ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way that the ideology of social equity advanced by social's values and principles has been eroded during the 1980s and 1990s under the auspices of multiculturalism. It shows that how successive Conservative governments have attempted to jettison the idea of social and racial inequality in favour of a market ethic, which suggests that everybody is equal in the eyes of capitalism. The chapter considers Stephen Lawrence as a privileged site for the battles over hegemony. It establishes the Stephen Lawrence case within a theoretical framework that considers articulations of race and ethnicity. The chapter shows that the relationship between the characters in the Stephen Lawrence story revolves around their identity within, and difference from, the standard of liberal democracy: otherness is defined by the character's relation to this ideological ideal. It seeks to advance the present theoretical survey by illuminating how theories of identification and otherness relate to the specific discourse generated by Lawrence's murder.
