Race, Racism and Anti Racism

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'Race', Racism and Anti-racism: Challenging Contemporary ClassificationsAlana Lentin

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Social Identities, Volume 6, Number 1, 2000

‘Race’, Racism and Anti-racism:Challenging Contemporary Classi�cations

ALANA LENTINEuropean University Institute

ABSTRACT: This paper argues for the revisiting of classi�catory concepts currently inuse in the study of ‘race’, racism and anti-racism. It examines the proposition thatracist movements no longer promote discrimination on the grounds of a belief inbiological differences but espouse a ‘differentialist’ racism based on a conviction in the�xity of culture, paradoxically ‘borrowed’ from culturally relativist anti-racist argu-ments. A critique of the differentialist thesis developed by Pierre-Andre Taguieff ispresented based upon the writings of Etienne Balibar and Paul Gilroy. The former, bygrounding modern racism in the ideological universalism of the European Enlighten-ment project, argues that the apportioning of blame to anti-racism for abetting theadvent of culturalist racism is unhelpfully conceived from a perspective which seeks todeny the legitimacy of black and ethnic minority led alliances as a basis for anti-raciststruggles. The novel connection is made between these arguments and those of PaulGilroy (1998) who proposes the redundancy of the term ‘race’, even from pragmatistperspectives, in the revitalisation of anti-racism as a viable opposition to contemporaryracist discourses. The argument is made that in order to dissect normative understand-ings of ‘race’ it is necessary to follow the historical trajectory taken by racism inbecoming an inextricable component of the modern project. Anti-racism, thus, must beseen as a multi-layered con�ict and, therefore, separate from its anti-fascist, anti-colonialist, leftist and institutionalised forms. Evidence from recent interviews withanti-racist activists points to their rejection of both ‘culturalist’ and ‘biological’approaches to racism and towards broad alliances of community-led activists againstovert but also covert, institutionalised racist discrimination.

Introduction

The last decade in sociology and political science has witnessed a risingpredominance of themes in ethnicity and identity as explanations both for theunprecedented explosion of ethnic con�ict in Europe post-1989 and for whatBillig (1995) terms ‘banal nationalism’, a paradoxical increase in the importanceof a communal belonging based on cultural heredity in an age seeminglyde�ned by cross-national communication and knowledge of the Other. Aconcomitant debate in political philosophy has evolved, particularly in NorthAmerica, between liberals and communitarians, an issue largely forced by thechallenges and oppositions embedded in the ‘multiculturality’ (Anthias, 1997)of contemporary western societies.

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In contrast, the discussion of ‘race’ has not �gured as prominently in thiscomplex of ‘hot’ sociological, political and philosophical currents. Whilst‘racism’ is still rightly regarded as an important source of institutionallyand individually based discrimination in contemporary western societies, thisappears to be due to the very centrality of ethnicity and the accompanyingneed to explain the persistence of ‘ethnic tensions’ in societies that, atleast theoretically, have moved towards a ‘politics of recognition’ (Taylor,1994). In a normative sense, then, while ‘race’ can no longer be used as acategorisation of human groups, it is understood that racism af�icts membersof ethnic minority communities whose difference we no longer describe inracial or biological terms. It may be argued that a problematisation of suchclassi�catory categories leads, unhelpfully, to a discussion based merely onsemantics. However, the introduction of the concept of ‘racialisation’ (Balibarand Wallerstein, 1991) to refer to the discrimination of groups and individualson the basis of perceived racial attributes is useful in pinpointing racism’stargets. Nevertheless, such a terminological discussion evades the very seriousissue that the demise in importance of discussions of ‘race’ and racism — inany sense other than the heuristic — poses to the building of sociologicaltheory grounded in a commitment to anti-racism at a time when concomitantracist discourses appear to have advanced signi�cantly and in a sophisticatedmanner.

Regardless of academia’s desire to move beyond ‘race’ and racism, the lastdecade has witnessed both an increase in the observable forms of racism anda re-analysis of the prevalent discourses characterising its self-understanding(Taguieff, 1990). In contrast, anti-racism as a viable movement is perceived tobe subsumed by crisis (Gilroy, 1992), lacking unity, workable strategy andpublic support. Both are shaped by the realities of societies characterised by ageneral fragmentation of the symbolic cultural modes guiding the life struc-tures of their populations, an increase in an immigration no longer categorisedas guest labour and a dismantling of welfare systems. The increasing ‘multicul-turality’ of western societies is accompanied by a parallel inability to effectivelydeal with its inevitable consequences — the racist discrimination of ethnicallyor ‘racially’ different minorities, who highlight the alterity between the domi-nant and subordinate groups inherent in today’s nation state.

