ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the racist ideologies that form the cement of that structural configuration we have referred to as the ‘new racism’. We have indicated that we do not agree with the school of thinking which views racism as ‘prejudice’, and ‘prejudice’ as the inevitable outcome of something which is mythically conceived of as ‘human nature’. Neither do we believe that racist ideas are the mere ‘relics’ of a distant imperial past, which are out of place in a ‘modern industrial society’. Racist ideologies, as we have argued in the preceding chapter, are an organic component of attempts to make sense of the present crisis. The fear that society is falling apart at the seams has prompted the elaboration of theories about race which turn on particular notions of culture. The ‘alien’ cultures of the blacks are seen as either the cause or else the most visible symptom of the destruction of the ‘British way of life’.
