Race and Racism - Part 3

    I wrote yesterday about two articles and realize that these two have taken approaches through the Marxian lens of base and superstructure. Other historians, like Paul Gilroy, have critiqued past approaches to legislation and even critique capital and the ideas of consumption. Gilroy argues “however, the more significant… is the critique of the economy of time and space which is identified with the world of work and wages from which blacks are excluded and from which they, as a result, announce and celebrate their exclusion.” This celebration is embodied in the culture of underground hip-hop, rap and lyrics, the musicality of reggae with its ‘ghetto’ components, and through other modes of expression. “(It) revels in the reduction of music to its essential African components of rhythm and voice.” It is through this expression that consumption is turned into a social process, one that turns itself into its own authentic public sphere, one that “may symbolize or even create community.” Gilroy takes the previous ideas of capitalism and take them into the realm of culture. He successfully indicates, through his ideology of cultures formed in the African diaspora, the involuntary participation that consumption has with the formation of cultures. Gilroy’s approach to critique capital helps to explain another dimension in this argument. He explains the formation of culture as mode of expressive celebration on their separation and exclusion from the workplace. As they become exploited by capitalists, they find a mode to express this repression in order to form a culture that has found significance even today.

    Randall Hansen takes a turn from class conflict and describes a political history of the Commonwealth Immigration Acts 1968, one of his points behind the legislation being, “a decline in both major parties’ commitment to the Commonwealth.” The racial issues involved come, blatantly, in the form of U.K citizens facing a racial restriction upon entering the U.K. “The part that had championed the Commonwealth ideal of racial equality and inter-racial co-operation… was on the verge of passing legislation denying the entry to British citizens because of the colour of their skin.” This change of heart, regarding racism and immigration control within the pro-Commonwealth party, shows the racism that was involved in political decisions. Hansen also describes the massive influx of Asians coming into Britain and the demand from the public that it be stopped. Through this analysis we can see that, the combination of political pressure, panic of increasing Asian immigration numbers, and commitment failures to Commonwealth equality values, resulted in racial discrimination took form in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968.

Sources

Paul Gilroy, “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 210.

Randall Hansen, “The Kenyan Asians, British Politics and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968,” Historical Journal 42/3 (1999): 809.