Two seemingly con�icting processes are at work in this context. On the onehand, contemporary western societies are perceived as being multicultural, astate actively promoted by the media and advertising industries, throughpopular music and other cultural forms: diverse, dynamic and positive. On theother hand, multiculturalism has been a liberal public policy, emerging fromNorth America, replacing assimilative strategies and emphasising the preser-vation of cultural difference. Multiculturalism in this latter form has beencriticised (see Jakubowicz, 1984; Anthias, 1997; Parekh, 1993) for establishing aclear separation between the domain of the public and that of the private byconcentrating on culture as the main determinant of difference and neglectingthe structural nature of racism and ethnocentrism. Seen in this light, themulticultural environment perceived, by some, as positively diverse or, byothers, as a ‘solution’ to the social problems brought about by immigration


‘Race’, Racism and Anti-racism: Challenging Contemporary Classi�cations 93

leads to the marginalisation and de-politicisation of the disproportionate powerrelations in dominant-subordinate group interactions.

A discussion of the contemporary relevance of racism and anti-racism needsto address the context in which they are played out. Racism and discriminationshould be brought back to the domain of the political but this cannot be donewithout attention to contextual transformations — particularly in the urbanenvironment where racism and anti-racism are most often fashioned. Racism,the possibilities for anti-racism, and the overall atmosphere of multiculturalismmust each be re-analysed in a context in which visible cultural differences, intheir discourses if not in every day reality, become more important than everbefore in the search for identities.

In this paper I will argue that to understand the crisis faced by anti-racismas a movement in Europe at the turn of the millennium, three steps should betaken.

· Closer attention should be paid to contemporary discourses that propose theadvent of a ‘new’, ‘culturalist’ or ‘second degree’ racism in light of the extentto which these arguments posit an antagonistic relationship between post-war racism and an anti-racism described as facilitating the former’s increas-ing acceptability.

· In response to this approach that seeks to pin the blame for new racistdiscourses on the failures of the anti-racism movement, the centrality ofracism to the evolution of the European nation state and to the developmentof universalist ideologies about ‘general ideas of man’ should be examined.

· Lastly, I will suggest that the use of ‘race’ as a critical concept can no longerassist in �ghting racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.

In exploring these three points I will emphasise the work of three keyauthors: Pierre-Andre Taguieff, Etienne Balibar and Paul Gilroy. I will paymost attention to Balibar’s response to Taguieff’s proposal of a ‘neo’ or ‘seconddegree’ racism and propose the existence of a continuum between the work ofBalibar and that of Gilroy. My objective is to show how these importantcontributions can be drawn upon in an attempt to theorise anti-racist potential.

The development of these arguments in greater detail will lead me to theproposal that a reformulation of anti-racism as a viable form of collective actionmay take the form of the inter-ethnic alliances beginning to emerge in Europethat seek to go beyond identity politics. To highlight the signi�cance of thesenew developments, I will draw on some examples from my own research inprogress of European anti-racist movements. Recent interviews with anti-racistactivists in the United Kingdom 1 revealed that alliances across differentminority ethnic and racialised groups as well as cross-national contacts areincreasingly important for strengthening the anti-racist message. This is ofparticular importance at a time of enhanced activity around the introductionof racist asylum and immigration legislation across the European Union.

Contemporary Racisms and the Centrality of Culture

Contemporary western societies have become increasingly multi-ethnic, lead-


94 Alana Lentin

ing to the popular perception based on observations of large cosmopolitancities (such as London, Paris or Amsterdam) that cultural diversity is a fullyaccepted phenomenon. For this reason the persistence of racism and thesuccess in various countries of far-right wing parties with a strong anti-immigrant manifesto is of signi�cant concern. It is against this setting thatwriters such as the French sociologist Pierre-Andre Taguieff have introducedthe notion of a ‘neo-racism’, based, not on biological, but upon culturaldifferentiation between peoples.2

Pierre-Andre Taguieff’s theorisation of a new racism, founded upon theview of cultures as �xed, is strongly linked to his attempt to point out the roleof anti-racism in facilitating this phenomenon. Taguieff develops the notion ofa differentialist racism based on the �xity of culture which renders both‘racism’ and ‘anti-racism’ incomplete as terms seeking to explain the intricacyof this oppositionary complex (Taguieff, 1991). His argument is based ontwentieth century developments in anthropology that weakened the biologicaltheorisation of superior and inferior ‘races’ and made ‘of�cial’ the notion thatthe existence of human ‘races’ has no scienti�c bearing. What evolved, how-ever, due to the work of anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss (1961)and the growing acceptability of culture rather than ‘race’ as a primary markerof difference, was the notion of cultural relativism upon which, Taguieff claims,anti-racism based itself.

