ABSTRACT
The literature on anti-racist discourse tells that favorable national imaginings are the axes used by multiculturalists in the United States and elsewhere to anchor the logic of their anti-racisms. However, this tendency is unsettled by the reality that the histories involved are never as glamorous as they are represented. The definition of conflict is a problem that has haunted the literature on conflict resolution. Media complicity in racially motivated violence, and even genocide, has been difficult to prove, and that is part of the reason why these types of prosecutions under international law have been rare. The persistence and growth of ethnic conflict and identity based terrorist movements are merely two examples that expose a basic intellectual dilemma: international society faces a set of serious problems with really no organized discipline and scholarly tradition to provide the tools for their solution.
