ABSTRACT
Anti-racism is routinely posited as a spirit of defiance, a product of individual or collective oppositional will. This association is, however, based on a very narrow view of antiracism’s relationship to modernity. For anti-racism is not merely about resistance. It is also about the creation of sustainable states, the reproduction of modern economies and the establishment of internationally accepted principles of political legitimacy. After the Second World War something approaching a consensus was established among Western nations that racism was unacceptable; that legitimate forms of political or economic governance could not be seen to condone racial inequality. This perspective found institutional expression in a variety of international initiatives. ‘There is’, noted one senior British official in the wake of the clear opposition to race discrimination offered in the United Nations Charter (1945), ‘something like official unanimity of opposition to this species of primitive prejudice’ (Corbett, quoted by Füredi, 1998, p. 13). Today the corporate sector in many countries also participates in the rhetoric of racial tolerance. The notion that multinational capitalism is perforce multicultural capitalism, and that ‘diversity’ and ‘equal opportunities’ provide ‘resources’ to be developed and tapped, have become familiar themes within business management.
