« North of settler colonialism: Julia Christensen, Rebecca Hall, ‘Welfare Colonialism and Resource Colonialism in Northern Canada’, in Daniel Béland et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Social Policy in Canada, Oxford University Press, in progress
Capitalising on settler colonialism in Palestine: Amir Reicher, ‘The settler-colonial ethical outlook in the West Bank settlement project: Or, how a settler-colony fell apart when money entered the frontier’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 15, 1, 2025, pp. 146-160 »

On the racing of settler colonialism in Palestine: Shaira Vadasaria, ‘The Racial Question of Palestine and the Question of Anti-Racism in Palestine’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2025

29Apr25

Abstract: The persistence of race thinking and racial violence toward Palestinians is inextricably linked to a century-long imperial and settler-colonial project. Yet, state-centered conceptions of anti-racism have seldom been the formative grammar upon which Palestinian sovereignty struggles are waged. Inspired by pedagogical encounters teaching critical race studies in Palestine, the author asks: What do divergent traditions of racial critique open to analytically, and what do they foreclose, in our understandings of decolonial liberation struggles in and for Palestine? What does Palestine’s decolonial liberation struggle and anti-racist legacy instruct scholars of race to center in our understanding of anti-racism? Thinking through her former students’ ambivalence around liberal conceptions of anti-racism as the vehicle toward achieving anti-colonial justice within a settler state, she argues that paying attention to how ideas about racism and anti-racism get registered and stacked within the wider legacy of anti-imperial and anti-colonial critique from Palestine invites a rethinking of the relevance of state-centered liberal approaches to anti-racism for Palestine’s land-based liberation struggle.


Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Closed