A principled multiculturalism must address both inequality and misrecognition simultaneously

Evidence

What would be required for this “drift” to become a sustained movement, a concerted effort of political will? To put this another way, what are the premises behind a radically distinctive form of British multiculturalism? It would need to be grounded, not in some abstract notion of nation and community, but in the analysis of what “community” actually means and how the different communities which now compose the nation actually interact on the ground. In addressing the sources of disadvantage, it would have to reflect what we have called “racism’s two registers”—the interdependence of biological racism and cultural differentialism. The commitment to expose and confront racism in any of its forms would have to become a positive objective of, and a statutory obligation on, government, on which its very claim to representative legitimacy would be seen to depend. It would have to address the double political demand, which arises from this interplay between the gross inequalities and injustices arising from the absence of substantive equality and justice, and exclusion and inferiorization arising from the lack of recognition and insensitivity to difference. Finally, rather than a strategy for improving the lot of the so-called “ethnic” or racialized minorities alone, it would have to be a strategy which broke with that majoritarian logic and attempted to reconfigure or reimagine the nation as a whole—in a radical postnational form (Hall 1999d). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 366

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘double political demand’ — redistribution plus recognition — echoes the conceptual pairing this module builds toward in the Islamophobia field where Muslims face both class exclusion and cultural inferiorization. Also resonates with Fraser’s redistribution/recognition framework. — connects to: Misrecognition is a cultural and institutional injustice rooted in representation and communication. — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 67; the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”
• DEEPTHINKING: The two-register model of racism (biological + cultural differentialism) and the demand that anti-racism be a statutory obligation grounding governmental legitimacy is a dense paradigm for how state racism functions and is contested.
• SEED: Angle: how a ‘radical postnational’ reimagination of the nation would reframe British Islamophobia debates that currently cast Muslim belonging as incompatible with the national imaginary.