The advancement of racial neoliberalism in Britain

Abstract

This paper explores the advancement of racial neoliberalism in Britain, and notes the genealogy of the evaporation of race post-Macpherson to demonstrate that, while the terms of race are increasingly erased from public and institutional discourse, the institutionalization of racism continues unbounded, legitimated through the ‘War on Terror’. This dichotomy comes together under the ‘Prevent’ agenda which, as it maps onto ‘Community Cohesion’, has become the dominant thread of state policy on race. Thus, while any progressive measures using race for the purposes of anti-racism fade from view, they are increasingly overshadowed by a position which uses race, silently and ambiguously, through policies of policing and securitization. Consequently we move towards a place where the only mode in which race is spoken by the state is for the purposes of discipline and control.

Keywords:

• racial neoliberalism
• post-race
• racism
• racial state
• Britain
• New Labour government

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Virinder Kalra, Nicholas De Genova and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Notes

1. Indeed now the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary gave their full backing to the police, supporting the use of water cannons if necessary (Kundnani 2001).

2. Of course, that Trevor Phillips would be supportive of the new legislation is not so surprising given his previous comments relating to the state of race relations in Britain, including his assertion that ethnic minorities were ‘sleepwalking to segregation’ (Phillips 2005).

3. As the progamme began, in 2007 a new Preventing Extremism Pathfinder Fund of £5 million was made available to support ‘priority local authorities’ defined by the size of their Muslim population to take forward a programme of activities ‘to tackle violent extremism at a local level’ (DCLG 2007b, p. 3). At its inception, the agenda was concerned with what it termed Islamic radicalism and the ‘hatred and violence [conducted] in the name of Islam’ (p. 1).