DESCRIBE AND DISCUSS THE EXTENT OF RACISM AND RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN BRITAIN.

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The term ‘racism’ cannot be defined in one way, but the simplest way defining it is, as “the determination of actions, attitudes or policies by beliefs about racial characteristics” (Abercrombie, N 2004: 316). The sociology of race in Britain began taking shape in the 1950s and 1960s, where scholars such as John Rex carried out studies of ‘race relations.’ They concentrated on the interaction between minority and majority communities in employment, housing and other social contexts. However, after the development of some theoretical debates since the 1980s, it was found that these early studies lacked clear theoretical perspectives on “the absence of a wider socio-political perspective on the interplay between race relations and other kinds of social relations” (Solomos, J 2003: 18).

Miles (1989) in Solomos (2003) discusses the way in which the concepts of racism and racial discrimination have been merged to such an extent that in practice they have come to mean almost the same thing. Michael Banton (1992) in Solomos (2003) supports this view when he “criticises the tendency to treat racism and racial discrimination as interchangeable notions.” For Banton and others there is a danger that racism will become a catchall term for quite disparate social, political and economic practices. Miles (1989) warns of the “danger of ‘conceptual inflation’ in relation to the term in the social sciences” (Solomos 2003: 225). The definition of racial discrimination like racism cannot be defined in one way, and this has become the challenging debate for a number of sociologists and researchers today.

In his book There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, Gilroy describes Britain’s old-fashion image being hidden behind these blurs: “the first depicts the nation as a homogenous and cohesive formation in which an even and consensual cultural field provides the context for hegemonic struggle. The second is attached to the idea that this country is, and must continue to be, a major world power” (Gilroy, 2002: 57). Britain in history has been known to be the most powerful colonial empire ever known, owning, at one point, the majority of the world. The majority of literature has also focused on the importance of the influence of migration and immigration of the Irish, Jewish, Black and other colonial peoples to Britain.

Irish migration was the first in Britain dating back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The beginning of Irish immigration was connected to economic change, urbanisation and class formation in British society. It can be said that this process of rapid social change was the main cause of labour demands in Britain and a search for new labour. Ireland was in the process of capitalist agriculture where the aim was to produce grain, meat and dairy products as commodities for exchange in Britain. While the capitalist agriculture developed to intensify the flow of cheap manufactured goods from Britain stemmed the rise of industrial production in Britain (Solomos 2003: 37).

It was found that Irish migration has been far greater than immigration by other groups. Although the Irish were given the freedom to enter, settle, work and vote in Britain by the British Nationality Act after the Irish Republic left the Commonwealth in 1947, hostile responses to Irish immigrants still existed, including a long history of anti-Irish stereotypes. This was evident in the nineteenth century where stereotypes of them was in terms of their Catholicism and their supposed biological inferiority. Also included were widespread violent acts against Irish migrants.

“Images of the racial or cultural inferiority of the Irish were ...

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“Images of the racial or cultural inferiority of the Irish were based not only on particular ideological constructions of the Irish but also on the definition of Englishness or Anglo-Saxon culture in terms of particular racial and cultural attributes” (Reeves, 1983; Rich, 1986; Brody, 1998 in Solomos 2003: 39).

From the late nineteenth century was the arrival of large numbers of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe. In Solomos (2003: 40), Lebzelter, (1981) pointed out that anti-Semitism in England was used to account for objective problems such as unemployment, poverty and opposition against British authority in the Empire, by attributing them to the outsider, the Jew. One example she gave was the slogan, “England for the English,” that became popular with both Conservatives and trade union leaders, in the context of economic crisis and high unemployment. Hostility towards the Jewish community was debated by the competition for jobs, housing and amenities in the East End of London. “‘Immigrant’ and ‘Jew’ became synonymous terms because of the extraordinary concern for the social problems of the East End of London which emerged roughly at the time of the first great wave of immigration” (Gainer, 1972 in Solomos: 41). A later example of this is during the 1970s where the economic recession of Britain led openly racist fascist organisations to recruit the youth of the working class whose hopes and energies were frustrated, by campaigning using ‘immigrants’ or ‘Jews’ as scapegoats for the state of the economic crisis. These right wing organisations adopted a similar style as Enoch Powell by exaggerating a supposed threat to the British way of life posed by “immigrants with alien cultures” (Brah, 1996: 37).

In history, Black people were present in Britain for centuries before the arrival of South Asian and African-Caribbean immigrants from 1945. By the end of the nineteenth century small established Black communities populated port towns of Liverpool, London, Cardiff and Bristol. Taking a political approach we must recognise that in Britain it was during the early twentieth century that a central theme of debates on Black communities was the supposed social problems to which their presence gave rise: “Social decay was supposed to be connected with the presence of a ‘Negro’ population…and so on who constituted an almost insignificant percentage of the population of the sea-port towns.” (Harris, 1988 in Solomos, 2003: 44).

Gilroy states that the term ‘race’ is a political category that can accommodate various meanings which are in turn determined by struggle.

“The forms of economic coercion involved in, for example, plantation slavery, migrant labour and apartheid, are all important reminders of the fact that ‘race’ can become a distinctive feature at the level of economic development” (Gilroy 2002: 35). Within the Black community racism was resisted through community as evident in Ken Pryce’s (1979) “Endless Pressure,” where his sample of Afro-Caribbean men tried to keep strong in the face of racism and perceived the ‘white power structure’ as the ‘enemy’ by following the existing black lifestyles and patterns of music, dance, heritage of negritude etc, which was hitherto despised (Pryce 1993: 274). Gilroy (2002) identified with the Rastafari movement where the effect of the movement had been detected in the politics of resistance to racism.

