A Plethora of ‘suitable enemies’: British racism at the dawn of the twenty-first century1

In this article, I begin by looking at older forms of British racism before addressing myself to some newer forms – anti-asylum-seeker racism, xeno-racism and Islamophobia. I argue that in contemporary Britain there are a plethora of 'suitable enemies'. Given that contemporary British racism is multifaceted, and in order to set the scene for newer forms of racism, I begin by contextualizing them alongside older forms of racism, while also demonstrating that these older forms continue to flourish. For conceptual clarity, I deal separately with colour-coded racism, non-colour-coded racism, and what I will call hybridist racism. Keywords: Racializationolder colour-coded racismolder non-colour-coded racismnewer non-colour-coded racismnewer hybridist racism Acknowledgements I would like to thank Thomas Acton, John Clay, Dave Hill, Alpesh Maisuria, Brian Matthews, Scott Poynting, Paul Warmington and Dave Windsor for their helpful comments on various versions of this paper. As always, any inadequacies remain mine and mine alone. Notes 1. The concept of 'a suitable enemy' is Liz Fekete's (Fekete Citation2009). 2. For a critique of the concept of 'white supremacy' as deployed by Critical Race Theorists, see Cole, (Citation2009a, pp. 23–33); see also Cole (Citation2009b, pp. 247–55) and Cole (Citation2009c). For a CRT response, see Mills (Citation2009). The importance of differentiating the traditional use of the term 'white supremacy' to describe the ideology of fascists and other far-right racists from 'everyday racism' was underlined for me in the 2009 elections to the European parliament. In the UK, two candidates of the British National Party, membership of which is restricted to white people, were elected. There was universal condemnation from the mainstream political parties, who themselves have racist policies, and from racist tabloids, with both constituencies correctly describing the BNP as 'fascist'. This indicates, I believe, a genuine hatred and fear of fascism which nevertheless co-exists with their open promotion of racism policies and views. 3. Along with the continued racialization of black and Asian constituencies, the racialization of the Irish also continues (see Mac an Ghaill [Citation2000]; see also the discussion in this article of anti-Gypsy Roma Traveller racism). 4. I use the term 'mainly' because there were settlements of colonial citizens in various parts of the UK during the colonial era (Fryer Citation1984). 5. The rest of Kern's (Citation2009) article takes an anti-Left, pro-Israel stance. 6. I deal with anti-Gypsy Roma Traveller racism under the main heading of 'Non-colour-coded racism' because my focus is the UK. I am aware, of course, that many European Roma people have darker skins, and that this will be a component in the racism directed at them. 7. As Thomas Acton has pointed out, 'if official statistics about "Gypsies"' health relate only to poor caravan-dwelling people who have come to the notice of the authorities, they omit those Romani people who are living in houses or who use private caravan sites (his comments on this paper). 8. Of course, there may be overlap between xeno-racism, anti-asylum-seeker racism and Islamophobia. For example, some Eastern European workers are Muslim, as are many asylum seekers (see the next section of this paper). 9. My focus here on current anti-asylum-seeker racism is not, of course, to underestimate the fact that this form of racism has a history in the UK and elsewhere.