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Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider
"Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider is that rare thing nowadays, an academic book that not only engages with a wider public but also provides a sharp campaigning edge to the analysis. Historical and broad in its coverage, this is one of the best accounts of contemporary racism published in a good long time." Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football
Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider offers an original perspective on the significance of both racism and anti-racism in the making of the English working class. While racism became a powerful structuring force within this social class from as early as the mid-Victorian period, this book also traces the episodic emergence of currents of working class anti-racism. Through an insistence that race is central to the way class works, this insightful text demonstrates not only that the English working class was a multi-ethnic formation from the moment of its inception but that racialized outsiders – Irish Catholics, Jews, Asians and the African diaspora – often played a catalytic role in the collective action that helped fashion a more inclusive and democratic society.
Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider offers an original perspective on the significance of both racism and anti-racism in the making of the English working class. While racism became a powerful structuring force within this social class from as early as the mid-Victorian period, this book also traces the episodic emergence of currents of working class anti-racism. Through an insistence that race is central to the way class works, this insightful text demonstrates not only that the English working class was a multi-ethnic formation from the moment of its inception but that racialized outsiders – Irish Catholics, Jews, Asians and the African diaspora – often played a catalytic role in the collective action that helped fashion a more inclusive and democratic society.
- GenresHistory
200 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2014
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 17, 2021
An excellent and interesting read that reassesses UK history of race and racism and in doing so challenges the manifestations of racist oppression and the structural foundations that sustain it
Particular highlights include:
Stressing how systemic change occurs only when long-established hegemonic domination, which lock in place key fractions of the working class through a combination of coercion and consent, begin to unravel amid sustained conflict and crisis. It is in the course of re-negotiating the settlement that workers become more amenable to alternative narratives or frames through which to understand their social position and the crisis more generally. That is, they begin to peel away from the political consensus that had held firm and shift to the political left and right. That is why such periods of crisis represent a key moment of potential systemic change, although the outcome can never be predicted in advance but is determined by the relations of force
How when socialist nationalists re-imagined the racialised Irish as an integral part of the working class of Britain, they excluded another – the Jews
Particular highlights include:
Stressing how systemic change occurs only when long-established hegemonic domination, which lock in place key fractions of the working class through a combination of coercion and consent, begin to unravel amid sustained conflict and crisis. It is in the course of re-negotiating the settlement that workers become more amenable to alternative narratives or frames through which to understand their social position and the crisis more generally. That is, they begin to peel away from the political consensus that had held firm and shift to the political left and right. That is why such periods of crisis represent a key moment of potential systemic change, although the outcome can never be predicted in advance but is determined by the relations of force
How when socialist nationalists re-imagined the racialised Irish as an integral part of the working class of Britain, they excluded another – the Jews
Displaying 1 of 1 review