Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines is a collection of fifteen essays as rich and interdisciplinary as the title suggests, and includes work by an impressive array of activists and scholars working in Africana studies, American studies, black studies, English, ethnomusicology, feminist studies, history, law, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. With such an interdisciplinary range, the preface and introduction to the anthology do the important work of identifying how the collected essays are more unified than their eclectic range of topics and disciplines may suggest at first, situating them as either growing from, or inspiring, a decade-long cross-institutional project called Countering Colorblindness. The aim of the project was, and continues to be, to combat the harm that an ideological investment in “colourblindness” can do, and is doing, in societies built around systematic oppressions. The energy that vitalized the scholars to take on that work flows through this collection.

Helpfully aiding the clarity and reading experience of the diverse anthology, the essays in Seeing Race are grouped into three sections that focus upon different elements of countering colourblindness. In the first section, “Masks,” the essays “address words, tropes, and concepts used within the disciplines to occlude race privilege via colorblind approaches” (21). In the second section, “Moves,” the essays “explore the distinct moves made within academic disciplines … that facilitate colorblind constructions of objectivity, knowledge production, and disciplinary authority” (153). Finally, in the third section, “Resistance and Transformation,” the essays discuss “concepts, strategies, and approaches to abolish colorblindness by renovating and reimagining disciplines, institutions, and social relations” (267).

Tied together by more than the anthology's theme, there is an honest collegiality that can be found throughout the collection as writers sometimes draw on the same evidence bases and the work of other scholars featured in the collection. The scholarship of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and George Lipsitz is drawn on the most, with their work clearly forming key touchstones within the movement that the book largely represents. This is predominantly due to Crenshaw's centrality in critical race theory and her work on intersectionality and Lipsitz's scholarship on the possessive investment in whiteness. Crenshaw and Lipsitz and their concepts feature often, and just as often their work is built upon by the wonderful essays in the anthology, for example in Loren Kajikawa's exceptional development of Lipsitz's scholarship in “The Possessive Investment in Classical Music: Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in U.S. Schools and Departments of Music” (155–74).

The importance of Crenshaw and Lipsitz's place within much of the work in the anthology should not be understood as their carrying empowered positions over the other contributors, but no doubt reflects the sheer excellence of those two established scholars. This excellence is placed front and centre within this collection, with the first two essays of the collection by Lipsitz and Crenshaw respectively. In the first, “The Sounds of Silence: How Race Neutrality Preserves White Supremacy,” Lipsitz unequivocally sets out how the racism at the centre of the US foundations could never be redressed by a colourblind approach (23–51). As he puts it, “race-bound problems need race-based remedies” (23). In the second essay, “Unmasking Colorblindness in the Law: Lessons from the Foundation of Critical Race Theory,” Crenshaw offers a troubling but inspiring recollection of the genesis of the theoretical approach that is vital to swathes of scholarship both inside and outside the Countering Colorblindness project (52–84).

The early essays by Crenshaw and Lipsitz set the tone for the collection, but they certainly do not define it. No work within the anthology could hope to do so. Indeed, if anything were to define this collection it would be the tangible determination permeating every contribution to cooperatively work against the damaging effect of colourblindness in society and the academy. That said, certain essays do stand out: essays such as Dwanna L. McKay's “Masking Legitimized Racism: Indigeneity, Colorblindness, and the Sociology of Race” (85–104), Luke Charles Harris and Uma Narayan's “Affirmative Action and Equalizing Opportunity: Challenging the Myth of ‘Preferential Treatment’” (246–65), and Paula Ioanide's “Negotiating Privileged Students’ Affective Resistances: Why a Pedagogy of Emotional Engagement Is Necessary” (327–51). However, due to the vast array of approaches and topics contained within this rich collection, each reader will no doubt find their own favourites within the anthology.