The race idea keeps recurring in different guises and yet has an intriguing ‘ever-changing sameness’. Ash Amin has provided an insightful discussion of the question in an earlier issue of this journal. I supplement his account by pointing to the ways in which the nature—culture puzzle identified by Lévi-Strauss creates continuing spaces and seductions for the race idea. I offer an account of the perils of using supposedly ‘natural’ human attributes, as in versions of cognitive anthropology, to explain racism, without (...) completely discounting the idea of human universals. I also explore how ‘race’ retains its continuing hold by intertwining with themes of class, sexuality and nation. I provide an interpretation of racist identities and explain why my account offers both greater pessimism and more optimism than Amin’s more uniform ‘ontological pessimism’. (shrink)