ABSTRACT
This chapter questions the dominant concept of racism that circulates within academia and political debates and, at the same time, enshrines a specific set of power relations. We examine how proposals for an in-depth, systemic analysis of racism have not been accepted, thus evading any effective confrontation with the legacy of a racial governmentality rooted in imperial European projects and institutionalized in contemporary democracies. Examining international debates in relation to the Portuguese situation, we show how the hegemony of a particular concept of racism—closely connected to political and academic concerns over fascism and anti-semitism and with little interest in considering structural racism—has become complicit in protecting and reproducing racial privilege in academia. Considering the fundamental divergences affecting anti-racism as a political field, we support an interpretation which recognizes racism as a political phenomenon linked to the notion of institutional racism, in which prejudice and attitudes should be considered merely as the tip of the iceberg.
