Abstract: T his book emerged from a desire to identify and invent analytics through which to compare racial formations, in distinction to comparative race scholarship that simply parallels instances of historical similarity across racial groups in the United States.Such a project entails not only articulating commonalities between communities of color but imagining alternative modes of coalition beyond prior models of racial or ethnic solidarity based on a notion of homogeneity or similarity.This project is necessitated by the changing configurations of race and nation in the wake of movements for decolonization and the social movements of the mid-twentieth century, which have revealed the limitations inherent in nationalist and identity-based forms of collectivity, even or perhaps especially when they are expressed in minority or cultural nationalisms.As we discuss in more detail later, the stakes for identifying new comparative models are immensely high, for the changing configurations of power in the era after the decolonizing movements and new social movements of the mid-twentieth century demand that we understand how particular