Racism and the Innocence of Law

Abstract

In liberal views of the world, law is manifestly incompatible with racism. Where racist practice infects law that can only be something aberrant and remediable. Exploring the British situation as a case, I will argue that on the contrary racism is compatible with and even integral to law. I try to show that the very foundational principles of law as liberal legality import racism into law, those principles of equality and universality which stand in their terms opposed to racism. The aim is not to dismiss law, nor to expose liberal legality as a sham. But nor is it to retrieve law and add to the list of obviously desirable variants on how to combat racism through law, such as recent left strategies.2 The point is, rather, to make such acts, gestures, discourses which ... had seemed to go without saying become problematic, difficult, dangerous.3 A note on the term racism: I will use it in an extended way to cover both belief and practice.