I am referring here to the return of the concept of »race« and not to the return of races. In other words, I am interested not so much in »concrete« groups (or something presumed to correspond to such groups, such as the »races« of 19th-century physical and cultural anthropology) but rather in a conception underpinned by a structure. However, matters are of course never as straightforward as this distinction might suggest. It is difficult to conceive of a generic »race« that is not expressed in contradictions between and hierarchies within groups. However, my focus here is on demonstrating that there has been a change in the relations between the structural, almost transcendental aspect of the problem and its empirical manifestations in terms of what was taught by the history of ideas not all that long ago. For our contemporaries the existence and the number of »races«, as well as the distinctions between them, have lost every scrap of plausibility, yet racial appellations continue to be deployed in identifying ethnic and cultural differences. People still refer to »Europeans«, »Orientals«, »Arabs«, »Blacks «, »Africans«, etc. Perhaps the principle of the race or »racialisation« plays a more dominant social role than ever, particularly as a genealogical principle and in terms of notions that trace the purported »mentality« or »abilities« of an individual or group back to their origins and ancestry. This is racism in the broadest sense of the term, although it is not appropriate to draw a distinction, as people sometimes try to do, between »racism« and »racialism«. If we talk of the return of »race«, then we are asserting first and foremost not simply that racism in the fundamental sense of the term still exists, but also that it has once more become highly virulent.