Along with the migration of the Black community were of the South Asian community including Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The African-Caribbean and South Asian people who migrated to Britain in the post war period shared a lot in common, as they found themselves working in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. “They were then commonly described in popular, political, and academic discourses as ‘coloured people’” (Brah 1996: 96). The term ‘coloured people’ as used then, had been one to show the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, which relates back to Britain’s Empire. It has been found that both African-Caribbean and South Asian groups had similar experiences in the forms of racist practices of “stigmatisation, inferiorisation, exclusion, and/or discrimination in arenas such as employment, education, housing, media, the criminal justice system, immigration apparatus, and the health services” (Brah 2002: 97). These similarities made way for a new politics of possible solidarity, where the concept of ‘black’ embraced African-Caribbean and South Asian peoples. However, British usage of the term ‘black’ is widely criticised as it was once used in the Black Power ideology referring specifically to the historical experience of people of sub-Saharan African descent, which was designed to create a positive political and cultural identity among black Americans. But when used in relation to South Asians the concept is incorporated in a political sense only, conclusively denying Asian cultural identity.

As outlined earlier racism and racial discrimination were mainly in the form stereotypes and exaggerated images of the supposed ‘other.’ Other forms include that of unskilled or semi-skilled jobs that were given to immigrants, as they were meaningless. “Almost all the jobs available to them [the South Asians] were those which the white workers did not want” (Brah 2002: 21). Zubaida (1970) cited in Brah (2002) points out that the one theme underlying all the cognitions of beliefs and stereotypes, is “the inferiority and servility of ‘native’ populations.” This is similar for African-Caribbean people as she further stated that immigrant communities from ex-colonies were not entirely new to the British. As ex-colonial subjects, they belonged to a group whose country was once ruled by Britain, so therefore, from the beginning the encounter between the ‘coloured’ and the white population was bounded by colonial precedents.

In discussing racism and racial discrimination we must not forget the theories behind race. Early theories placed race as being characterised in relation to the theory of evolution placing importance on appearance. Later, as discussed earlier theories were mainly focused around socio-economic and political context, with the constant notion of ‘us versus them’ with the addition of fear and pollution of disease, as was stereotyped with the Irish. Popular theories such as Marxism and Weberian sociology may be outdated but they provide accounts on the development of the new theories of race, racism and racial discrimination. Robert Miles (1988), a Marxist, states “on the one hand the need of the capitalist world economy for the mobility of human being, and on the other, the drawing of territorial boundaries and the construction of citizenship as a legal category which sets boundaries for human mobility” (cited in Solomos and Black, 1996: 9), relates to the potential for global capitalism if migrants are included, but those excluded have problems with citizenship. With reference to race and racial discrimination it can be said that immigrants in Britain faced inequalities that Marx stated in his theory of proletariats being exploited by the bourgeoisie, as the only forms of employment that were available to migrants were unwanted by the dominant white population. Marx described the capitalist society and employment structure, as having no form of social upward/downward mobility.

Weberian theory consists of class, status and power, with more agency and more possibility of change. Contemporary Weberian sociologists such as Rex and Tomlinson cited in Solomos and Black (1996) integrate both status and party in relation to class by describing the underclass were conceptualised in terms of their disadvantages compared to their white peers. “Instead of identifying with working class culture, community and politics, they formed their own organisations and became effectively a separate underprivileged class.”

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies include Mac an Ghaill (1991) whose comments challenged those of Margaret Thatcher who claimed that we had fixed identities and discussed the processes in which race is constructed. “They insisted that this was not a crisis of race but rather that race provided the lens through which the crisis was perceived and mediated; the crisis was largely thematized through race” (Mac an Ghaill, 1999: 21). Also recognised was the impact of cultural processes, as pointed out by Gilroy (2002) and Pryce (1993) where black people felt they were defined by their language as having a ‘black identity.’

Contemporary theories include new ethnicity and new racism, which challenges the view of the 80s where culture in race was neglected. Whereas now, these theories look at the ways in which racism is conceptualised with culture and how knowledge is maintained with culture. An example of this is the way in which today, racism is hidden in political language compared to the days of Thatcherism where racist comments were overtly used. Today language is more skilful and it is more difficult to accuse someone of being racist.

As you would see in the media following the September eleventh and July seventh terror attacks a lot of racism has been focused on the cultural and religious beliefs of the Islamic communities in Britain. Others include the 2001 Bradford riots. Islamophobia has come into play with politics and society with attachments of cultural racism. Other theories include those of feminism where gender contains many parallels in relation to race and also investigating the ethnocentric certain theories are. Consideration of race and science must be taken into account.

A lot of research is needed to relate theories and issues such as Islamophobia in relation to race and ethnicity. A final question to ask is, are we making the problem even worse by studying race and ethnicity?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abercrombie. N, Hill.S, Turner.B.S (2006), Dictionary of Sociology, 5th ed. London, Penguin
Brah. A, (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora, Contesting Identities. Routledge London & New York
Gilroy. P, (2002) There ain’t no black in the Union Jack. Routledge London & New York