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Racialising age in the UK’s border regime: a case for abolishing age assessment Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Rachel Rosen, S. Khan
Processes for assessing the age of young unaccompanied migrants have been roundly critiqued, with new concerns in the UK being raised about the increasing use of ‘scientific’ approaches. In this article, we suggest that, taking everything into account, analyses do not go far enough, arguing that technical questions of how ‘best’ to assess age or the new incursion of biometric measurements can obscure
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Political theology, discovery and the roots of the ‘great replacement’ Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Colin Bossen
In recent years, fears of the ‘great replacement’, popularised by Renaud Camus, warning against a supposed Islamist take-over of France, have motivated White supremacist violence and resulted in mass shootings in Europe, New Zealand and the US. The author shows how this conspiracy theory can be traced back to medieval theological doctrines used to justify the conquest of Muslim lands in Al-Andalus
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Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel By David Lester Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 RY O. Siggelkow
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From black Welsh miner to Marcus Garvey’s nemesis: Lionel Francis and the Black Atlantic Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Tony Collins
This article uncovers the life of Lionel Francis, one of the people who ousted Marcus Garvey from the leadership of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and who would eventually lead the UNIA. Although described by Garvey’s biographers as a medical doctor from Trinidad, this article reveals that Francis was never a doctor but began his working life as a miner and a preacher in the South
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Dismissal, legibility and the normalising of colonial misrecognition Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Falguni Sheth
The judicial act of dismissal in discrimination cases involving diasporic or minority populations is part of a larger cultural approach to diasporic subjects. Racial dismissal includes judicial as well as larger cultural forms of dismissal, whereby an authority judges a speaker’s grievances as implausible or unworthy of consideration, often due to cases of misrecognition or illegibility to a hegemonic
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Majority jury verdicts in England and Wales: a vestige of white supremacy? Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Nisha Waller, Naima Sakande
In England and Wales, the requirement for a unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases was abolished in 1967, marking a significant departure from a centuries-old legal tradition. Majority verdicts are now common practice, yet no research to date explores the origins of this sudden change to the jury system. In contrast, recent research in the US uncovered a connection between the conception of majority
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The princess, the witch and the fairy godmother: colonial legacies in ‘FGM’ Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Natasha Carver
This article analyses the discursive construction of what has become known as ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ (FGM) in colonial-era debates in the UK Houses of Parliament. The author shows how, in order to bring the topic into the realm of political legitimacy and to be heard in an institution that had only recently allowed women to stand for office, (White) women MPs emphasised their superiority to the
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The antinomies of Sam Morris: a life in the diaspora Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Christian Høgsbjerg, Hannah Ishmael
This article attempts to recover the antinomies and contradictions of the life and work of Grenada-born Samson Uriah Morris (1908−1976), an educationalist, anti-colonialist and Black political activist, whose life was dedicated to both the movement for civil rights in Britain and the broader anti-colonial and Pan-Africanist struggle. His life ranged from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom to Kwame
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An anatomy of the British war on woke Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Huw C. Davies, Sheena E. MacRae
The British war on woke is an intensive ideological campaign against social justice movements that is mobilising far-right tropes and conspiracy theories within mainstream British political discour...
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Islam, violence and the ‘four dogmas of Orientalism’ Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Tim Jacoby
Hidden away at the end of Edward Said’s seminal text, Orientalism, is a brief summary of his main arguments. Consisting of what he calls ‘four principal dogmas’, these establish the binary differen...
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The 2022 Conservative leadership campaign and post-racial gatekeeping Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Rima Saini, Michael Bankole, Neema Begum
The UK Conservative Party leadership contest that took place in the summer of 2022 was unprecedented for, among other things, its level of ethnic diversity. This article argues that this does not i...
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The Hanau massacre and state (in)action: a dossier Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Oscar Herzog Astaburuaga
Based on official and unofficial reports into the 2020 massacre at Hanau of nine people in a racist attack by a rightwing German extremist, the article reveals how state agencies fail to acknowledg...
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Trade unions negotiating the Swedish model: racial capitalism, whiteness and the invisibility of race Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-02-25 Paula Mulinari, Anders Neergaard
In October 2022, a new employment protection regulation, often seen as a core aspect of the Swedish model of industrial relations, was implemented in Sweden. While the debate around the new regulat...
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Does the United States owe reparations to Somalia? Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-02-24 Jason C. Mueller
For over twenty years the United States government has engaged in what it calls a global ‘war on terror’ (GWOT). This war spans continents and while US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq receive...
