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Postracial Britain
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What does it mean to describe a society as postracial? The term ‘postracial’ is problematic because it has been used to denote differing worldviews. For some, postracial thinking requires a revolutionary shift, bringing radical incoherence to the narratives of modernity. For others, a postracial world implies, more modestly, a postracist world: a world in which racial inequalities have been removed. However, there is another putative postracialism that rests upon the claim that we have moved into a new phase in British society, wherein Britain’s approach to race equality stands as a model for the world. This facile state postracialism is shaped by an atavistic mistrust of antiracism and by a desire for ‘contradiction closure’: a conclusive end to recognition of problems of race and racism. Its ideology holds that racism has lost social salience and that consequently race is no longer a useful lens through which to understand social inequalities. This chapter examines recent UK policy and political rhetoric, marked by a drive to eliminate concepts of structural and institutional racism and by colourblind, ‘anything but racism’ accounts of why racial inequalities persist.
Title: Postracial Britain
Description:
What does it mean to describe a society as postracial? The term ‘postracial’ is problematic because it has been used to denote differing worldviews.
For some, postracial thinking requires a revolutionary shift, bringing radical incoherence to the narratives of modernity.
For others, a postracial world implies, more modestly, a postracist world: a world in which racial inequalities have been removed.
However, there is another putative postracialism that rests upon the claim that we have moved into a new phase in British society, wherein Britain’s approach to race equality stands as a model for the world.
This facile state postracialism is shaped by an atavistic mistrust of antiracism and by a desire for ‘contradiction closure’: a conclusive end to recognition of problems of race and racism.
Its ideology holds that racism has lost social salience and that consequently race is no longer a useful lens through which to understand social inequalities.
This chapter examines recent UK policy and political rhetoric, marked by a drive to eliminate concepts of structural and institutional racism and by colourblind, ‘anything but racism’ accounts of why racial inequalities persist.
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