Racist apologism and the refuge of nation

Abstract

This symposium commentary on Alana Lenin's Why Race Still Matters considers the terms by which apologists of racism deploy the alibi of nation and (white) identity. The increasingly efficacious claim to ‘mere' nationhood and the allegedly organic immutability of majoritarian identity both enables racism whilst impugning anti-racism. Attention will be given here to the chicanery by which racism often ceases to something to be ideologically justified or defended; but instead, the demands of anti-racism are simply deflected through asserting the seemingly superseding dictates of national righteousness. My commentary also speculates about certain connections between the white majority settings surveyed by Lentin and wider postcolonial settings where comparable politics of bordering, chauvinism and ‘racial capitalist’ stratification are pursued but without the same overarching reference to whiteness.