The end of anti‐racism∗

The last decade has witnessed the rise of ideologies of self‐help and independence which have made many anti‐racist initiatives in local government and elsewhere appear patronising and irrelevant. The article argues that there is more to the emancipation of blacks than opposition to racism, particularly when racism is itself viewed as separable from wider political processes. These have come to include the emergence of an integrated Europe. Anti‐racist initiatives have emerged in Labour local authorities when support among blacks for the Labour Party is itself waning. Those opposed to ‘anti‐racism’ have been able to exploit ambiguities in what the term has come to denote. Definitions of race in cultural terms have come to mirror the categories employed by racists themselves. In this way, ‘anti‐racism’, which also tends to trivialise black life as nothing more than a response to racism, has come to be discredited.