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The global responses to recent current events drawing attention to systemic racial equality in the spring of 2020 highlight the continued salience and importance of race and racism in contemporary societies. Why Race Still Matters and Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation are thusly timely publications as many individuals, organisations, and institutions are beginning to question their own roles in upholding racist systems, making public declarations stating this acknowledgement, and – as time will tell – putting antiracist practices into action to counteract systemic racism. Although the killing of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA on 25 May 2020 sparked the latest global protests, the underlying issues of systemic racism are not uniquely US problems. Both race and racism persist, reproducing legacies of colonialism that are present in societies all over the world. Decentring the USA, Why Race Still Matters applies a global lens to theorisation on race and racism, while Ethnicity, Race and Inequality examines the subjects empirically within the UK context. Taken together, these two works add important sociological perspectives to global race scholarship in their examinations of the discourses and practices of race and racism in the present day. Why Race Still Matters uses a transnationally informed race-critical lens to provide forensic analyses of why and how race has been and continues to be globally significant. Alana Lentin’s main thesis is that race ‘matters’ because those who are racialised as nonWhite are harmed by the power wielded in its name via ideas and operationalisation. 986053 SOC0010.1177/0038038520986053SociologyBook Review Essay research-article2020