Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants’ race talk

•I examine the metadiscursive work in Luso-descendants’ (LD) race talk.•Race talk indexes stance toward referent (racialized others) and speaker demeanor.•Personalist ideology shifts focus from referent to speaker, as (anti)racist type.•Types are situated spatiotemporally, as French, modern vs. Portuguese, nonmodern.•Race talk reveals LDs’ concern to display modern identities.

I discuss the metadiscursive work in race talk among transnationally mobile Luso-descendants, who frequently compare race and racism in French and Portuguese contexts. Participants’ race talk may index the speaker’s stance toward referent, i.e. racialized others whom they discuss. It may also index the speaker’s demeanor as a racist/antiracist type. As such, the indexicality of Luso-descendants’ race talk is multifocal. Participants shift the indexical focus from referent to speaker, when they invoke personalist ideologies which interpret talk as reflecting the speaker’s inner beliefs about racialized others. Based on assumptions about those beliefs, participants then assign speakers to spatiotemporally locatable types: the French, modern “antiracist,” vs. the Portuguese, nonmodern, “racist.”