The emerging anti-racist tradition constructed itself around the beliefs thatcultural phenomena are of an autonomous nature, that cultural determinismthus dominates both mentality and lifestyle, and that all cultures should bevalued equally. With this, Taguieff appears to blame anti-racists for declaringthe nullity of racial differentiation as a viable concept and replacing it with thesemantically interchangeable term ‘culture’, the positive nature of which couldbe easily subscribed to but whose deterministic properties had not beenproperly thought out. In more direct terms, the notion of cultural differen-tiation as equally valorised presents no problem to left-leaning, westernthinkers in so far as it is contained in anthropological �eld research. The ideabecomes problematic when contextualised in the form of European-boundimmigration. This approach is echoed by the current debate on the limits ofcommunitarianism and is visible in Habermas’ writings on the effect that a‘tremendous in�ux of immigration’ (Habermas, 1995, p. 255) may have on thestability of western European societies. Indeed, the advent of social-democratgovernments in all four of Europe’s largest states does not seem to have alteredhard-line, racially biased approaches to immigration (Bloch, 1999).

Taguieff shows anti-racist thinking to have developed, regardless of thein�uence of culturalist moves in anthropology, along the lines of an oppositionto a racism still perceived literally to be racist in the biological sense. This viewof racist opposition was based on anti-racism’s inability to sever the linkages inthe ‘hostility to difference-annihilation/genocide’ continuum, founded uponthe experience of the Nazi Shoah. However, lack of evidence for connectingcontemporary racism against immigrants to the horrors of recent history led tothe formulation of economic arguments for the explanation of intolerantattitudes which, however unwillingly, justi�ed working class phobias against



foreigners. This double victimisation was the outcome of the deliberate attemptby the capitalist class to serve its own interests, diffusing racial prejudice tomask class hegemony.

Taguieff seeks to show that whilst anti-racism was being subsumed byeconomic/colonialist arguments, racism itself was learning from the initialtrigger for these very ideas — the notion of cultural rather than biologicaldifference. To be clear, it is proposed that anti-racist thought was based onthree pinnacles: the invalidity of ‘race’, the centrality of cultural difference, andthe equal status of all cultures. These principles are at the core of arguments forcultural relativism. At the same time, the proliferation of racist attitudesamongst the working classes was explained in terms of traditional classcon�ict. This need to excuse the racism of the white working class still sticksin the side of the progressive anti-racist movement today (interview withCARF, 1999). On the other hand, racism as diffused by the bourgeoisie, washeld to be based on a belief in the hierarchisation of biological races that, in theextreme, would lead to human genocide. Anti-racism as a movement sought,in reaction, to combat racism by insisting upon the equal valorisation of allcultures and a respect for difference. This, for Taguieff, was anti-racism’sgravest error.

A problematisation of Taguieff’s contribution has been proposed by EtienneBalibar. In his summary of Taguieff’s work, Balibar concludes:

From the logical point of view, differentialist racism is a meta-racism, orwhat we may call a ‘second-position’ racism, which presents itself ashaving drawn the lessons from the con�ict between racism and anti-racism, as a politically operational theory of the causes of social ag-gression. If you want to avoid racism, you have to avoid that ‘abstract’anti-racism which fails to grasp the psychological and sociological lawsof human population movements; you have to respect the ‘tolerancethresholds’ maintain ‘cultural distances’ or, in other words, in accord-ance with the postulate that individuals are the exclusive heirs andbearers of a single culture, segregate collectivities (the best barrier in thisregard still being national frontiers). (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991,p. 23)

This reading of Taguieff, highlights the problematic nature of his insistenceon a culturalist racism which replaces the ‘traditional’ view of human popula-tions differentiated on the basis of biological ‘race’. Taguieff sees this newracism as purposefully veiling its purer form, biological racism. In retaliation,he argues, anti-racism should adjust its orientation in recognition of the toneddown cultural discourse of the new Right. His emphasis on the need to tacklenew-Rightist strategy masks anti-racism’s growing concern with racism as adiffused phenomenon, more pervasive and, arguably, more dangerous, in itsinstitutionalised forms. Indeed, Taguieff’s position reveals his strong situationin the context of the French debate on racism.3 According to Phil Cohen, in theBritish context

the new racism thesis provided an important intellectual resource for the


96 Alana Lentin

anti-racist movement, enabling it to shift its attention beyond the violent,aversive forms of popular racism towards the more subtle and invisibleaspects of cultural stereotyping and discrimination, especially as theseoperated within the institutions of civil governance. (Cohen, 1999, p. 4)

In essence, the more correct argument appears to be that there is nosigni�cant difference between theories that seek to justify the discrimination ofthe Other, whether they be biological or cultural. It is not simply that ifanti-racism were to realise that racism no longer believes in biologicallydetermined differentiation and has now itself taken up the cultural relativists’call for the unicity of culture that it could become a viable movement. What infact appears to be at the root of placing the blame at anti-racism’s door is ratheran exasperation at the failure of assimilative strategies. Thus, Taguieff appearsto be following a current in French anti-racism that calls for the right of‘immigrants’ (second and third generations included) to integrate into Frenchsociety. Harlem Desir, leader of SOS Racisme in the 1980s stated: ‘For usintegration is primarily the rejection of exclusion, the rejection of the ghettowhich includes the cultural ghetto’ (Desir, cited in Lloyd, 1996). This statementre�ects the tendency of French mainstream anti-racism to frame racism in thecontext of human rights, stressing the individual’s right to freedom andequality despite group-based discrimination.

