ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION This chapter looks at some of the causes and proposed cures for the crisis within the anti-racist movement. Three anti-racist dilemmas are identified: conservative entrenchment; the isolation of anti-racism from the wider community and what Tariq Modood (l990a) has termed the 'new ethnic assertiveness'. By the end of the 1980s these tendencies had created a period of intense selfquestioning and self-doubt amongst British anti-racists. This process has, in turn, provoked a new willingness to openly debate the political orientation of the anti-racist project. At the end of this chapter I look at two such reassessments - one leaning toward a radicalized anti-racism, the other pointing towards a depoliticized anti-racism - and consider their critique of anti-racist orthodoxy.
