Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2023, Vol. 9(3) 422–430 © American Sociological Association 2023 journals.sagepub.com/home/sre Conversations INTRODUCTION Conversations is an occasional feature which brings people together to discuss urgent topics for the study of race and ethnicity. Freeden Blume Oeur and Mo Torres had a chance to speak with the leading scholars José Itzigsohn and Vilna Bashi on the state of the sociology of race and ethnicity today, and learned more about what they study and how they teach and mentor. Itzigsohn and Bashi reflect on challenging the mainstream of sociology, nurturing decolonial and other critical practices, creating networks of mutual care, reimagining what is possible, and whether sociology is worth saving at all. This conversation was edited slightly for length and clarity. FREEDEN BLUME OEUR: How would you char- acterize the sociology of race and ethnicity today? VILNA BASHI: I’m really heartened by the conversations we’re having supporting critical race studies, about decolonizing various parts of the discipline. It feels like people are galvanized because of the hard Right turn toward authoritari- anism and even fascism. And I feel like we are responsive and thoughtful, but I still feel like we need to be even more critical because the turn is so hard Right. If you look at what’s happening in Florida, what’s literally in the forefront is whether or not we’re allowed to speak about certain things. That’s the same thing that happened with the 1619 Project. Are you even allowed to say something that goes against erroneous common knowledge? So, I don’t know. I’m feeling a little torn about the future, or rather where we are today and where we’re pointing toward. There’s a lot of good work, but I think there’s still a lot of challenges out there. What do you say, Jose? Am I on the same track you are? JOSÉ ITZIGSOHN: I’m close to your view. I was trying to think about this in a historical per- spective. In 1990, James McKee published Sociology and the Race Problem, which was a scathing critique of the sociology of race and eth- nicity. And it was right for that time. But I think that since then, starting in the 80s with Omi and Winant’s Racial Formations in the United States, in the 90s with the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Joe Feagin, and up to today, really there has been a change and a large amount of very good work. I mean, including the work of Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle on Black feminist sociology 1 ; the work of Victor Ray on critical race theory; the work of Dan Hirschman and Laura Garbes on race and economic sociology; the work of Karida Brown on African American communities in Appalachia; and Ricarda Hammer’s work linking race to colonialism and rethinking the history of modernity, colonialism, and race. And it’s a huge change and a good change. I want to mention also the rise of Du Boisian sociology. And I want to point out that in this change, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity has played a very important role publishing really good papers, par- ticularly bringing to light questions of Indigenous people and settler colonialism that were absent in sociology. I’m teaching sociology of race and eth- nicity now and I’m teaching tomorrow an article from Sociology of Race and Ethnicity by Dwanna McKay titled “Real Indians.” 2 And I think that the work that the journal has done is fantastic. For me, today it’s the best journal in sociology. On one hand, there has been all this work which has been in a sense reflecting and contributing to a change in 1174509SRE XX X 10.1177/23326492231174509Sociology of Race and Ethnicity research-article 2023 Is Sociology Worth Saving? A Conversation with José Itzigsohn and Vilna Bashi Participants José Itzigsohn, Vilna Bashi, Freeden Blume Oeur, and Mo Torres DOI: 10.1177/23326492231174509