The Institute of Race Relations is set to publish a wide-ranging report
exposing racism in government policy, institutions and popular culture.
The report, entitled 'The three faces of British racism', shows how
racism has worsened under a government which claims to be leading the
fight against it. The report focuses on asylum policy and reform of the
criminal justice system as the main areas in which the promise held out
by the Macpherson Report has been squandered. Rather than tackle
institutional racism, government asylum policy has fuelled a new variant
of racism directed at the world's displaced and dispossessed, while
Labour's new crime plan will tend to reinforce existing patterns of
racial discrimination. The report also highlights the ways in which black
over-representation in the criminal justice system will be exacerbated by
current 'reforms' of the right to trial by jury and stop and search
powers, and examines ongoing problems in the legal provisions to tackle
racial violence.

The report argues that the current asylum legislation, which has
deterrence instead of human rights as its guiding principle, should be
scrapped, and that government ministers should be required to make
'racial impact statements' in which criminal justice reforms are tested
against their anticipated effect on black communities.

Report contributors: Professor Lee Bridges (Director of the Legal
Research Institute and Chair of the School of Law, University of
Warwick), Gareth Peirce (leading civil rights lawyer), Frances Webber
(leading immigration barrister and writer on immigration law), Dr. A.
Sivanandan (Director, Institute of Race Relations), Harmit Athwal, Jenny
Bourne, Liz Fekete, Arun Kundnani (researchers, Institute of Race
Relations)

The three faces of British racism is available from the Institute of Race
Relations, 2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X 9HS, UK. Telephone: +44 (0)20
7837 0041. Price 6 pounds.

KEY POINTS

"The three faces of British racism"
Institute of Race Relations, October 2001

TWO-and-a-half years after the publication of the Macpherson Report -
with its historic recognition of institutional racism - the Institute of
Race Relations surveys how racism continues to manifest itself in
government policy, in institutions and in popular culture. Many of the
post-Macpherson initiatives to address racism, far from alleviating its
effects, have actually served to compound the disadvantage and
disproportionate impact of government policies on black communities. And,
as Labour has made deterrence the guiding principle of its asylum policy,
a whole new layer of racism has become entrenched in British society. The
report sends out a clear challenge to Labour, in its second term of
office, to address the continuing problems of racial injustice.

- THE concept of institutional racism has been diluted and practical ways
of tackling it have been undermined. In responding to the Macpherson
report, politicians and policy-makers have adopted a self-serving,
blinkered attitude, at once adopting a high moral tone in condemning
racism within organisations but turning a blind eye to the racist
implications of their own policies, whether in relation to imposing
further restrictions on asylum seekers, or in relation to 'reforms' of
the criminal justice system.

- THE government's policies of dispersal and detention of asylum seekers,
the voucher system and the tacit pandering to tabloid hysteria have all
led to an unprecedented demonisation of asylum seekers, refugees and
migrants, which flies in the face of Labour's claims to oppose racism.
The government's clampdown on asylum rights has in turn fuelled a new
variant of racism, targeted at the displaced and dispossessed alien poor
- irrespective of colour - and therefore best described as xeno-racism.
This in turn has set back the government's attempts to tackle the
institutional racism which affects settled black communities, by reviving
fears of an 'alien invasion'.

- THE focus on so-called 'persistent offenders' in the government's new
'crime plan' will tend to exacerbate black over-representation in the
criminal justice system and, particularly with the policy of imposing
longer prison sentences on such offenders, increase the already high
proportion of the prison population that is made up of black people.

- THE proposal to abolish the right of defendants to elect to be tried by
a jury for offences such as minor theft, assault and criminal damage,
will affect black people more adversely, removing one of the few
remaining legal safeguards against unfair treatment.

- THE policy of more 'targeted' and 'intelligent' use of stop and search
powers, which the government has introduced in response to criticisms of
racial bias in stops, actually ends up having a disproportionate impact
on black people. The 'intelligence' used to target stop and search may
simply reflect the racial biases underpinning earlier police operations,
thereby reinforcing existing patterns of discrimination.

- THE Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - which was intended to strengthen
legal protections against racial violence - failed to place a duty on the
CPS to bring before the courts any evidence available to them that
offences had been committed for racial motives. At the same time, the
creation of separate offences for certain types of racially motivated
crime may have actually placed new barriers to bringing successful
prosecutions.

- THE Race Relations Amendment Act provides an exemption for key areas of
government decision making, such as the administration of asylum policy
where immigration officials have therefore been permitted to legally
discriminate.

- GOVERNMENT ministers should be required to state openly what effects
they anticipate new criminal justice reforms will have on the
over-representation of black people in the system. Such 'racial impact
statements' would be a first step in holding governments ministers and
policy-makers to account for widening racial inequalities.

CONTENTS LIST

"The three faces of British racism"
Institute of Race Relations, October 2001

Introduction - Poverty is the new Black, by Dr. A. Sivanandan
I. The life and times of institutional racism
II. The emergence of xeno-racism
III. In a foreign land: the new popular racism
IV. Race, law and the state
V. The Human Rights Act: a weapon against racism?
VI. The Terrorism Act 2000
VII. From Oldham to Bradford: the violence of the violated
VIII. The racism that kills
IX. A right to life: the story of Ramin Khaleghi

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