Universalist calls for the fading out of difference through the assimilation ofminority cultures have blended into a politics of integration which, althoughrecognising their existence, sees all cultural groups as internally homogeneous(Wieviorka, 1997; Yuval-Davis, 1997). The concern displayed with the failure ofboth approaches, both as principles and as policies of western states, is evidentin much of the contemporary liberal versus communitarian debate. Both sidesoften arrive at similar conclusions when discussing the handling of ‘illiberalgroups’ (Kymlicka, 1989), perceived as unable or ‘unwilling’ to become aseamless part of western society. The view which sees minority ethnic orracialised groups as responsible for what is often viewed as their failure toadjust to the demands of the states in which they live, fails to problematise theinequality of the power relationships which govern the way we live in‘multicultural’ societies.

Consequently, culturalist racism, rather than being a clever mechanisminitiated by new Right-wing parties to gain face, permeates state institutionaland, thus, individual conceptions of difference conceived as ‘race’-based. Ittherefore cannot be said to be due to the failures of anti-racism, as Taguieffsuggests. Racism of this type is inherent in state, institutional, class-based andindividual participation in the legitimation of an established dominant culture.Thus, neither is it a new phenomenon.

There is, no doubt, a speci�cally French brand of the doctrines ofAryanism, anthropometry and biological geneticism, but the true‘French ideology’ is not to be found in these: it lies rather in the idea thatthe culture of the ‘land of the Rights of Man’ has been entrusted with auniversal mission to educate the human race. There corresponds to thismission a practise of assimilating dominated populations and a conse-



quent need to differentiate and rank individuals and groups in terms oftheir greater or lesser aptitude for — or resistance to — assimilation.(Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991)

All western states minimise the effect of the presence of non-nationalpeoples (minority ethnic and racialised groups) on the societal status quothrough assimilation or, latterly, integration. Whether by playing down (as-similating) or playing on (integrating) cultural difference, states play a pater-nalistic role that entrenches racist attitudes. Bauman describes the process thus:

With the progressive universalisation of the human condition — whichmeans nothing else but the uprooting of all parochiality and the powersbent on preserving it, and consequently setting human development freeof the stultifying impact of the accident of birth — that predetermined,stronger-than-human-choice diversity will fade away. (Bauman, 1997,p. 48)

The continuing co-existence of minority ethnic and religious groups and peopleof colour alongside so-called nationals serves as a constant reminder of theshortcomings of universalist idealism inasmuch as it involves a top-downimposition of standards, values and behaviour.

The Janus Face of Universalism

In order to understand the origins of a so-called ‘culturalist’ racism and itsproposed emergence through anti-racist cultural relativism, it is helpful toexamine the relationship between racism as both discourse and practice andthe ideology of universalism that has de�ned western thinking about humanityfor the last two centuries. By doing this I hope to show that the proposal of a‘new’ culturalist (rather than biological) racism ignores the historical evidencethat shows that this is no new concept. Antisemitism is the primary exampleof this type of ‘racism without race’. Moreover, it is ethnic, religious orracialised difference per se around which racism moulds its arguments fordiscrimination.

Etienne Balibar proposes that the negation of difference is central to racistdiscourse through his argument for the compatibility of racism and universal-ism:

universalism and racism are indeed (determinate) contraries, and this iswhy each of them has the other inside itself — or is bound to affect theother from the inside. (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991, p. 198)

Linked as it is to the very foundations of a universalist ideology, emerging outof Enlightenment philosophy, the belief that moral equality is a naturalentitlement of the ‘brotherhood of man’,4 racism, like sexism, becomes theprism through which we may understand the very possibility of talking abouta universalist ideal. In other words, both racism and sexism serve to justify thefact that there are always exemptions to inclusion in universal humanity. Thiscan also explain why several criteria of demarcation may serve to exclude those


98 Alana Lentin

seen as different. Culture has provided to this end in some contexts whereasbiology has proved equally effective in others.

