From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the “Race Question” in the United States

This chapter discusses globalization between universal sameness and absolute divisions. The globalization has a profound effect not only on the economic and political world order but also on the development of social relationships. An antiracist pedagogical response uncovers any racism implied in the way boundaries drawn in the social landscape of a country and makes these taken-for-granted boundaries problematic. Ireland, a country of the European Union, recently had the image of a traditional, homogeneous society unaffected by globalization and its associated immigration phenomena. The legislation in the form of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act gave the police new powers to detain asylum seekers for up to eight weeks whose case had been rejected and who are awaiting deportation, when there is the suspicion that they would disappear or forge or destroy their identity documents. The case of Ireland and its traumatic encounter with globalization belies its peripheral and marginal image.