ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the efforts of the international development and development education to combat racism and engage stakeholders in action to address the causes and effects of racialised oppression. This chapter argues that both sectors tend towards a technocratic approach to inequality that results in ‘racial erasure’ in their policy and practice. It argues that neoliberalism is deeply racist, as well as sexist, resulting in more entrenched levels of discrimination and poverty being experienced by black people, Afro-descendants, indigenous peoples and historically marginalised and oppressed communities (Oxfam, Time to Care: Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis, Oxford: Oxfam, 2021: 20). These inequalities have been magnified by COVID-19 with António Guterres (Secretary-General Denounces ‘Tsunami’ of Xenophobia Unleashed Amid COVID-19, Calling for All-Out Effort against Hate Speech’, New York: UN, 2020), the UNs’ Secretary-General, finding that the pandemic ‘continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering’. Interrupting this narrative of racial inequality and xenophobia requires that development non-governmental organisations extend their analysis of poverty beyond economic inequality to include the prevalence of structural and institutional racism. This analysis is urgently needed at a time when some governments and political leaders are openly inciting racially motivated violence for political ends.
