New Labour,racism and ‘new’ football in England

ABSTRACT

Bradbury and Williams begin by examining aspects of the genealogy of incidents of fan racism at the Spain v. England international football match in Madrid on 17 November 2004, and the public outcry in Britain that followed. They raise questions about the possible ‘strategic mobilization’ by Spanish fans of apparently racist epithets as a response to the use, by the English football authorities before the match, of prominent anti-racism symbolism. The main body of the article then considers the British public response to Madrid within the context of the Blairite New Labour policy on football racism in England from the late 1990s. It argues that Labour's Football Task Force from 1997 constituted an entirely new direction for sport and government policy in Britain. However, by drawing on the comments of some of the key figures involved, Bradbury and Williams further contend that, both structurally and ideologically, the Task Force was preset to limit its own investigations on the nature and effects of racism, specifically in the English game. Although the Task Force's report, Eliminating Racism in Football, has had some positive effects—for example, on Football Association policy or in stimulating local anti-racist initiatives—its narrow focus and its relatively underdeveloped understanding of the racism problem in professional sport led its members to de-emphasize the significance of forms of institutionalized racism within English football. Research and commentaries on racism in the English game since that report was published in 1998 suggest that problems of racialized exclusion in football remain. Bradbury and Williams conclude that the public outrage in Britain about the incidents in Madrid reflect an over-concentration on silencing public expressions of racism—combating overt, collective fan outbreaks—at the expense of addressing the racialized structures of power that continue to shape access, opportunities and acceptance of ethnic minorities within professional football in England.     

England's green and pleasant land? examining racist prejudice in a rural context

Popular constructions of rural England have perpetuated images of idyllic, problem-free environments that have largely masked the process of ‘othering’ that works to marginalize particular groups within rural society. Drawing on the findings of studies conducted in two rural English counties, Chakraborti and Garland assert that racist prejudice is very much part of the reality of rural living for minority ethnic groups whose presence in the countryside tends to be overlooked. They discuss the perceptions of established white rural communities and those of the victims of racial harassment to illustrate the disturbing nature, extent and impact of racism in rural areas, and suggest that the enduring ‘invisibility’ of the problem is compounded both by the under-reporting of such racist incidents and the reluctance of agencies to acknowledge the needs of minority ethnic groups in the countryside. Consequently, racist prejudice in the rural context will only be recognized as a significant issue through a greater appreciation of the diverse complexity of rural space, and the abandonment of singular, outdated notions of rurality.     

Law and Violence in Richard Wright's ‘Native Son’

This paper seeks to intervene in the continuing debate around violence as a function of law and violence as a condition of justice. It examines a key literary work of the American civil rights movement as an instance of the establishment of an ethical community anchored by the literary text, and argues that, within such a community, the literary text is the counter-violence to which the law can yield. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Feminist criminology in an era of misogyny†

In this address I make the case for continuing to focus criminological research on gender, sexism, and racism within our lives and within our profession. I also provide a brief case study of a topic many would feel falls well outside our field: reproductive rights. Data are reviewed to reveal the impact of gender on the lives of women—notably the devaluation of work done by women, particularly if the work is deemed feminist. Afterward, recent data on the persistence of both sexism and racism in our field are reviewed. Despite gains made by women (notably in the membership of the field), the highest positions in our professional association are held by men, particularly by White men. Data on the importance of reproductive rights to women are then considered, notably the fact that nearly one third of women will need abortion services by the time they reach middle age. Finally, I review recent efforts by conservatives to recriminalize abortion, specifically through the passage of laws making abortion difficult to arrange, or even outlawing the provision of abortion services. These efforts directly involve the criminal justice system in the criminalization of women's bodies.     

A million little ways: racism and everyday performances of blackness in Buenos Aires

In spite of the reality of racism in Argentina, dominant Argentine society holds class as the most important factor in explaining social inequalities. I analyze everyday performances of blackness in Buenos Aires, Argentina and how these both corroborate with and contest dominant ideas about race. Even attitudes and behaviors that appear to uphold the racial hierarchy are, often upon deeper analysis, complex mechanisms of negotiation within a racist society. These performances range from very casual encounters on the street to literal interpretations including an audition for a TV commercial. I detail incidents of blacks who counter racist assumptions through their performance of identity as well as how racism influences and shapes these performances among Africans and Afro-descendants. The ethnographic evidence I gathered from my own exchanges as well as those of my research consultants challenges the notion of Argentina as a nation devoid of antiblack racism.     

Mainstreaming of Racist Anti-Roma Discourses in the Media in Hungary

The article focuses on the rise and spread of racist language in public debate in Hungary. It investigates how radical right discourses—that is, the relegitimating of the racist idea of “Gypsy crime”—have been transmitted by the mainstream media thus contributing to the decline of a short-lived political correctness in Hungary. The analysis explores how racism has become more and more accepted and how the mainstream has embraced the radical right's propositions, turning them into a “digestible” rhetoric while “breaking the taboos” of antiracism.     

Three-Fifths a Racist: A Typology for Analyzing Public Opinion About Race

Is race politics primarily about symbolic racism, principled conservatism, or group conflict? After almost three decades, this debate among some of our best scholars seems scarcely closer to resolution, yet the theoretical, empirical, and normative issues at stake remain enormous. All three parties to the debate falsely assume that the causal structure driving opinion about race policy is homogenous. I reorient and advance the debate by showing how a methodological shift to a data-driven taxonomy of subjects can elucidate how race politics really is complex. I use this taxonomy to run new analyses, and to explain and assess the seemingly contradictory results of previous contributions to the debate. Each of the major parties to the debate is partially right in their account of public opinion about race politics, but about independently identifiable sub-sets of subjects.     

Race,Islamophobia and the politics of citizenship in post-unification Germany

ABSTRACT

In the immediate aftermath of German reunification, as in the wake of the recent humanitarian crisis, Germany experienced notable ‘peaks’ of racist agitation and violence. In the 1990s, as today, the post-Communist eastern regions of Germany tend to be perceived as the hub of such racism. In this article, Lewicki revisits both ‘peaks’ via an examination of numerical evidence for verbal and physical racist violence in the former East and West of Germany. Rather than conceiving of racism as ‘cyclical’ or a specific legacy of the Communist dictatorship, her analysis suggests that political projects in Germany’s past and present have retained distinct structural incarnations of race. Far-right activists could thus successfully channel animosities resulting from the terms of unification into nationalist and racist resentment: momentarily more so in the East, but increasingly also in the West. The politics of citizenship, Lewicki argues, has provided a key means of perpetuating, reaffirming and cementing racialized hierarchies in the two post-war German states, but also in reunified Germany.     

Racist Offenders and the Politics of ‘Hate Crime’

In the UK and USA ‘Hate crime’ has become a topic of public controversy and social mobilization around issues of violence and harassment. This has largely but not exclusively addressed racism, homophobia and gender based violence. This article has three objectives. First, to situate hate crime legislation within a broad theory of modernity;secondly to examine the politics of its emergence as a public issue; thirdly to use data from the authors' recent research in Greater Manchester to illuminate the complexity of the concept of ‘hate crime’. The centrality of ‘hate crime’ to current debates derives from the importance of rights-based regulation of complex societies and the juridical management of emotional life. Hatred and violence have become problematic behaviour thrown into relief by a long term civilizing process. Hate crimes have thus acquired powerful rhetorical focus for mobilization of victim and identity politics. With reference to racist violence in Oldham and elsewhere in Greater Manchester, we argue that in its application and construction, however, ‘hate crime’ is a complex phenomenon that might dramatize rather than regulate the problems it seeks to address. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.