Contribution short abstract:

Drawing on my experience researching and teaching on racism and whiteness in the U.S., Germany, and Italy, I reflect on how the blind spots of liberal anti-racism manifested themselves in these different contexts during divisive political times. I conclude by discussing ways out of this impasse.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution draws on my experience as an anthropologist who has researched the workings of racism and whiteness in the U.S. South and, since 2020, has been based at a German research institute focusing on critical studies of diversity and migration. Reflecting back on a decade of exchange and training across North American, Italian, and German academic institutions, I discuss some of the “blind spots of liberal righteousness” (Smith 2017; Lanari 2022) which, as I see it, stand in the way of forging an anti-racist anthropological praxis. These blind spots were revealed on occasion of major events shaking the world and the anthropological public sphere – from Trump’s 2016 election to the war in Gaza, yet they have long been part of daily life in these academic microcosms. They include a) instances of disciplinary “boundary-work,” whereby PhD students engaging with Black and Indigenous studies and other intellectual traditions are labeled “too radical” and encouraged to do “proper” anthropological work; and b) a tendency to project racism onto the actions of ignorant working-class voters and other “repugnant cultural others” (Harding 1991), be them Trump supporters living in Atlanta’s suburbs or “narrow-minded” residents of Italian small towns, both of them featured in my research. To consider ways out of this impasse, I turn to my experience teaching anthropology and (anti)racism at the University of Göttingen, reflecting on our collective efforts to recognize and name the multiple racism(s) structuring our worlds and build intersectional forms of “thick solidarity” (Shange and Liu 2018).