British anti-racism discourse centred on colour until the early 1990s

Evidence

The Runnymede Trust was founded in 1968. Up until about 1992 the dominant terms in Runnymede’s discourse were ‘race’, ‘race relations’ and ‘colour’ – the Trust’s work reflected, that is to say, the conceptual consensus established by the Race Relations Acts of the 1960s and 1976. The dominant discourse portrayed everyone as either white or coloured – or, according to the terminology developed in the eighties, white or black (later, since about 1998, white or BME – Black and minority ethnic). The worldview reflected in this language was derived in part from the United States and in part from Britain’s experience as a colonial power. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 730

Categorization

• XREF: Explains the U.S.- and colonial-derived ‘white vs. black’ framing that set up the context in which Islamophobia as a distinct racism form had to be asserted. — connects to: British anti-racist unity under black identity dissolved as politics of recognition grew; Britishness carries largely unspoken racial connotations and is usually imagined as white; The anti-racist term ‘black’ excluded Asians and prompted new identities — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 57 (+2 more)

Related

• British anti-racist unity under black identity dissolved as politics of recognition grew (similarity 0.90)
• The Runnymede Trust’s founding paradigm was colour-based race relations, not religion. (similarity 0.89)
• Jungle helped establish a post-racial Britain by defying racial sound categories (similarity 0.86)
• The Runnymede Trust acknowledged Islamophobia as racism in 1994 (similarity 0.84)
• Two decades of advocacy left the dominant race relations paradigm untouched (similarity 0.83)
• The 1997 Runnymeade Trust report institutionalized ‘Islamophobia’ as a category in British discourse (similarity 0.83)
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle (similarity 0.83)
• Trustees resisted an Islamophobia commission as a radical break from the colour-based race paradigm. (similarity 0.83)
• Britain has failed to officially define Islamophobia decades after Runnymede’s report (similarity 0.82)
• The term Islamophobia originated in a 1991 Runnymede Trust report (similarity 0.82)
• Racism scholarship long confined itself to biological black-white and antisemitic models (similarity 0.82)
• The commission’s Islamophobia work left the race relations paradigm untouched (similarity 0.82)
• Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race (similarity 0.81)
• Mainstream race-equality bodies resisted framing Islamophobia as a racial issue (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia is best understood and countered as a form of anti-Muslim racism. (similarity 0.81)