex social realities occurring in South African black communities. I therefore call for the deconstruction of the term xenophobia and propose that we begin to see it as culturally-based racism. The article explains that this kind of racism is heavily entrenched in cultural differences enunciated by dissimilarities in nationality, ethnicity, language, dress, customs, social and territorial origins, speech patterns and accents. These differences are deepened by social and economic inequalities, and frustrations among local people are expressed thorough economic grievances, which however mask the preceding cultural contempt and disdain. In addition, some current black on black practices are reminiscent of apartheid white anti-black racism. Drawing on my fieldwork in Alexandra, I then discuss a wide range of labels which are used to refer to African immigrants.

Vigorous Currents, Painful Archives: The Production of Affect and History in Poe's “Tale of the Ragged Mountains”

A s we turn to the question of pain in Poe, we might return to Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood, which describes how effectively his mother’s stories drained away all of his morbid symptoms.1 Given the relief attributed to the “vigorous current” of those tales, we could ask if the current coursing through Poe’s work also targets some feverish pain abroad in the land of his upbringing. Many scholars now find Poe’s engagement with painful issues of his day undeniable, particularly as they relate to traumas of slavery and the racism driving imperialism at home and abroad. Yet those same scholars continue to debate how to interpret that engagement, particularly when it takes the indirect, ghoulish, and splenetic form so characteristic of his work. If some still question whether Poe was a racist, most assume that some degree or kind of racism was unavoidable for a man of his time. While initially useful, efforts to pinpoint Poe’s position on the spectrum of racist ideologies of his day have been superseded by recognition that his writing constitutes an archive with broad implications for an anatomy of racism’s conflicted and contested operations.2 Poe exposes slavery’s impact well beyond the experience of its most immediate victims and perpetrators, and this extended traumatic environment generates a range of response whose effects are worth studying with care. This last is particularly the case when we discover how often the vigorous currents of Poe’s work invite us to consider the broader traumatic relays alive in their very production. Thus if we consider the deeper resonances of Benjamin’s association between storytelling and pain, we may find another way to approach some of the

Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the New Racism: Getting beyond the Politics of Denial

While many liberals suggest that with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency the United States has become a post-racial society, many conservatives have now taken the opposite position, prompted by the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, that racism is alive and well in the American republic.[1] According to many right-wing pundits and politicians extending from Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson, Judge Sotomayor is a ‘racist’ and a ‘bigot’ because of a largely decontextualized 32-word quotation abstracted from a speech she gave in 2001 in which she stated: ‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life’.[2] Newt Gingrich ignored the broader context in which the quotation appeared, insisting that Sotomayor’s statement was symptomatic of a new type of racism. He exclaimed in Twitter-like fashion, ‘Imagine a judicial nominee said “my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman” new racism is no better than old racism’.[3] All of this saber-rattling rhetoric about the emergence of a new kind of racism suggests rather ironically that whites rather than people of color are the real victims of personal and institutional racism and points to a kind of historical amnesia that not only rewrites the meaning of racism, it also points to a long-standing fear among many conservatives that diversity rather the bigotry is the real threat to democracy. What the relentless attack on Judge Sotomayor suggests is that the public morality of American life and social policy regarding matters of racial justice are increasingly subject to a politics of denial. Denial in this case is not merely about the failure of public memory or the refusal to know, but an active ongoing attempt on the part of many conservatives to rewrite the discourse of race so as to deny its valence as a force for discrimination and exclusion either by translating it as a threat to American culture or relegating it to the language of the private sphere. The idea of race and the conditions of racism have real political effects and eliding them only makes those effects harder to recognize. And yet, the urgency to recognize how language is used to name, organize, order, and categorize matters of race not only has academic value, it also provides a location from which to engage difference and the relationship between the self and the other and between the public and private. In addition, the language of race is important because it strongly affects political and policy agendas as well. One only has to think about the effects of Charles Murray’s book, Losing Ground, on American welfare policies in the 1980s.[4] But language is more than a mode of communication or a symbolic practice that produces real effects, it is also a site of contestation and struggle. The charge that Judge Sotomayor is a racist suggests something about the changing vocabulary about race and racial injustice that has to be both critically understood and politically engaged. In fact, there is something called a new racism and it has been brilliantly explored by a number of writers including David Theo Goldberg, Elizabeth Ansell, Howard Winant, and Manning Marable, among others, though they do not use the term in the same way as conservatives. Unlike the old racism, which defined racial difference in terms of fixed biological categories organized hierarchically, the new racism operates in various guises, proclaiming among other things raceneutrality, asserting culture as a marker of racial difference, or marking race as a private matter. Unlike the crude racism with its biological referents and pseudo-scientific legitimations, buttressing