Quotes from Ali Rattansi

The 'racial types' they posited are of relatively recent origin, having been replaced over and over by other types of populations in previous centuries.

This 'mantra' of race, class, and gender has now led to a new and to some extent almost separate field of research under the umbrella term of 'intersectionality' studies, which includes within its research framework an understanding that age, disability, and citizenship also have differential impacts on majority and minority communities and individuals.

Ignored are the secular regimes and processes that have historically been evident in many Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia, as well as the secularism evident in second- and third-generation migrants from these countries.

The debates have now become too wide ranging and the literature too voluminous to be considered in any depth here.

But there are black Muslims and white Muslims, as well as Asian Muslims and Arab Muslims; Muslims are constituted by a wide variety of nationalities and ethnicities, while the religion itself is riven with sectarian conflict, especially between Shi'as and Sunnis. Muslims, in other words, cannot be considered a 'race'.

However, this is by no means an argument that prevents us from recognizing the myriad ways in which Muslims are racialized.

So, for people of colour to even make it to the point where they could be considered for college admission, or employment in managerial or professional occupations, they had to overcome obstacles that white admissions tutors and employers simply did not have to face and remained unaware of.

Thus an explanation has arisen—the 'culture of poverty' thesis—which has painted the African American community, especially, as suffering from a cultural deficit of single-parent families, low educational aspirations, laziness, and 'welfare dependency', and which, together or singly, explains the continuing disadvantaged position of African Americans in particular.

Colourblind racism has also been labelled 'laissez faire racism' because it is based on the myth of individuals with equal starting points competing in a free market, thus chiming with neoliberal economic nostrums. Indeed, it has been argued by Randolph Hohle

processes of racialization have been crucially intertwined with the rise of neoliberal economic policies that involve the deregulation of markets and the shrinking of the state sector, especially in the area of welfare. In effect, neoliberal policies have served to reproduce white privilege.

the election of Obama showed that America had moved beyond 'race' into a definitively post-racial era in which now even a black American could be president. The

Mild though Obama's observations were, all the tropes of the angry black man out to get revenge were thrown at him, especially in talk shows on radio and TV, with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading the charge. Among other things, Obama's policies were accused of being covert attempts at getting 'reparations' for slavery, segregation, and discrimination.

But French new antisemitism has also become intertwined with far-right infiltration into protests by the 'yellow vests' (gilets jaunes), which initially began as protests against fuel price rises but have morphed into wider antagonisms against falling living standards and elitism.

the sins of slavery are given short shrift.

In France it is Muslims, of North and West African origin, whose members are generally regarded as part of minorités visibles, or visible minorities, who are said to be the perpetrators of the new antisemitism.

First, the idea of 'race' contains both biological and cultural elements, for example skin colour, religion, and behaviour. Second, the biological and cultural appear to combine in variable proportions in any definition of a racial group, depending upon the group and the historical period in question. And racial status, as in the 'whitening' of Jews, the Irish, and others, is subject to political negotiation and transformation.

The idea that Jews were a distinct race was given currency by Nazi racial science. But before that, there was little consensus that Jews were a distinct race.

The idea of race was in retreat in the second half of the 20th century in the aftermath of the defeat of Nazism and discoveries in the science of genetics, although the 21st century has seen (unconvincing) attempts to revive the notion. Nowadays, there is a tendency to regard intercommunal hostilities as stemming from issues of cultural rather than racial difference, except on the very far right and among some who (misleadingly) base their assertions on recent biomedical research.

Many commentators argue that the justification of hostility and discrimination on grounds of culture rather than race is mostly a rhetorical ploy to get around the taboo against racism that has gradually been established, especially in Western liberal democracies. There is, they contend, a new 'cultural racism' that has increasingly supplanted an older biological racism. 'Islamophobia' has been identified as one of the most recent forms of this new racism.

Epigenetics is a discipline that relies more on speculation than genuine scientific understanding. Nevertheless, scholars of race and racism would do well to keep a wary eye on epigenetic research, as this is an avenue whereby many researchers will attempt to resurrect the biological concept of race. Defining 'race': is there a consensus that race is a social construct?

Most sociologists in the UK and many in the USA are now convinced by scientific research that 'race' is a social construct rather than a biological fact.

In both Europe and the USA, racialization is fed by a backlash against 'multiculturalism' in which the positions of the extreme and the mainstream right often overlap to a considerable extent, assisted by a common over-reaction over issues of refugees and asylum seekers.