The moral aporia of race in international relations

Abstract

Drawing on recent scholarship on race, post-colonialism, and ethics in the field of international relations, I return to the ‘first debate’ in the field regarding realism versus liberalism to highlight how racialized international political practices a century ago shaped theoretical assumptions, deferrals, and absences in ways that continued to resonate throughout the century. In reviewing several prominent periods of the past 100 years, I argue that (a) a powerful, ongoing moral aporia regarding race has marked the practice of international politics and the study of international relations over the century, despite important challenges and (b) it is critically important for the field as a whole to confront both the aporia and these challenges to understand its own moral precarity and to dent ongoing racialized injustices.