Therefore, the semantic nature of the culture versus biology debate enlargedby Taguieff, obfuscates the point made by Balibar, that racism, in both itsbiological and cultural forms, has been inseparable from the task of creating a‘general idea of man’ (Balibar, 1994, p. 198), itself confounded by images ofsuperiority and inferiority in which the quest for the Ubermensch is implicit.The construction of universally rational man necessitates a de�nition in relationto some Other that, in turn, demands a hierarchisation of human beings,ranked in relation to the universal ideal. Taken a step further, such categorisa-tions lead to �xing the boundaries that encompass our de�nitions of humanitywhich, in the practices of certain European philosophical traditions, have beenfounded upon the Eurocentric perspective that structures the patterns ofexclusion and inclusion from a universal point of view that sees Europe as itscentre.

Balibar’s proposal that racism and universalism, rather than being reducibleto one another, contain each within itself leads to a constant questioning of

who you are in a certain social world, why there are some compulsoryplaces in this world to which you must adapt yourself, imposing uponyourself a certain univocal identity. (Balibar, 1994, p. 200)

Racism provides the answer to the universal dilemma that seeks to homogeniseus when, in fact, we feel different and strive towards uniqueness. It is becausethere is difference that these feelings are aroused in us and it is because thereare Others who point out this very difference that we are sometimes compelledto exclude or enact violence against them. Racism is inextricable from univer-salism and, thus, apparently perennial, because:

We are different, and, tautologically because difference is the universalessence of what we are — not singular, individual difference, butcollective differences, made of analogies and, ultimately, of similarities.The core of this mode of thought might very well be this common logic:differences among men are differences among sets of similar individuals(which for this reason can be ‘identi�ed’). (Balibar, 1994, p. 200)

Taking this into account, the reaction of anti-racism should concern itself lesswith what speci�c weapons are used to point out difference or model ahierarchisation of peoples. Rather, racism for Balibar should be seen as a

mode of thought, that is to say a mode of connecting not only wordswith objects, but more profoundly, words with images, in order to createconcepts. (Balibar, 1994, p. 200)

Challenging racism thus means changing a way of thinking which has becomeessential to the view of our western selves, created in the tradition of modernEuropean Enlightenment philosophy and pervasive of daily thought andbehaviour.

Balibar’s historically based argument is useful in pointing out the problemsinvolved in the new racism thesis. By relating both cultural and biological



arguments for the subordination of the racialised in society to the core ofuniversalism, Balibar successfully points out the Janus-faced nature of idealssuch as individual human rights. Their location in a universalising tendencythat grants the right of individual freedom while concomitantly perceiving andclassifying minority groups as internally homogeneous is especially problem-atic when used in anti-racist discourse. However, Balibar’s emphasis on ‘feel-ings’ of difference — essentially individual — detracts somewhat from theforce of his argument. Implying that racism is bound up with feeling differentfrom others unlike ourselves may be seen as implying that feelings can bechanged by challenging individual prejudices or allegiances alone. Despite hiscritique of Taguieff, Balibar may be read as falling into a similar trap byavoiding an institutional and, thus, political reading of racism. By seeingracism as a ‘mode of thought’ Balibar avoids talking explicitly about racism interms of the uneven power relations exercised in contemporary societies.However, if we read Balibar from such a structural perspective it is possible tosee racism as so ingrained in both the institutions of state policy and practiceand the ideologies that guide them that it appears to be like a ‘mode ofthought’ or a �xed attitude.

Rejecting ‘Race’ as a Critical Concept

Paul Gilroy (1998) has recently called for an end to the use of ‘race’ as a criticalconcept. His proposal, I suggest, may be linked to Balibar’s demonstration ofthe dangers in essentialising either the biological or cultural signi�ers ofdifference purportedly used in ‘original’ and ‘neo’ racisms respectively. It canalso be seen as emerging from Gilroy’s increasingly critical stance on theappropriation of anti-racism by institutions and self-interested lobbies (1992)and his strong opposition to the de-politicisation of anti-racism as a viablemovement:

a �eld from which politics has been banished, and where the easyinvocation of ‘race’ is regular con�rmation of the retreat of the political.(Gilroy, 1998, p. 839)

Gilroy bases a substantial part of his argument upon the importance ofcontemporary developments in technology which create ‘new historiesof visuality and perception’ (Gilroy, 1998, p. 839) and radically transformnotions of ‘absolute identity’ from which new and competing subjectivitiesemerge.

Have you, has your body been scanned? (asks Gilroy). Do you recogniseits changing optic density? If so, I would like you to consider thatdevelopment as another sign that we can let the old visual signatures of‘race’ go. Having waved them farewell, it is possible that we shall do abetter job of countering the racisms, the injustices, that they brought intobeing if we make a more consistent effort to de-nature and de-ontologize‘race’ and thereby to disaggregate raciologies. (Gilroy, 1998, p. 839)

What Gilroy is asserting should not be confused with Taguieff’s rejection of


100 Alana Lentin

biology in favour of culture in the quest to understand racist ideologies. Rather,‘race’ can no longer be an effective classi�catory category, even in the politicalterms in which it has been employed (for example, in the discourse on ‘politicalblackness’) because of the way in which it has been commodi�ed in daily life.On the one hand, as Gilroy points out, if even anti-racist activists retain racialde�nitions of difference what chance is there of convincing others that in realterms it has no meaning. On the other, the pervasive usage of racial categorisa-tion in the domain of advertising and the media, promoting difference aspositive, has paradoxically led to the situation in which ‘race’ cannot beabandoned because in that world of ‘privatised, corporate multicultural-ism … racial alterity has acquired an important commercial value’ (Gilroy,1998, p. 843).

