The chapter argues for the usefulness of the concept ‘racial formation’ for analyses that seek to grasp both historical continuity and change, to combine structural analysis with that of human agency, and to connect the process of racialisation with multiple inequalities. In their view, the concept also provides a way to think through the challenges of knowledge production for purposes of social justice, embedded in a tradition of intellectual activism. Using Sweden as a case study, Mulinari and Neergaard explore the role of silence, denial and forgetting of imperialism, colonialism and racism in mainstream Swedish academia and society. They further identify the central contribution of the concept ‘racial formation’ and elaborate it with the help of post-colonial feminist/queer scholarship. The chapter ends with an examination of how the Swedish racial classification system is constructed and changed; by which institutions; and through which discourses, social struggles and key actors.