Published in 2020
184 pages
Dr. Alana Lentin is Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University. She is a European and West Asian Jewish woman who is a settler on Gadigal land. She works on the critical theorization of race, racism and antiracism.
She is a graduate of the European University Institute where she earned her PhD in political and social sciences in 2002, and the London School of Economics (1997). Prior to joining the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Sussex University (2006-2012). Before this she held a Marie Curie EC Research Fellowship at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (2003-2005). In 2017, she was the Hans Speier Visiting Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York and has previously been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin (2010).
She is co-editor of the Rowman and Littlefield International book series, Challenging Migration Studies and former President of the Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies Association (2017-20). She is on the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities, Journal of Australian Studies, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, and the Pluto Books series, Vagabonds.
Her current research examines the interplay between race and digital technology and social media. Her most recent research project analysed the use of ‘antiracism apps’ for education and intervention.
What is this book about?
‘Why are you making this about race?’ This question is repeated daily in public and in the media. Calling someone racist in these times of mounting white supremacy seems to be a worse insult than racism itself. In our supposedly post-racial society, surely it’s time to stop talking about race?
This powerful refutation is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Race critical scholar Alana Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. Weaving together international examples, she eviscerates misconceptions such as reverse racism and the newfound acceptability of ‘race realism’, bursts the ‘I’m not racist, but’ justification, complicates the common criticisms of identity politics and warns against using concerns about antisemitism as a proxy for antiracism.
Dominant voices in society suggest we are talking too much about race. Lentin shows why we actually need to talk about it more and how in doing so we can act to make it matter less.
