We need new words: on transatlantic translations of race and racialisation

A book review of Ann Morning and Marcello Maneri's An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy andthe United States, which assesses their intervention into the difficult but developing field in comparative international sociology of race and ethnicity. They advance a model that would replace reference to “race” or “ethnicity” with a more encompassing notion of “descent-based difference”. The review suggests their empirical evidence for the ongoing effects of the Du Boisian “colour line” and its origins in Eurocentric racial theories, runs counter to their analytical model, which tends to sanction a proliferation of the term “racialization” beyond the clear historical narrative of racial capitalism.