ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of 'race' and the historical development of racism in England. It then explores a particular regime of racial representation, Edward Said’s analysis of Orientalism. The chapter uses Hollywood’s account of America’s war in Vietnam, and its potential impact on recruitment for the first Gulf War as an example of Orientalism in popular culture. Racism first develops in England as a defence of slavery and the slave trade. Edward Said (1985), in one of the founding texts of post-colonial theory, shows how a Western discourse on the Orient – ‘Orientalism’ – has constructed a ‘knowledge’ of the East and a body of ‘power–knowledge’ relations articulated in the interests of the ‘power’ of the West. The chapter concludes with a section on ‘whiteness’ and a discussion of cultural studies and anti-racism and Black Lives Matter.
