National identity crises are both opportunities and dangers for multicultural politics

Evidence

On the one hand, in Britain, this is a propitious moment to raise the multicultural question—because Britishness as a national identity is in a transitional state, beset by problems and up for extensive renovation and renegotiation. However, such opportunities are also always moments of profound danger. For, just as the multicultural question opens up from below issues which were considered closed—settled—in the Western political institutions, so it is seen by many as the straw that broke the camel’s back. It points toward the redefinition of what it means to be British, where the unthinkable might come to pass—it might be possible to be black-and-British, or Asian-and-British (or even British-and-gay)! However, the idea that everyone should have access to the processes by which such new forms of “Britishness” are redefined, coupled with the loss of empire and decline as a world power, is literally driving some of its citizens crazy. The “pollution” of Little England—as some see it—is calculated to produce not just a resurgence of the old biological stereotypes but a proliferating lexicon of new exclusionary binaries, grounded in a racialized “cultural difference”: a British version of the new racisms which are abroad everywhere and gaining ground. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 379

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hall’s own articulation of the ‘new racism’ grounded in cultural difference rather than biology — the key mechanism the Islamophobia readings will build on; also echoes the displacement of biological racism by cultural racism elsewhere in critical race theory.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘new racisms’ as exclusionary binaries grounded in racialized cultural difference, contrasted with old biological stereotypes.
• SEED: The claim that loss of empire plus inclusive redefinition ‘is literally driving citizens crazy’ could anchor an essay on how declining powers respond to demographic change by inventing cultural-racist binaries.