![]() ![]() We propose a framework that sketches out the intersecting relationships between hierarchical racial norms, international law, and foreign policy and practice, demonstrating that race can help explain patterns of behavior and interstate interactions that sustain an unequal global system. ![]() Our supposition in this review is that attention to race and racism not only by critical theorists but also by positivist scholars will reveal previously overlooked and important dimensions of world politics. Despite this neglect, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that systemic racism, now propelled to broader public consciousness, ends at the water's edge, a myth about domestic politics once believed to characterize international politics. Vitalis (2000), citing Toni Morrison (1992), calls this pattern the “norm against noticing,” the practice of overlooking and denying race and racism as factors in world politics. Yet, until very recently, race and racism have received relatively little attention in the field's major journals. And as we discuss below, critical theorists have long decried the silence of IR scholars on race, and postcolonial scholars have forefronted the role of race in colonialism. Du Bois famously wrote in 1906 that “the Negro problem in America is but a local phase of a world problem”. Race and racism have long been ignored by scholars of international relations (IR). The pandemic appears to have intensified trends toward greater nationalism and xenophobia across the globe. In May 2020, Malaysian authorities raided Rohingya refugee and migrant communities with the pretext of reducing COVID-19 spread ( Peter 2020). Human rights groups in Brazil, South Africa, and Russia reported COVID-19-related attacks on people of Asian descent. Though it later apologized, a French newspaper declared the virus the “Yellow Peril,” prompting the social media hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (“I am not a virus”) in response. Anti-Asian sentiments and incidents were not confined to the United States. In the United States, President Trump and top government officials insisted on referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” the “Wuhan virus,” or even the “kung flu,” accelerating the racialization of not only the health crisis but also the country's deteriorating relations with China. Amplified by the concomitant rise of far-right political movements across the globe that seek to challenge antiracism ( Sabaratnam 2020), the implications of racial justice are transnational.Īt the height of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the world also witnessed a global surge in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes. From Nairobi to Tokyo to Buenos Aires, movements in solidarity for racial equality are themselves a feature of an interconnected world. ![]() ![]() Ongoing struggles against state-sanctioned violence toward unarmed Black men and women in the United States resonate in countries facing similar crises ( Powell 2020, Stephan 2021). The now global movement for racial justice, embodied in the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, begun in 20, respectively, has sparked new attention by majority communities to the systemic racism long experienced and felt by minority groups around the world.īlack-led civic movements animate the links between domestic and international politics ( Tillery 2011, Henderson 2015, Getachew 2019b). Floyd's death spurred protests on every continent, even Antarctica. The murder in May 2020 of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, who used his knee to press Floyd's throat into the street, was a catalyst for a global racial reckoning. We discuss key methodological challenges in empirical research on race in international relations, focusing on issues of measurement, aggregation, and causation. Positing two faces of racism in international relations, we examine how race biases international law in practice and affects the assessment of foreign threats and national interest. We propose an analytic framework for the relationship between racial hierarchy, international law, and foreign policy, demonstrating that race can help explain patterns of interstate interactions that sustain an unequal global order. New studies of hierarchy in international relations open the door for new understandings of race in world politics. Although critical theorists have decried the “norm against noticing,” other scholars of international relations have long sidestepped the possible role of race in shaping contemporary international affairs. The global movement for racial justice and the rise of anti-Asian hate at the height of the pandemic have called new attention to race and racism in international politics. ![]()
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