Against Racism

An impressive collective effort by a group of established scholars and early-career researchers who seek to understand anti-racist struggle across four mestizo societies. . .the strength of Against Racism lies in its ambitious analysis and the door it opens to a ‘radical imagination’ built on intersectional anti-racist strategies.

* Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

The shear scope of Against Racism makes it an impressive volume necessary for scholars interested in racism and anti-racism in Latin America.

* The Latin Americanist *

A groundbreaking volume analyzing anti-racism through the lens of organizations in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. . .Taken as a whole, the volume is impressive for its comparative scope, depth, breadth, and intricate layers.

* Latin American Research Review *

The book does provide a rich picture of the diversity of actions and organizations in the region, but it does much more than that: it opens a number of thorny questions about the potential and shortcomings of different grammars of antiracism in Latin American societies and beyond. One of the merits of Against Racism is that it brings together topics and questions rarely discussed jointly. Empirically, it analyses indigenous and black antiracist organizations, showing how they have common goals even if mobilizing distinct repertoires of action.

* Ethnic and Racial Studies *

By approaching race through antiracism, this exemplar of teamwork in social research charts a major innovation in thinking about race in Latin America and beyond. Interweaving themes, cases, and countries, race appears in social activism even when it is not named, and even when it is named it may not be the only factor building support and strategy.

-- David Lehmann, author of The Prism of Race: The Ideology and Politics of Affirmative Action in Brazil

This far-ranging volume, the product of a deep and expansive collaboration among scholars based in Latin America and the global North, with different racial identifications, and belonging to different generations . . . forces us to confront complex questions with no easy answers and will have a significant impact on how race, racism, and antiracist movements are studied, not only in Latin America but also in other parts of the world.

-- Joanne Rappaport, Georgetown University

With great prescience and precision, this book captures the emerging moment in Latin America, when multifaceted antiracist organizing has come to the fore. The project’s ambitious scope and collective character—four countries, more than a dozen researchers—uncovers a central analytical challenge, which opens onto the book’s central contribution. . . . The authors offer a salutary reminder of the topic’s immense complexity, yet always guided by the drive to imagine and work toward societies—to evoke Stuart Hall’s memorable phrase—no longer structured in racial dominance.

-- Charles R. Hale, University of California, Santa Bar