White Backlash and the Politics of Multiculturalism

by Roger Hewitt

• ISBN13: 9780521520898
• ISBN10: 0521520894
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The murder of Stephen Lawrence led to the widest review of institutional racism seen in the UK. Sections of the white working-class communities in south London near to the scene of the murder, however, displayed deep hostility to the equalities and multiculturalist practice of the local state and other agencies. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, this book relates these phenomena to the 'backlash' to multiculturalism evident during the 1990s in the USA, Australia, Canada, the UK and other European countries. It examines these within the unfolding social and political responses to race equalities in the UK and the USA from the 1960s to the present in the context of changes in social class and national political agendas. This book is unique in linking a detailed study of a community at a time of its critical importance to national debates over racism and multiculturalism, to historically wider international economic and social trends.

Author Biography

Roger Hewitt is Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Table of Contents

List of figures	viii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(17)
Politics and `backlash' on the large stage	18	(17)
Greenwich and its racial murders	35	(21)
Narrative, counter-narrative and the boundaries of legitimate discourse	56	(23)
Residence and resistance: the case of the Eltham Tenants Forum	79	(24)
`Race' and `culture' in education: from neighbourhood schools to the multicultural highway	103	(29)
Backlash, multicultural politics and the global turbine	132	(25)
Select bibliography	157	(9)
Index	166