Leading race theorists neglected minorities’ participation in representative democracy and party politics

Evidence

As yet we have seen little of this kind of research, and this has meant that we know surprisingly little about the new forms of black and ethnic minority political mobilization. Additionally it is important to note that little research has been done on the everyday processes of political change and conflict within political institutions. Key questions about the role of party politics, claims to representation, pressures on the policy agenda, and the role of black and minority politicians remain largely unexplored. Whatever the merits of attempts to question the limits of class-based models of the politics of race, it has to be said that as yet they have not provided a rounded analysis of the complex ways in which racialized political identities have been constructed and reconstructed in recent years. It is also interesting to note that all the approaches we have discussed say very little about the whole issue of democratic politics and the role of minorities in party politics. Indeed it is clear that writers as diverse as Rex, Hall, Miles, and Gilroy hold little hope that an oppositional politics can be developed within the arena of representative democracy, and they therefore say very little about what is perhaps the key aspect of new forms of black political involvement in British society over the past decade. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2214