Presentation:

Obama’s election as US President in 2008 appeared to give further support to the notion that the US has become a post-racial society. This argument has fuelled the position of the anti-affirmative action lobby since the 1980s and of those, across western societies, who oppose anti-discrimination policies for their recognition of difference in general and race in particular. Race critical theorists have consistently agued that declaring a society post-race is to ignore the persistence of racism in continuing to define socioeconomic inequality despite changing societal relationships to race over time. Despite such critiques, the notion that we are post-race has gained ground in a post-9/11 era defined by a growing suspicion of diversity. Clearly racialized, this suspicion is nonetheless couched in cultural-civilisational terms that attempt to avoid the charge of racism. Hence, policies seeking to counteract the perceived failure of multiculturalism in Europe today pose culturalist solutions to problems deemed to originate from an excess of cultural diversity (Goodhart 2004). This policy is part of a deepening culturalization of politics in which the post-race argument belongs to a post-political logic that shuns political explanations of unrest and widening disintegration in favour of reductive culturalist ones. This culturalization of politics is understood by relating it to the displacement of the political originating with the 19th Century ascendance of race (Hannaford 1996), thus demonstrating the importance of analysing the notion of post-race within a wider analysis of the profound rejection of politics of which it has, and continues to be, definitive.

Biographical Note:

Senior Lecturer in Sociology within the department's research group on Social Theory and Political Sociology. Lentin works on the critical theorisation of race, racism and anti-racism and has done extensive research into the contemporary politics of (im)migration and collective action for migrants' rights. Her recent research focuses on the perceived crisis of multiculturalism both in Europe and in a global perspective with a special focus on interconnections between Europe and India.

Publications:

 Racism and Anti-Racism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2004).

 Race and State (co-edited with Ronit Lentin, Cambridge Scholars' Press, 2006).

 Racism: A beginner's guide(OneWorld, 2008).

 The Politics of Diversity in Europe (co-edited with Gavan Titley; The Council of Europe, 2008).

 “Europe and the Silence About Race”, European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 487-503, 2008.

 “After Anti-Racism?”, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(3): 311-331, 2008.