The problem of evoking ‘race’ as a critical concept, and, I add, most likelythe reason why culture seems now to dominate racist discourse, is that we nolonger so readily equate observable differences with consequential physicalrealities. The unimaginable speed of recent developments in technology, butalso the �rst-hand knowledge brought about by greater mobility, have madethe theoretical notion of biological racial difference untenable:

On what scale is human sameness, human diversity now to be cali-brated? In the instability of scale that characterises our episteme, how isracialised and racialising identity to be imagined when we know that ithas already been imaged? (Gilroy, 1998, pp. 843–44)

What these observations bring Gilroy to is an understanding, in accordancewith Balibar, that to conceive racism, to develop useful critical concepts and totentatively reformulate anti-racism, it is imperative to locate historically theunfurling of the notion of ‘race’. Such a task requires the relation of macrohistorical conditions to congruent subjective developments in individuals’self-understandings. ‘Scienti�c’ racism, for Gilroy, accompanying the onset ofmodernity, became the point at which ‘enlightenment and myth’ (Gilroy, 1998,p. 843) met. Accompanied by nationality, the bonds created by ‘race’, legiti-mated by their couching in the modern language of ‘provable’ biologicalscience, gave meaning to our pre-modern, instinctive understandings of our-selves. Thus,

‘race’ may be modernity’s most pernicious signature. It articulatedreason and unreason. It knitted together science and superstition.(Gilroy, 1998, p. 843)

Biological ‘race’ and the practice of racism allowed pre-modern knowledgeabout modes of belonging to persist in an age in which the non-reasonable wasotherwise scorned. This echoes Balibar’s (1994) claim that racism itself createdits own communities, grounded in the safety of sameness which the modernEnlightenment project and its quest for universalism engendered. Communitiesof (homogeneous) identity were possible where overriding ideology placedthem at the top of a universal hierarchy.

Gilroy does not, indeed cannot, provide the answers to the dilemmas heposes in his provocative paper. He is, like most contemporary students of



‘race’, racism and anti-racism, haunted by the problem inherent in the recogni-tion of the critical futility of employing ‘race’ as a category and the concomitantrealisation that, without these tried and tested concepts, anti-racism increas-ingly loses meaning. This is the point of Gilroy’s anger in his 1992 declarationof the ‘End of anti-racism’ where he condemns anti-racism in its institutional,party-political and anti-fascist forms, an anti-racism that

trivialises the struggle against racism and isolates it from other politicalantagonisms — from the contradiction between capital and labour, fromthe battle between men and women. It suggests that racism can beeliminated on its own because it is readily extricable from everythingelse. (Gilroy, 1992, p. 50)

Gilroy’s proposal to abolish ‘race’ as a critical concept should not, however,be confused with a denial of anti-racism as a necessary principle and practice.Gilroy re�ects the signi�cant changes taking place amongst organised anti-racists since his observation of anti-racism’s crisis in 1992. Particularly in theBritish context, from which Gilroy wrote, a series of events marked the turningpoint for an anti-racism overtaken by interest groups, political parties and ananti-fascist discourse bearing little resemblance to the institutional racismexperienced in contemporary society. The inquiry into the death of blackteenager Stephen Lawrence and the mobilisation by Bangladeshis against theelection of a British National Party candidate in the Tower Hamlets area ofLondon brought about a less entrenched anti-racism. Campaigns of this naturewere the �rst to be both broad-based, attracting a record rate of public support,and community-led, signifying the acceptance of the end of an appropriatedanti-racism (interview with NAAR, 1999). In London, and equivalent cities, thepositive proliferation of black culture alongside the disproportionate violenceand discrimination against racialised communities makes a rejection of ‘race’ asa means of classi�cation possible. The paradox of a situation in which black-ness permeates daily experience to such an extent to make it banal highlightsthe outrageousness of targeting this group over any other for unequaltreatment.

