Introduction to Part I

In the introduction to this volume, we pointed out that the past few
decades have seen important transformations in research agendas on
questions about race, racism and ethnicity. In Part I of the collection,
we bring together chapters that explore key facets of these debates.
This begins in Chapter 2, through Sandra Soo-Jin Lees overview of
key aspects of debates about the contemporary meanings attached to
the category of race within scientific discourses. Lees critical discussion
focuses on the impact of research into the human genome on our under-
standings of ideas about race. Her suggestive analysis helpfully guides us
through the ways in which scientific debates about the human genome
are likely to impact on both scholarly and popular discourses of race as a
social category. Her analysis highlights the importance of contemporary
scientific research agendas in the analysis of race as a social category.
The question of the changing dynamics of contemporary racial norms
is also at the core of Chapter 3, by Charles Gallagher. Locating his analy-
sis within the broader transformations of debates about race in American
society, Gallagher argues that a discourse of colour-blind egalitarianism
has become the dominant racial norm in narratives about race in the
USA. In situating both the historical and contemporary reasons for this
process, he also seeks to argue that such a framing of race in American
society can be seen as limiting the potential for a critical understanding
of the racialised inequalities that remain an integral component of its
social, economic and cultural relations in the present.
An important undercurrent in contemporary debates about race in
American society, particularly in the aftermath of the election of Barack
Obama, is that about the trend toward the emergence of the post-racial.
This is a theme touched upon by Gallagher, and it is the main focus of
Chapter 4, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (with Victor E. Ray). Their account
is framed around the notion that, far from racism disappearing in post-
racial America, it can be seen as taking on new forms. A key concern
running through the chapter is the argument that, in the aftermath of
the civil rights period, we have seen the emergence of new racialised
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 Introduction to Part I 25

inequalities that continue to frame the experiences of racial minorities.

Bonilla-Silva and Ray also focus on the limitations of accounts that see the
election of Obama as a turning point in the politics of race in American
society.
Chapter 5, by Miri Song, addresses the question of mixed race as a
socially constructed category, an issue that has attracted much attention
in a number of different social contexts, including the USA, contem-
porary European societies and Brazil, for example. Song argues that, in
recent debates about this issue, we have seen a kind of normalisation of
mixedness that has helped to shape policy as well as political discourses.
She also explores some of the connections between ideas about mixed
race and post-race.
This is followed by Chapter 6, by Leah Bassel, which considers the
ways in which identity and activism are understood to connect when
identities are multiple and serve both as a site of challenge and as a
resource. Bassels account draws on the work of French philosopher
Jacques Ranciere and the feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins to
highlight both commonalities and differences in their approach to the
analysis of political identities. Bassel also uses her research on undocu-
mented migrant women in France to explore the complexities of what
is understood as politics in the processes of mobilisation, resistance and
identity formation.
The concluding chapter in this part of the book is by Brett St Louis
and focuses on a critical account of post-racial problematics. St Louis
investigates, in particular, how ideas such as post-race and racial elim-
inativism can be located within an uneven history of anti-race thinking
across the human, social and life sciences that often attempts to reject
racial categories and concepts. His analysis links up to some of the themes
that are taken up in the chapters in Part II of this collection.

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