ABSTRACT
Introduction In this chapter you will fi nd that the term ‘ethnicity’ tends to be used, rather than ‘race’. In crude terms the distinction here is between one category (race) which is biological, and another (ethnicity) which is social. ‘Ethnicity’ is used, therefore, to describe social groups believed or perceived to differ from other social groups in terms of various possible characteristics including geographical origin, language, cultural traditions and religion, among many other things. However, much of the time some fairly broad categories are used (‘white’, ‘black’, ‘Asian’, ‘mixed’, ‘other’), not because they are taken to be the best way of understanding ethnicity, but because they tend to be the categories used in many of the main research studies reported here. Often this is the case because the numbers of minority ethnic respondents are insuffi ciently large to support fi ner-grained categories. The data, as we will discover, reveal some interesting, and for many perhaps worrying, trends, but by their very nature operate at a considerable level of generality. The crucial point is to be aware that the categories used, though widely accepted, are far from unproblematic, and you should bear this in mind as you work your way through the chapter. The term ‘racism’ is used in a fairly broad manner in this chapter to refer to attitudes, opinions and practices that have the consequence of treating people in a discriminatory manner on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin.
