The New Racial Regime

‘Extraordinary ... The New Racial Regime works from an archival foundation of Black and Indigenous, liberationist and anti-colonialist thinkers, honing analytical tools that make sense of the ongoing racial reconstructionist moment’ Dylan Rodríguez, author of White Reconstruction

‘Accessible, rigorous, and unequivocal, The New Racial Regime is the principled treatise we sorely need’ Charisse Burden-Stelly, author of Black Scare/Red Scare

In the words of Robin D.G. Kelley, ‘anti-wokeness is the perfect example of the functioning of the racial regime.’ Taking the reader beyond the distracting framings of culture wars and moral panics, Alana Lentin shows how the attacks on Black, Indigenous and anticolonial thought and praxis reveal the processes through which racial colonial rule is ideologically resecured.

The often chaotic and contradictory restitching of the racial regime is traced through the attacks on Critical Race Theory; the ‘whitelash’ against the teaching of histories of slavery and colonialism; the counterinsurgent capture and institutionalisation of antiracism, Indigeneity and decoloniality in the interests of Zionism, settler colonialism, and imperialism; and the ways that the state mandated ‘war on antisemitism’ reforms white supremacism in a time of genocide. 

While the racial regime undergoes constant recalibration, its inherent instability is the consequence of continual resistance from below. Maintaining and deepening that resistance is vital at a time of rapidly mounting fascism.

Alana Lentin is the author of Why Race Still Matters.