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Policing rights in the UK 2022: an audit Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-02-24 Frances Webber
As the UK economy unravels and collective action in defence of livelihood and life spreads, the author explains how 2022 reveals the way the government is reacting to an expanding list of ‘enemies’...
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Civilisational racism, ethnonationalism and the clash of imperialisms in Ukraine Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Liz Fekete
This article, developed from a panel speech on ‘Radical internationalism and shifts in the global order’ at the IRR50 New Circuits of Anti-racism Conference at King’s College, London, October 2022,...
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Migrant labour, debt and the branding of a ‘multicultural’ Israel Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2023-01-27 Rachel Brown
The author examines the way in which the example of Filipina caregiver Rosa Fostanes, winner of X-Factor Israel, was used to reframe Israel as multicultural and economically empowering for migrants...
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Cedric J. Robinson, Black radicalism and the abolition of Europe Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-12-06 Dušan Bjelić
A militant critique of ‘Europe’ as the civilisation of racialism singles out the work of Cedric J. Robinson from other critical scholarship on Europe. Even though his concept of ‘racial capitalism’...
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Legacy, truth and collusion in the North of Ireland Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Mark McGovern
The British state is currently taking forward deeply contentious legislation that would essentially end all legacy investigations and court cases relating to the conflict in the North of Ireland (1...
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Seeing off Empire: the life of Pearl Prescod Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Jenny Bourne, Anya Edmond-Pettitt, Chris Searle
This article retrieves the life and cultural contributions to Britain of Trinidadian Pearl Prescod, singer, campaigner and the first Black female actor at the National Theatre. She is one of a gene...
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Who is behind the ‘war on woke’: an interview with Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Liz Fekete
Manufactured, divisive and destructive outrage over supposed ‘woke’ issues has long been building in the UK, fomented by think-tanks, media and politicians. To understand the relationship between c...
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Carceral islands: the rise of the Danish deportation archipelago Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Sigrid Corry
This article investigates recent plans for the offshoring and externalisation of the Danish border. It traces a series of proposals launched by the Danish government to establish deportation centre...
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‘The half I keep’: John Berger’s Booker Prize speech fifty years later Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-09-15 Martyn Hudson
Fifty years after John Berger’s controversial acceptance speech for the Booker Prize in 1972, in which he highlighted Booker McConnell’s involvement in the colonial exploitation of the Caribbean an...
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The racialisation of British citizenship Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-09-13 Frances Webber
The history of British citizenship is a history of state racism – from the differential treatment of ‘non-patrial’ citizens who acquired citizenship through a colony rather than through British anc...
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Britain and the repression of Black Power in the 1960s and ‘70s Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-09-09 Ben Gowland
This article details the extensive security regimes deployed against Black Power in the Caribbean that were operated by regional governments and the (neo)colonial British state. These regimes of se...
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Class and race in Latin America’s left populist politics Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Judith Teichman
This article challenges the notion that populist rhetoric in Latin America primarily and consistently arose in response to recent social dislocations and involves, from the onset, a Manichean strug...
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Moralising racial regimes: surveillance and control after Singapore’s ‘Little India riots’ Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-06-28 Joe Greener
This article examines the moral politics of state organised social control in bolstering racialisation in Singapore after the 2013 disturbances in ‘Little India’, when agencies mobilised morally ch...
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Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’ Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-06-28 Liz Fekete
Following analyses in the US of the reaction to Black Lives Matter in the Blue Lives Matter movement and the recasting of the police as victims, the author explores similar tendencies in Europe, in...
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The conflict between national and transnational power: the Russian trap Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-06-19 Jerry Harris
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a powerful assertion of geopolitical power and conflict. But Russia’s nationalist and expansionary drive takes place within the context of transnational economic ...
