White Thinking: Behind the Mask of Racial Identity

Citation

Murphy D (Translator), Ni Loingsigh A (Translator) & Johnston C (Translator) (2024) White Thinking: Behind the Mask of Racial Identity [Co-Translation of White Thinking: Behind the Mask of Racial Identity]. White Thinking: Behind the Mask of Racial Identity. London: Hero Press.

Abstract
This is a co-translation from the French of former footballer and anti-racist activist Lilian Thuram’s examinination of racialised white thinking, its origins and development, and its normalisation across the world. The French publication, La Pensée blanche was published in 2020; our translation, White Thinking, was published in hardback by Hero Press, London in 2021, and in a revised paperback edition in 2022. Thuram’s book is an ambitious but accessible attempt to trace and examine the origins of white supremacy, understood in its widest sense. It is a study of an insidious, unthinking form of racial hierarchy, whose origins can be traced back to slavery and colonisation, and which still shapes our understanding of the world today and our relationships with each other. I focused on the mid-section of the English publication (entitled ‘Being white’, pp.85-153). Overall, my co-translators and I worked as a team, producing a translators’ note (pp.i-ii), researching the text’s copious critical references with an assistant, and ensuring a coherent, cohesive end result.