Racism: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of racial ideas and a wide range of racisms—biological, cultural, colourblind, and structural—and illuminates issues that have been the subject of recent debates. Is Islamophobia a form of racism? Is there a new antisemitism? Why has whiteness become an important source of debate? What is intersectionality? What is unconscious or implicit bias, and what is its importance in understanding racial discrimination? This VSI tackles these questions, and also shows why racism is an ongoing problem. Finally, it explains why there has been a resurgence of national populist and far-right movements and explores their implications for the future of racism.

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This paper pro\.ides a critical assessment of the field of postcolonialism or postcolonialist studies, which has grown rapidly since the publication of Said's Orzenlulrsm. It is argued that the area of investigation's distinctive features, and originalit?; lie in the concern with the mutual constitution of the identities of colonizer and colonized, and in its anal\-ses of chronic instabilities inhabiting and destabilizing the colonial project from \\ithin. Some exemplary studies are explored to establish why the field deserves praise and support. The paper then discusses a wide range of criticisms that haw been Ic\-ellcd at the field's distinctil~e take on colonial encounters. 3lany of these are found wanting, although the paper also strips postcolonialism of man!-pretensions that threaten to undermine its credibilit!. as a serious intellectual project. Along the na! the paper also discusses the vexed questions of postcolonialism's relation to postmodernism and the potential political in~plications of a specifically postcolonialist stance.

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