Racialized Realities in World Politics
| Author | Ilaria Carrozza,Evelyn Pauls,Ida Danewid |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829817714722 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial Introduction |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829817714722
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(3) 267 –268
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829817714722
journals.sagepub.com/home/mil
Racialized Realities in
World Politics
From Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, to the horrors of Aleppo and the global
migrant crisis, 2016 was a year that seemingly hardened the global colour line. In the
United States, the Black Lives Matter movement struggled against domestic racism
and police brutality, punctuating the myth of a post-racial and colour blind America.
In the Mediterranean, migrant deaths hit a record high as Europe increasingly slammed
its door shut. In Cape Town and Oxford, students called for a decolonisation of the
university campus and curriculum, as well as the immediate removal of the statue of
Cecil Rhodes.
In the field of International Relations (IR), these events took place within the context
of a growing conversation on the role of race and racism in the constitution of world poli-
tics. The annual Millennium Conference, held 22–23 October 2016 at the London School
of Economics and Political Science, aspired to push these debates further by interrogat-
ing and theorising what it means to live in a racialized world. Where is race in IR theory
and why is it so rarely addressed? How do racial differences, cultivated by transatlantic
slavery, colonial conquest, and genocide, continue to inform debates on democracy, good
governance, military intervention, and liberal empire? How can studying the practices
of anti-colonial revolutions, feminist struggles, and anti-racist social movements in
different sites of resistance help inform, interrupt, or destabilise the discipline of IR? By
asking these and similar questions, the Millennium Conference sought to open up new
and creative ground for scholarship that takes seriously the many afterlives of historical
and ongoing colonialism.
The articles in this special issue offer tentative answers: Examining the many racial-
ized realities in world politics, they highlight and probe a variety of problematiques,
ranging from racism in the theory canon and pop culture, to the racial origins of modern
finance, the displacement of religion in critiques of Eurocentrism, the politics of white-
ness in the settler colonial city, and the possibility of a decolonial IR. With over 100
excellent papers presented at the 2016 Millennium Conference, and limited printing
space available in this special issue of the journal, it was difficult, but also exciting, to
select the final pieces. These articles, to us, represent the most innovative and inspiring
thinking in the field of IR and beyond, and we hope they will push the discussion
forward, not only in diagnosing the problem, but also in tackling it.
We would like to thank everyone who participated in the conference, presented and
discussed papers, submitted to this special issue, and helped put it together. Thank you to
714722MIL0010.1177/0305829817714722Millennium: Journal of International StudiesEditorial Introduction
editorial2017
Editorial Introduction
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