Questions of racial inequality and racial justice have come to the fore in recent political and public discussions. Especially after the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, we saw campaigners from all continents standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. In each of these respected locations, campaigners raised central questions: demonstrators in France questioned the link between Floyd’s death with state violence against post-colonial citizens in their country; protestors in Kenya questioned the link between police brutality with the still extant Public Order Act created by the British colonial government, and indigenous groups in New Zealand questioned the parallels between police violence in the United States with police violence towards the Māori and Pasifika.

In this panel event, our speakers will discuss how sociology can both inform, and learn from these global discussions of racism and racial justice. They will consider the long trajectory of sociology and sociologists shaping anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles, as seen for instance in W.E.B. Du Bois’ co-creation of the NAACP, the struggles for self-determination led by Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Amilcar Cabral, and the contemporary fight for prison abolition led by Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.