This edition, first published in 1989, looks at the problems of racism and equal opportunity in employment and government policies towards them in Britain. It brings together a group of specialist contributors and covers the major areas of debate, including the law, policies towards unemployment, job training and the labour market, the role of the public and private sectors, the role of trade unions, the gap between policies and pronouncements on equal opportunity and their implementation, and the related issue of sectarian discrimination in Northern Ireland. It looks at the future prospects for equal opportunities and provides conclusions for policy. In particular, it aims to address important topics such as the assumptions underlying policies and whether they realistically reflect reality, the actual effect of legislation, and the relationship between power disparities in society as a whole and racial inequality.
In the 1980s the position of young blacks in British society became a key issue in the analysis of race relations. High levels of black youth unemployment and incidences of urban unrest focused attention on this group. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the state's role in this area of race relations. John Solomos examines the policies pursued by the state and related institutions towards young black in Britain from the 1940s to the 1980s. Referring to a wealth of original empirical material, he analyses the ways in which the central and local state have attempted to manage the 'race question' and concentrates in particular on the process through which young blacks came to be seen as a social problem. He also provides an overview of alternative perspectives.
This book discusses British thought on race and racial differences in the latter phases of empire from the 1890s to the early 1960s. It focuses on the role of racial ideas in British society and politics and looks at the decline in Victorian ideas of white Anglo-Saxon racial solidarity. The impact of anthropology is shown to have had a major role in shifting the focus on race in British ruling class circles from a classical and humanistic imperialism towards a more objective study of ethnic and cultural groups by the 1930s and 1940s. As the empire turned into a commonwealth, liberal ideas on race relations helped shape the post-war rise of 'race relations' sociology. Drawing on extensive government documents, private papers, newspapers, magazines and interviews this book breaks new ground in the analysis of racial discourse in twentieth-century British politics and the changing conception of race amongst anthropologists, sociologists and the professional intelligentsia.
This book studies the relations between black and white adolescents in an urban environment (South London); the processes by which racism is relayed within adolescent communities, and the strategies which subvert or encourage them. More specifically Hewitt examines the sociolinguistic impact of the 'London Jamaican' creole used by young black Londoners on the language and culture of young whites. Basing his work on extensive fieldwork amongst racially mixed groups in youth clubs, schools and 'street corner' contexts. Hewitt is able to examine the way racial attitudes and cultural allegiances are expressed in, and affected by, inter-racial friendships. White Talk Black Talk is a uniquely ethnographic account which places the use of black language forms in the speech of whites firmly in its social and political setting: integrating disciplines in a creative way, Hewitt sites a practical sociolinguistic study within a much wider and systematic sociological context of group interaction
This book brings together internationally known scholars from a wide range of disciplines and theoretical traditions, all of whom have made significant contributions to the field of race and ethnic relations. As well as identifying important and persistent points of controversy, the collection reveals a complementary and multifaceted approach to theorisation. The theories represented include contributions from the perspective of sociology. These range from the established perspectives of Marx and Weber through to the more recent interventions of rational choice theory, symbolic interactionism and identity structure analysis.
