ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of race as an artefact of Northern thinking, albeit one of global significance. It argues that dominant understandings of race, and even concepts such as ethnicity, have dominated thinking about difference globally, influencing practices not only in criminology and other social sciences, but also the everyday functioning of law and criminal justice systems in many post-colonial societies of the Global South. Criminology has always posited race as a major correlate of crime. Without race, positivist criminology is impossible. On one level, resources in society, including police, are organised around notions of race. On another level etiological explanations of crime, especially street crime, draw significantly on notions of race. Australian criminologists and political activists cannot escape adopting racial terminology which divides the Australian population into racialised groupings and largely ignores the complex ways in which difference is experienced and practised in diverse Australian contexts.