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Torrens Title: property, race and (infra)structures of feeling in the settler colony Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Andrew Brooks, Astrid Lorange
This article argues that property law can be understood as a key infrastructure of settler-colonial sovereignty. Rather than a simple importation of British law, the frontier mentality of the colonial outpost allowed for the implementation of a new legal framework for the allocation and registration of land. Taking the example of Torrens Title allows for an analysis of the ‘structures of feeling’ that
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Revisiting ‘resilience’ in light of racism, ‘othering’ and resistance Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-05-04 Wendy Sims-Schouten, Patricia Gilbert
In this commentary the authors analyse how the concept of resilience can be and has been applied to Black, Asian and minority ethnic families and communities in ways that are biased, stigmatising and pathologising. They argue that current definitions of resilience need to be redefined and reconceptualised, particularly in settings dominated by White middle-class voices that define what ‘positive emotions’
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Let us entertain you: paramilitary songs and the politics of loyalist cultural production in Northern Ireland Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Stephen R. Millar
From the Shankill Defence Association’s Orange-Loyalist Songbook to the UDA’s appropriation of ‘Simply the Best’, music has long been used to celebrate loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. During the Troubles, loyalist songs served a variety of functions, from community fundraising and entertainment to the transmission of loyalist cultural memory and the articulation of political perspectives
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A promise of listening: migrant justice and the London Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Leah Bassel
This article explores the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) hearing, ‘The hostile environment on trial’, which took place in London in 2018. When calling a gathering a ‘people’s tribunal’, certain kinds of listening and attention become possible, which are shaped by specific histories and contexts. The author considers the kinds of listening that took place during the London PPT and what changed as
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Anti-fascism – a new horizon Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Liz Fekete
In an extended version of a presentation on 3 February 2022 to the Stuart Hall Foundation’s fifth Annual Conversation on ‘Manufacturing Dissent: Moments of Solidarity’, the director of the Institute of Race Relations asks whether a refreshed anti-fascism, that tackles the global war against the poor, New Right ‘culture wars’, ‘total policing’ and the surveillance state, can act as an inspiration for
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Impunity entrenched: the erosion of human rights in the UK Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Frances Webber
In this article, the author provides a roundup of the UK Conservative government’s legislative programme in 2021, arguing that, in the service of an authoritarian agenda, it uses law to undermine the rule of law and executive accountability, and to criminalise marginalised and/or racialised groups, including asylum seekers and those helping them, black youth, protesters and human rights defenders,
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The Emigrant Ambassadors: a foundation for present-day Black Liberation Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Christopher S. Taylor
In this polemical commentary on Canada, the author argues for the recognition of the crucial role played by West Indian, particularly Barbadian, women – Emigrant Ambassadors − of the 1950s and ’60s who fought in Canada against their supposed subordination in the West Indian Domestic Scheme so as to establish Black women at the forefront of a liberatory struggle and create the conditions on which the
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IRR50 and the revolutionary act Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Jenny Bourne
On a balmy evening fifty years ago, a motley crew of suited businessmen, Black power activists, academics, journalists, community activists, members of the Lords and Commons and tellers from the Electoral Reform Services made their way down the narrow steps into the basement room of Wren’s church, St James’s, on Piccadilly. An hour and a half later as the businessmen, Lords and MPs slunk defeated into
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The Rites of Cricket and Caribbean Literature by Claire Westall Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Chris Searle
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Cedric Robinson: the time of the Black Radical Tradition by Joshua Myers Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Miguel N. Abad
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Love in the Drug War: selling sex and finding Jesus on the Mexico-US border by Sarah Luna Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Jessica Pandian
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Out of the cauldron: lessons from Cedric Robinson Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-01-11 Jenny Bourne
This is an abbreviated account of the UK webinar launch in October 2021 of the biography, Cedric Robinson: the time of the Black Radical Tradition, written by Joshua Myers. Moderated by James Pope, panellists, including Myers, Colin Prescod, John Narayan, Avery Gordon and Elizabeth Robinson present their takes on Robinson in relation to the UK and especially his relationship with the Institute of Race
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Notes on policing, racism and the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-01-11 Scarlet Harris, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Patrick Williams, Lisa White
This commentary excerpts from the research report ‘A threat to public safety: policing, racism and the Covid-19 pandemic’, carried out by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) and published by the Institute of Race Relations in September 2021. One of the only pieces of research based on the experiences of the policed and their testimonies, the report suggests that policing during the Covid-19
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The Twenty Years’ War Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-01-11 John Newsinger
The author, expert in British colonial history, explains the inevitability of the rout of the US/British-installed regime in Afghanistan in 2021 by the Taliban, in terms of the ways in which corruption, drug trafficking, pillage of international aid, war-lordism and non-payment of police and military personnel had been allowed to flourish over the past twenty years.
