Racialized Boundaries offers an innovative approach to an analysis of the constructs of race and racism. The authors maintain that the concept of race has to be understood within the wider category of "ethnos" or ethnicity, which they define as a primarily political rather than a cultural phenomenon.

The authors explore the ways in which race and racism serve as structuring principles for the processes of defining national boundaries and constituting national identities. They examine the ways in which the phenomenon of race and racism relate to other social divisions, such as class and gender and the way "blackness" can play a part in the racialization process. Finally the authors consider some of the ideologies that have influenced the "race relations industry" as well as some of the racial struggles surrounding this entity. In particular they look at what they term, "community ideology," which underlies in different ways both multi-culturalist and anti-racist schools of thoughtand apply this ideology to a critical examination of identity politics.