A Reckoning with Racism

The politics of racism have returned with a bang. What was once a whisper is now a roar in the wake of public outrage over charges of police racism that claimed the lives of racialized minorities and Indigenous peoples. Yet confusion and uncertainty unsettle the challenge of clarifying the nature and scope of racism in general, systemic racism in particular, resulting in a glaring disconnect between public perceptions and lived experiences. Reckoning with Racism is themed around the prospect of problematizing the idea of racism as articulated, understood, and debated in response to new realities, emergent demands, and contested dynamics. A profoundly new racism world is evolving, one so fundamentally different from the iterations of the past, as to trigger a foundational shift in reconceptualizing how see, think and talk about and act on racism. Changing the conversation on racism must also acknowledge its uncanny knack of reinventing itself, while intersecting with other axes of identity and differentiation to amplify the inequalities of exclusion.

Augie Fleras obtained his Ph.D. in Maori Studies and Social Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He worked as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, but has since retired. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association for his longstanding contributions to the field. Canadian Multiculturalism @50 (Brill, 2021) is one of his latest publications.