Having analyzed the relations between racial ideas and the secondary objects within the racial ensemble, we can now to turn to the question of the attachment to racial ideas. If the belief in racial ideas persists over time, then some account must be made of the processes that reproduce this belief. We shall address two such processes, one related to the politics of memory and the other manifested in the form of desire (in the following chapter). As discussed earlier (Chapter 1), a strong claim in favor of the perpetuity of the idea of race takes the form of an ethicopolitical argument: racism and its experiential consequences cannot be fought against without the idea of race, and both political movements and the social scientific research that informs anti-discrimination policies depend on the continued recognition of race. Accordingly, the idea of race remains indispensable as long as racism exists. This transformation of race from an object of epistemological questioning into an object that contributes to the political interests and goals of subordinate (thought-to-be) racial groups can be seen as a process of attachment to racial ideas.