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Book Review: White Skin, Black Fuel: on the danger of fossil fascism Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Joseph Maggs
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Book Review: ‘Anois ar theacht an tSamhraidh’: Ireland, colonialism and the unfinished revolution Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Ronit Lentin
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Notes on exhaustionism, the latest moment of the global organic crisis Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-11-19 Blake Stewart
This essay seeks to build on the concept of exterminism developed by E. P. Thompson in his 1980 New Left Review essay ‘Notes on exterminism, the last state of civilization’. Thompson’s polemical focus on weapons systems in his analysis was the product of a particular moment in history; one where the most precipitous threat to human security was the Cold War. The concept of exhaustionism developed in
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Sentenced for the season: Jamaican migrant farmworkers on Okanagan orchards Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Elise Hjalmarson
Despite perfunctory characterisation of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a ‘triple win’, scholars and activists have long admonished its lack of government oversight, disrespect for migrant rights and indentureship of foreign workers. This article contends that the SAWP is predicated upon naturalised, deeply engrained and degrading beliefs that devalue Black lives and labour
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Racing the nation: towards a theory of reproductive racism Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Sophia Siddiqui
In this challenging article, the author marries the notion of reproduction, both biological and social, to new forms of political and popular racism in Europe wherein the family and breeding to keep the nation white and ‘native’ are now centre stage. Whilst certain women’s reproductive capacities are being incentivised for nationalist ends, this goes alongside a rollback in reproductive rights as well
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NHS: inequality and incorporation Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Wayne Farah
As chief executive Simon Stevens ends his stint at the helm of England’s National Health Service (NHS), a Black health activist takes a critical look at the direction of travel on racial equality under his leadership. He argues that ‘racial democracy’, i.e., ethnic representation or diversity, has displaced the rooting out of racialised injustice and inequality. Using the example of the health service
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Review: The Book of Trespass: crossing the lines that divide us Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-10-01 Anita Rupprecht
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Review: The Interest: how the British establishment resisted the abolition of slavery Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-10-01 Danny Reilly
1 https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/trespass-and-nuisance-land (accessed 20 December 2020). 2 The Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto, 2019, https://assets-global.website-files. com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20 Manifesto.pdf (accessed 20 December 2020). 3 Marcus Barnett, ‘The Kinder Scout Trespass’, Tribune, 24 September 2019, https://tribunemag
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Is cricket ‘for everyone’? Reflections on the 2021 Ollie Robinson scandal Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-09-03 Sam Berkson
The author, a keen recreational cricketer and educationalist, reflects on the nature of racism and commitment to anti-racism in the game in England, where, recently, Ollie Robinson was penalised for historical tweets on social media. Through interviews with key players from ethnic minorities about their experiences, he concludes that the culture of cricket and the colour of its selection bear the hallmarks
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Nations of bankers and Brexiteers? Nationalism and hidden money Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-08-31 Kristín Loftsdóttir, Már Wolfgang Mixa
This article examines the relationship between nationalistic mobilisations, hidden funds and undisclosed campaign contributions, commonly known as dark money. Contextualising Brexit alongside the Icelandic economic crash of 2008 shows how nationalist mobilisation and racism can secure economic and political interests for a small minority and thus create space for what Zygmunt Bauman has called ‘evasion’
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Explosive mixtures: ‘Redbones’ and the racialisation of a white working class Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-08-29 Kendall Artz
In the 1950s a wave of labour unrest shook a small town in southwestern Louisiana, leading to the racialisation of workers who had previously been considered white, as ‘mixed race’ or, in local terms, ‘Redbone’. This article considers why certain individuals were marked as mixed race in relation to strike violence and their opposition to capitalist expansion. Utilising a variety of methodological approaches
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‘Blue Lives Matter’ and the legacy of blackface minstrelsy Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Jamie Longazel
This article situates the pro-police countermovement, ‘Blue Lives Matter’, within the legacy of blackface minstrelsy. An analysis of various ‘racial performances’ shows how, like its minstrel forbearers, the rebuttal to Black Lives Matter subscribes to a dual identity: envious, fetishistic ‘love’ of Black people on one hand, visceral contempt accompanied by often-violent fantasies on the other. It
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South Africa: from apartheid to xenophobia Race & Class (IF 2.977) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Pervaiz Khan
How to explain the violent xenophobic attacks in South Africa in recent years? Two militant South African activists, Leonard Gentle and Noor Nieftagodien, interviewed here, analyse the race/class bases for the anti-foreigner violence in terms of the echoes/reverberations of apartheid and the rise of neoliberalism. They argue that remnants of apartheid have endured through the reproduction of racial