There were several names suggested and utilised during the consultation phase for the planned Centre. These related, for example, to a name that closely captured its primary purpose, and at the same time distinguished it from other centres and other approaches to the study of ‘race’ (and I will return to the issue of ‘scare quotes’). It had to indicate that it was, in the first instance, not a Centre for the study of racism – although, let it be said immediately, it is not possible, nor desirable, to avoid issues of racism. Race thinking, however, is far more prevalent than racism, and the latter cannot exist without the former.

The ccrri is not a Centre for examining issues of race relations, with the implication that races exist and that the best we can hope for is to establish good relations between these given social groups.

There would, also, not have been a proposal, such as the one that led to the establishment of the ccrri, if the enormous social effects of notions of race were denied, and it would have been insulting to the victims, those at the receiving end of racist or even racialist policies, especially so in societies (such as apartheid South Africa) structured by notions of race, if that had been the case.

The Centre that was approved of by the University’s Senate and Council was established and will function to investigate both those factors that maintain notions of race (and what these are) – race thinking or racialism – and those that demand that we move beyond systems of thought that limit and even remove from the imagination alternatives to race-based thinking and practices.

Here the South African Constitutional commitment to non-racialism, claimed to have been a primary motivation for the struggle against apartheid, and frequently repeated since 1994, provides one such alternative necessary to explore, and worthwhile even if just in its utopian challenge to where we are located.

It was with these various issues in mind, and others that will be explored through further debate and research, that the name – the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (ccrri) – was proposed and accepted. It indicates a deliberate approach that will not take for granted the seemingly permanently given nature of race in shaping society; it indicates the seriousness of race in oppression and discrimination, but also in opposition; it alerts to the need to repeatedly question whether there are not other more important and meaningful aspects that are obfuscated by focusing on race as an explanatory tool; it draws attention, because of the awful pervasiveness of race, of exploring the notion from and within a range of disciplines; and it makes an historically-informed approach essential. The ‘critical’ also indicates, if it even needs statement in the twenty-first century, that race is approached as a social construct. This is not the place to defend such an argument against the shallow claim that it means that race as lived reality with its varied burdens is ‘denied’, or that it is a sign of avoidance of racism through ‘colour blindness’. On the contrary, as Neville Alexander, amongst many, has stated, once that approach is stated that is where the real research and analysis starts! It is not deemed to be necessary, in the twenty-first century, to have to carefully use quotation marks to indicate distance from this abhorrent notion, unless the term appears in quotation or specific attention is drawn to it.

These enormous tasks can, obviously, be attempted only through collaboration in many research efforts, and drawing on the rich research that has been and is being undertaken nationally and internationally.