In this article, the authors situate race within the context of a discussion of globalization, neoliberalism and the class conquest of the city, focusing attention particularly on how developments associated with these dynamic processes present us with new philosophical and practical challenges to addressing the topic of racial antagonism within the school and the university in the new century. Specifically, the article is formulated against the backdrop of important changes in social, economic and cultural dynamics taking place on a global scale--dynamics which have as profound implications for racial affiliation and "its" cultural and social uses in the new century as "they" have for the organization of knowledge in schooling and in the university.