This current reality connects to the points made by both Gilroy and Balibarin the former’s proposal to banish ‘race’ from anti-racist discourse and in thelatter’s reminder that dwelling on categorisation (science versus culture) willnot change the marginalised situation of the racialised. Tackling the phenom-enon at its structural, political core appears, therefore, to be the only way ofusefully combating racism. Moreover, an overemphasis on categorisation,particularly in attempts to ‘�ght racism on its own terms’, as suggested byTaguieff in his warning to anti-racism to note parallel shifts in racist discourse,have already proved unreliable. Gilroy makes this point by referring to theproblems inherent in pragmatic stances that adopt racialised terminology. Thisis further echoed by Modood (1997) who explains how the emphasis on‘political blackness’ that dominated British anti-racism during the 1970s and1980s resulted in the exclusion of Muslims from the anti-racist struggle. Asracism is necessarily a heterogeneous phenomenon so too must anti-racisms bedeveloped that include, to the maximum, the various voices of racialised and


102 Alana Lentin

ethnic minority communities in western societies. The �nal section of the paperwill attempt to draw together the main points made by illustrating initiativesthat have been taken to this end.

Anti-racist Responses

Anti-racism movements in Europe represent a diverse range of associationsand platforms, differing signi�cantly from country to country. This lack ofunity has been perceived as leading anti-racism into crisis (Gilroy, 1992;interview with CARF, 1999), mainly inasmuch as con�icting viewpoints be-come entrenched thus denying the possibility of co-operation. This problemhas been further confounded in recent years with the introduction of variousinstitutional initiatives for tackling racism. Movements often �nd themselves inuneasy collaboration with supranational institutions such as the EuropeanCommission, risking outright rejection which denies them any in�uence overpan-European processes. This is re�ected by the views of the CampaignAgainst Racism and Fascism (CARF):5

In terms of European Union … There was money going out to fundanti-racist projects. I mean nobody’s going to be purist and say we don’twant the money because we’re all desperate for money, without whichyou can’t do your work, if you haven’t got any money you’re just goingto collapse. But certainly from our perspective — I don’t think we gotany money from the European Union at all — is that I think what wasfunded was not anti-racist work, was cultural work, multicultural work.The best way to get funding was multicultural work, not stuff that wasgoing to be critical of state institutions. (Interview with CARF, 1999)

Representation is another issue confounding collaboration with transna-tional institutional initiatives with many organisations insisting on black andethnic minority leadership and others still rejecting the signi�cance of this formof empowerment. Amongst coalition based movements, recent interviews thatI carried out with activists revealed a growing tendency to go beyond theseperennial stumbling blocks. Organisations such as the National AssemblyAgainst Racism (NAAR) and the 1990 Trust in the UK, while stressing blackleadership, did not refuse co-operation with other organisations sharing theirbasic aims on both national and international levels. This view is illustrated inthe following interview extract with the National Assembly Against Racism:6

The sort of de�ning point of the National Assembly is (1) that the peoplewho experience racism, that is in the �rst instance today, black — thatis Asian, African, Caribbean people in Britain — have to play the leadingrole in the �ght against racism and that is not just a matter of lip-servicethat has to be in any organisation written in and constitutionallyorganised … That’s number one and then number two, that the anti-racist movement has to be an alliance, it can’t be one particular currentimposing its view, analysis and agenda on the whole movement andtherefore the way the anti-racist movement has to work — or how the



National Assembly has to work — is that it has to discuss and take itsown initiative, �ght against every obvious appearance of racism in thissociety but it also has to be willing to support and promote the issuesand campaigns taken up by others if they’re genuinely against racism.And that it may have to work in coalition with other organisations inorder to take forward speci�c campaigns and initiatives. (Interview withNAAR, 1999)

Both of the above comments re�ect the importance of tackling racism froma perspective that is politically critical, black and ethnic minority led and basedon broad alliances. This approach poses a direct challenge to both state andinternational institutions charged with dealing with racism and sectors ofnon-government that concentrate on overt racism and neo-Nazism, on the onehand, or the promotion of multiculturalism seen as insuf�cient, on the other.These alliance-based movements call for anti-racism to �ght racism beyond itscrude fascist forms and on the basis of a structural politicised strategy thatrejects the notion that multicultural understanding is the panacea for racist‘attitudes’. Both Balibar and Gilroy’s arguments for the need to get beyondboth ‘cultural’ and ‘biological’ explanations for racism are evident here. Thesearguments are apparent in the following comments.

