Race

Abstract

In this chapter, I make a case for the continued need to dialogue about race. In order to spark this dialogue, I consider the complexity of race by examining three of its wide-ranging definitions. From a decolonial perspective, I attempt to delink the term race from its historical ties to Western racial hierarchies. In an attempt to provide a contested, decolonial consideration of race and to connect its colonial roots to the twenty-first century’s dilemma of the great "racial" divide, I present a brief historical treatment of this term, which merely scratches the surface of the concept’s deep and complex history. Here, then, the chapter demonstrates one possible thread as a discursive act of "epistemic disobedience," which works toward delinking race from its religious, scientific, and social-constructionist points of origin.