This edited volume presents a collection of highly diverse and collaborative work by contemporary anti-racist scholars and activists. Spanning the Americas with seven multi-year studies in countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States, the authors tackle the question of “How did we get here?” in conversation with the conservative and ultraconservative political movements sweeping the Western Hemisphere.
Although each chapter brings unique perspectives, the overarching contribution of the book is to demonstrate that the neoliberal politics of the 1990s and 2000s, and with them multiculturalism, precipitated a hemisphere-wide racist backlash wherein privileged populations felt threatened by the progressive movement toward multicultural inclusion—respect for national diversities inclusive of black and indigenous populations. Racial retrenchment (2) spread in response to neoliberal sociopolitical movements, usurping the minimal political and legal gains obtained by black and indigenous activists. Together, through diverse approaches and experiences, these authors explore the complexities of the extensive, re-emergent white supremacy and continuing racist discrimination across these continents, derived from racial capitalism and the fear provoked among white and white-mestizo populations by their imagined loss of power to these ethnic groups.
Hooker and the chapter authors have compiled a rich contemporary history with analyses showcasing the voices and lived experiences of local activists and the movements and sites of struggle as anchors for each chapter, providing a stellar model to which all scholars should aspire. The inclusion of diverse positionalities and varied methodologies contributes to the volume's groundbreaking results. These take the innovative approach of bridging the gaps, not only between continents, but also between indigenous and black populations confronting similar race-based struggles, avoiding the traditional analyses that approach these groups separately.
Anti-racist voices of local activists and their organizations and movements are showcased here as progenitors of theoretical contributions, rather than just agents of praxis, effectively disrupting the “academic hierarchies of knowledge production” (7). Understanding the variations and commonalities of the struggles and challenges confronted in these sites opens the discussion, comparative analysis, and critique of anti-racist activism's state-centered approach to legal and social gains. These offer examples of creative strategies emanating from black and indigenous communities on a path toward the future of anti-racist resistance, shifting away from promoting either state-centered protest or the acceptance of state-sanctioned humanitarian rights for racialized minorities. Instead, the authors turn their focus to the critique and refusal of racial capitalism and structural racism that has predominated in these countries since their colonization, and through “post-colonization,” with a call to activism and resistance to this racist backlash.
The hemispheric approach of this book allows the authors to create new, meaningful interregional dialogues and present research that offers both breadth and depth. Despite varied approaches to multiculturalism and racism, these seven sites share commonalities in the repercussions of the neoliberal sociopolitical reversal. While most scholars maintain analytical distance between the United States and Latin America, this volume considers the United States, the Trump Administration, rising white supremacy, and racial violence as integral evidence for the larger Pan-American phenomena that align with, rather than diverge from, Latin American political discourses. Readers can clearly identify these political trends that transcend the formal nationalist projects of each individual state and envision as a nearly whole Pan-American regression in racial politics.
This timely cutting-edge volume provides a veritable guidebook to the current state of racial politics spanning the Americas. While the book engages the deep complexities of racial retrenchment, it remains accessible to wide audiences within and external to academia. The authors engage with multiple disciplines and positionalities to enhance their activist-scholarship and practice. Undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and activists alike would find this edition an impeccable resource and fine example of collaborative scholarship. Applied anti-racist works herein inform, inspire, and empower scholar-activists to understand contemporary history, its deep shared roots in colonialism, and the new responses and strategies to combat widespread systemic racism.