Concerning multiculturalist approaches:

[In the] Overcome Racism Now initiative their7 whole thing was to saypeople are making an exaggerated fuss about this because there areactually very tiny numbers of black people in these cities so they wantedthe �gures to show there’s only really 2%. I said well, excuse me, youknow in London there are 33–34% black and ethnic minority people andour point is not that this is small, it’s big and therefore London andgovernment and London government have to change to re�ect thereality of London not to try to push it into a corner. (Interview withNAAR, 1999)

Concerning institutionalised identity politics:

I think our perspective has enabled us to critique identity politics andsee what’s wrong with them. I mean, for instance there was a time in the1980s after the riots here where different strategies for �ghting racismwere advocated like racial awareness training which is very much basedon identity politics and was based on the idea that racism equalsprejudice. So, the idea was that the way to get rid of racism was toactually get people who were working in the police force, in localgovernment and to take them for racial awareness training and tobasically — it sort of worked that white people were given a grillingabout their own personal racism and so they were made to feel terriblyguilty and break down and cry. And we were always very muchopposed to all those things because, you know, we have … our politicscome out of the belief that racism isn’t about individual prejudice, it’sabout institutions, what institutions do. And in many ways a lot of the


104 Alana Lentin

things that we have said over the years have been vindicated now withthe Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the ruling about institutionalisedracism. (Interview with CARF, 1999)

These illustrations of the concerns of anti-racist activists support the mainpoints made in the theoretical body of the paper. Progressive coalitions ofanti-racists tend to reject culturalist arguments for the promotion of racialequality as advocated by Taguieff. In practice this is re�ected in a justi�edscepticism of depoliticised, multiculturally orientated campaigns or

something celebrating cultural diversity or bringing different ethnicgroups together. I think those were the sort of things the EuropeanUnion were interested in. (interview with CARF, 1999).

But there is also a rejection of what can be termed ‘biological’ or ‘race’ basedarguments in support of Gilroy. This runs along two lines. Firstly, there isstrong realisation that targeting neo-Nazism and the far right alone, thoughvital, is insuf�cient. Secondly, the emphasis placed on black and ethnic min-ority leadership in broad alliances negates treating ‘race’ as a special mode ofclassi�cation. As Gilroy claims, the familiarity with blackness, at least inmodern urban societies, empties ‘race’ even of its pragmatic signi�cance. Theaim today is not to talk about the racialised. Rather, the leadership by blackand ethnic minority people of organisations re�ecting their concerns becomesa norm that may help towards accepting non-whiteness or ethnic difference asa fact of life rather than an ‘anthropological category’.

Conclusions

Three main points have been made in the course of this paper that are crucialto any project that aims to lay the ground for a rethinking of anti-racism asdiscourse and practice.

Firstly, coming to an understanding of the structural embeddedness ofracism in western societies necessitates a historical perspective showing howthe universalising rationalisation of human differences effectively shaped theacceptability of exclusion, leading, in the worst case, to the Nazi Shoah.

Secondly, the current proposal to draw a line between ‘old’ biologicalracism and ‘new’ cultural racism denies the point that aversion to difference perse and not particular biological or cultural traits leads to the persistence ofracism over time. The link made by writers such as Taguieff to the insistenceof anti-racism on the diversity of equal cultures can only be seen as anexasperated (and in some senses justi�able) dig at contemporary ‘multicultural-ism’.

Finally, an abandonment of ‘race’ as a critical concept is proposed in an erawhen intermingling between different ethnic groups and the proliferation ofblack and other minority cultures increases yet racism continues to exist. Areframing of anti-racism as a political project that engages directly with thestructures into which it is built is necessary to avoid a racist discourse that



stresses identity, community, culture and tradition and neglects intersectional-ity and, most importantly, politics.

Alana Lentin is a Researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences,European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9, I-50016 SanDomenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy, tel: 1 39 00 291 117, e-mail: [email protected],web page: http://www.iue.it/Personal/Researchers/Lentin.

Notes

1. These interviews were carried out as part of my research on Europeananti-racist movements. Interviews in the UK and Ireland have been carriedout in the �rst stage of a project also looking at movements in several otherwestern European countries. The project will eventually group together anumber of activists from different organisations and countries in an inter-active action-based research in part using the Internet in addition toface-to-face meetings.

2. Note that while the neo-racist thesis has been associated with the Frenchliterature on the subject and is strongly related to the rise of the FrontNational in that country, British writers have also concerned themselveswith the emergence of a new racism (see Barker, 1981; Gordon, 1989).

3. Taguieff’s concentration on new right-wing discourse and the lack ofattention he pays to the broader realms of institutional racism may be putdown to his situation in the French context where such debates have notcome as strongly to the fore. This is due, in part, to the success of the FrontNational, a phenomenon only mirrored more recently in other Europeancountries (e.g. Switzerland and Austria).

4. The phrase ‘Brotherhood of Man’ is used by Immanuel Wallerstein (1988)to point out that it was not inclusive of women but neither of nonEuropean, non-white men.

5. A representative of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism wasinterviewed by the author in November 1999.

6. A representative of the National Assembly Against Racism wasinterviewed by the author in November 1999.

7. The interviewee is referring to the Italian initiators of the project, ARCI.

References

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Balibar, E. and I. Wallerstein (1991) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities,London: Verso.

Barker. M. (1981) The New Racism, London: Junction Books.


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Race, Racism and Anti Racism