The problem of color racism in scholarship on modern and contemporary East Central Europe: a mismatch made in heaven?

The present article examines the normative reliance on color-based conceptions of race in scholarly literature on East Central European history and present-day societies, arguing that its unreflective application produces a systematic mismatch between theoretical frameworks and regional empirical material. While recent scholarship has sought to integrate the region into global histories of race – often through critiques of the region's “racial innocence” or “racial exceptionalism” – this article contends that such approaches risk obscuring historically prevalent forms of racialization that were not primarily organized around skin color. Even if many of them were underpinned by notions of white supremacy, the emphasis of local actors was often put onto other purported markers of biological belonging. Methodologically, the article offers a critical review of scholarship and different strands in the literature, and finally reflects on the implications of color-centered frameworks for the study of contemporary regional social and political dynamics.