Britain: racial violence and the politics of hate

Abstract

Drawing on research into racist attacks in three cities, this article reveals a changing geography of racial violence in the UK (in terms of new areas and targets), and sets this in the context of the socially destructive impact of neoliberalism and government policies to manage the UK’s changing demographic make-up. With racial violence officially defined as just one form of ‘hate crime’, it is now divorced from any wider political context or racialised climate and reduced to a matter of individual pathology. The changing parameters of racism and the state’s responses present a challenge which the Left and anti-racists have been slow to meet.