Race Still Matters is what you get when you have a trusting editor. My editor at Polity Books, Jonathan Skerrett, approached me at first asking whether I would be interested in contributing a proposal for a book on borders for their ‘Debating Race’ series. I wrote back telling him that, while I was delighted to have been asked, I did not feel competent enough to write on this subject, but that I could propose something else. Although the book did not find a home in ‘Debating Race’, Polity agreed to publish it nonetheless, and Jonathan supported me as the book vastly expanded from its original agreed-upon length.
There are many people who helped directly and indirectly in the writing of this book. Some of them I have never met. So, although it may seem strange to do so, I want to start by thanking my fellow antiracist scrollers and 280-character formulators on Twitter. Twitter at times is enraging and it is certainly also a drain on my time. But it is undeniable that, were it not for Twitter, this book would not have taken shape in quite the way it has, especially because sometimes I find living in Australia to be an isolating experience. Twitter helps me feel closer to an international community of race scholars. Knowing what I was writing on, Twitter friends sent me countless examples of the ‘not racism’ I explore in Chapter 2. I want to thank Michael Richmond in particular, who, as well as publishing an article I wrote on ‘Frozen Racism’ in the Occupied Times, contributed many examples and much food for thought.
The Internet has been important for research in other ways. In particular, I am an avid listener of podcasts, and have learned a lot from Surviving Society, Always Already, The Funambulist, and About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge, on which I was delighted to have been asked to appear in 2018.
I am very grateful to have been invited to speak about aspects of the book in several places, occasions that have helped me to hone it through discussion with colleagues. I first addressed the topic of ‘not racism’ during a conference in Paris organized by the ‘Global Race’ project in June 2017, to which I was invited by Patrick Simon and Sarah Mazouz. I was lucky to have been invited to visit the University of Amsterdam in late 2018 as a guest of the anthropologist Amade M’charek, who runs the Race Face ID research project on race and forensics. During my stay there, I was invited by Sarah Bracke and Paul Mepschen to give a talk about the themes I cover in Chapter 3. In February 2018, I was delighted to have been a guest of the inimitable Dottie Morris, Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity at Keene State University in New Hampshire, to give a public lecture. Dottie had read about me in Reni Eddo-Lodge’s beautiful book Why I’m No Longer Talking About Race to White People. Most recently, I attended the ‘Mobilizing Blackness’ symposium organized by Damani Partridge and Mihir Sharma at the University of Michigan, which was one of the most nourishing scholarly gatherings I have had the pleasure of attending, with a group of almost all Black women scholars. I enjoyed energizing and thought-provoking conversations with Pacific studies scholar Katerina Teaiwa, the African-American anthropologist of whiteness Marian Swanzy-Parker, the Afro-German Black theorist Vanessa Thompson, the Black Finnish scholar of race in the Nordic countries Jasmine Linnea, and Charisse Burden-Stelly, whose brilliant work in the tradition of Black radicalism and communism was a discovery.
I am an enormous fan of libraries, and this book was mainly written in them. I wrote happily in the Sydney University law library during the summer vacation of January 2018, the State Library of New South Wales, and the beautiful new library in Marrickville, where I ran to complete revisions on the manuscript after it opened in late 2019.
I was very lucky to have been invited to the Varuna Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains above Sydney. I wrote my third chapter there in a difficult week straight after the horror of the Christchurch terrorist attack, and I was grateful for the silence.
This book, as with all my work, is indebted to the endless practical help and intellectual support I receive from my mother, the fearless antiracist, anti-colonialist, and race scholar Ronit Lentin. Thanks always for your honed commentary and your sharp eyes that find all my strange linguistic formulations and grammatical errors.
The intellectual insight of Gavan Titley, with whom I have been working since 2003, is invaluable. Gavan’s own Polity book, Is Free Speech Racist?, is Why Race Still Matters’ sister. It is fair to say that there is a rare word I write that doesn’t land in Gavan’s inbox, and he is always there with both incisive critique and endless encouragement, both scholarly and political. Stefanie Boulila, whose own book on Race in Postracial Europe had just been published, also provided me with precious feedback on Chapter 3. Waqas Tufail read Chapter 4 during his visit to Sydney. The brilliant Critical Muslim Studies scholar Yassir Morsi, whose Radical Skin, Moderate Masks is a must-read, is my go-to person for puzzling over race in Australia.
Books don’t get written without the help and encouragement of your friends and colleagues. I thank my colleagues in the Cultural and Social Analysis group at Western Sydney University, especially George Morgan. Our little team at the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, Deb Bargallie, Fiona Belcher, Nilmini Fernando, Sherene Idriss, Sharlene Leroy-Dyer, and Oscar Monaghan, became a source of nourishment. I am so excited to be building a community with you. Maria Elena Indelicato deserves a special mention for her energy in building the ACRAWSA blog and for being the best co-editor a person could wish for!
To my friends, those near and far, thanks for hearing me complain. Yael Ohana, whom I have loved like a sister for over forty years, and with whom I pick up where we left off as though a day hadn’t passed each time we see each other, thanks for being you. To my local girls, Antoinette, Lana, Leanne, and Lucia, thanks for the drinks, the coffees, and the DMs.
Finally, this book was written at a time that was particularly challenging for my love and life partner, Partho Sen-Gupta. Just as I was settling down to write, Partho’s brave and uncompromising third feature film about Islamophobia and white supremacism in Australia, Slam, was fighting for a place in the white world of the film festival circuit. As I place the final words on the page, the film has been seen by audiences around Australia and has been met with critical acclaim, proving that, whatever the gatekeepers may say, there is a public for the difficult conversations we need to have about race. To your endless love and bravery, Partho, I raise a glass of prosecco!
During this time, our strong and beautiful, original and unstoppable daughter, Noam, grew to become a tween. I know you would have liked me to have spent less time at the library, but you also show me that you understand and believe in me. This book is for you in the hope that race will matter less for you in the future than it unfortunately does today.
Introduction
On 15 March 2019, fifty-one Muslim people, mainly of South Asian or African origin, including several young children, were massacred during Friday prayers by Brenton Tarrant, a white Australian, self-proclaimed ‘ecofascist’ in Christchurch, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Muslim people close to me responded with grief, shock, rage, but not surprise. White supremacism was suddenly on everyone’s lips. The Christchurch massacre has since inspired at least two other lethal terrorist attacks. In El Paso, Texas, on 3 August 2019, twenty-two people were shot by twenty-one-year-old Patrick Crusius. A week later, another twenty-one year old, Philip Manhaus, carried out an attack on the al-Noor Islamic Centre near Oslo, claiming to have been inspired by the Christchurch and El Paso events. In Halle, East Germany, on Yom Kippur (9 October), the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Stephan B. admitted that ‘antisemitic and right-wing extremist beliefs’ had inspired him to attack a synagogue, ending up killing two bystanders, neither of whom were Jewish (Deutsche Welle 2019). What links all of these attacks and their perpetrators is the fact that they were motivated by white supremacism and the consequent hatred for Black people, immigrants, Muslims,
