What kind of ‘map’ is needed in order to address the various challenges for anti-racism in Britain today?
In response to the BLM protests, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced a new review into racism and discrimination, an announcement that has received criticism from some who highlight a number of existing reviews with plentiful recommendations for action.
Yet, both of these issues and the challenges at stake, point towards another report that although now two decades old remains relevant. Returning to the report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (CMEB), the so-called Parekh Report, proves extremely instructive. Covering a wide spectrum of issues, sectors and institutions, the report highlights a route for Britain to develop what it calls ‘a community of communities’. That is, that Britain engages with its history and national story in order to develop an inclusive sense of Britishness that is sensitive to its internal differences based on the diversity of people and their origins from different parts of the world.
Significant is that this engagement is also able to address various forms and ‘targets’ of racism. Anti-racism in Britain has increasingly incorporated thinking in terms of ethnic and religious minorities. This shift is a result of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of Britain recognised in the report. Moreover, a significant strand in this has been the fact that for Muslims, earlier conceptualisations of racism, and consequently anti-racism that was focussed on ‘political blackness’, were unable to capture forms of discrimination they faced based on their being an ethno-religious minority, and thus anti-Muslim racism or Islamophobia has become a prominent focus.