Race And Racism: A Literature Review

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This week’s readings focus on the scholarly attempts to define race, race relations, and racism in the latter half of the 20th century. Solomos and Back walk readers through key literature and concepts on the topic in their introductory chapter of Theories of Race and Racism. In their overview, Solomos and Back shows that the definitions of race and racism have been continuously contested since the 1960s, when the “sociology of race relations” took off, and especially with the incorporation of feminist perspectives and colonial theories in more recent years. Articles written by Banton, Todorov, and Cox show the “contested” nature of race and racism in the earlier times of “sociology of race relations,” as they attempt to establish a common

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