ABSTRACT

Where does anti-racism come from? This question is not of merely historical interest. Constructions of the past play an important role in all forms of anti-racism, both as a site of legitimation and by providing examples of what racism is and where it leads. History is constantly deployed by anti-racists. But it is equally true that many of the tensions within contemporary anti-racism were also apparent within the traditions it seeks to claim. More specifically, the tensions between relativist and universalist visions of equality can be seen to weave their way through the history of both the Enlightenment, Western identified, ‘anti-racist heritage’ and non-Western and/or anti-Western identified traditions of anticolonialism and anti-imperialism. As this implies, this chapter shows that racism and anti-racism are often intermingled, even inseparable, tendencies. Such a portrait of moral complexity contrasts with more sentimental accounts, in which the story of anti-racism is staged as a melodrama, the characters presented as heroes and villains: pure anti-racists versus pure racists, good against evil. Such an approach has its place. But this book is not one of them. This is not an account of superhumans, of anti-racist martyrs and saints, of people capable of extracting themselves from the norms of their day. The narrative developed here is far more politically messy; peopled,

as it is, by individuals struggling within and against their social context.