Abstract
The idea that there are groups of people so distinct that they form separate races has long been discredited by biologists (Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza, 1976; Gribbin, 1985 and others). Genetic variation within a supposed racial group will be greater than that commonly found between groups (Hirst and Woolley, 1982; Washburn, 1980). Mindful of this, sociologists have turned to concepts of ethnicity which refer to socially constructed differences grounded in cultural processes, ancestry and language (Fenton, 1999).1 However, this manoeuvre does not obviate all the difficulties associated with biological race; over forty years ago Franz Fanon (1962) saw ethnicity as the ‘new racism’ (see Gillborn, 1999 for a more recent account).
No sooner do we mention ‘race’ than we are caught in a treacherous bind. To say ‘race’ seems to imply that ‘race’ is real; but it also means that differentiation by race is racist and unjustifiable on scientific, theoretical, moral, and political grounds. We find ourselves in a classic Nietzschean double bind: ‘race’ has been the history of an untruth, of an untruth that unfortunately is our history … The challenge here is to generate, from such a past and a present, a future where race will have been put to rest forever. (Radhakrishnan, 1996, cited in Gunaratnam, 2003)
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© 2007 Lorraine Culley and Jack Demaine
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Gulley, L., Demaine, J. (2007). Race and Ethnicity in United Kingdom Public Policy: Education and Health. In: Rata, E., Openshaw, R., Friedman, J. (eds) Public Policy and Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625303_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625303_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28105-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62530-3
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