In our work together, going back to the mid-2000s, we have always felt that it was impossible to engage fully with the ever circulating, scavenger nature of race and racism from the narrow Anglo-American vantage point that often predominates and orients public and scholarly discussions. Especially, when attempting to think with and against race in Europe and to excavate the attempts to ‘bury it alive’ we always attempted to seek out the parallels and overlaps between contexts that attempted to portray themselves as distinct, mirroring indeed the sedimentation created by a politics of race. Reading race in France, and in particular over the last two decades Islamophobia, has been central to that work in common. In this conversation, we reflect on debates on race, coloniality and the spectre of ‘Islamo-leftism’ in the France of 2020–2021, against the backdrop of both a global pandemic and a worldwide movement against racial violence. Through this dialogue, we think about what has changed, and what remains the same, ending with a recognition of the international importance of decolonial and political antiracist politics in France and the energy they inspire in the face of the most reactionary of forces.