{"id":61592,"date":"2021-09-22T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61592"},"modified":"2021-09-22T14:26:35","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T14:26:35","slug":"61592","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61592","title":{"rendered":"The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian
\n2021-08-05<\/p>\n

Yohann Koshy<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Opinion Editor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nProf Paul Gilroy<\/a> near his home in north London<\/a>. Photograph: Eddie Otchere\/The Guardian<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

One of Britain\u2019s<\/a> most influential scholars has spent a lifetime trying to convince people to take race and racism seriously. Are we finally ready to listen?<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2000, the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust<\/a> published a report about the \u201cfuture of multi-ethnic Britain\u201d. Launched by the Labour<\/a> home secretary Jack Straw<\/a>, it proposed ways to counter racial discrimination and rethink British identity. The report was nuanced and scholarly, the result of two years\u2019 deliberation. It was honest about Britain\u2019s<\/a> racial inequalities and the legacy of empire, but also offered hope. It made the case for formally declaring the UK<\/a> a multicultural society.<\/p>\n

The newspapers tore it to pieces. The Daily Telegraph<\/em> ran a front-page article: \u201cStraw wants to rewrite our history: \u2018British\u2019 is a racist word, says report.\u201d The Sun<\/em> and the Daily Mail<\/em> joined in. The line was clear \u2013 a clique of leftwing academics, in cahoots with the government, wanted to make ordinary people feel ashamed of their country. In the Telegraph<\/em>, Boris Johnson<\/a>, then editor of the Spectator<\/em> magazine, wrote that the report represented \u201ca war over culture, which our side could lose\u201d. Spooked by the intensity of the reaction, Straw distanced himself from any further debate about Britishness, recommending in his speech at the report\u2019s launch that the left swallow some patriotic tonic.<\/p>\n

The Parekh report<\/a>, as it was known \u2013 its chair was the political theorist Lord Bhikhu Parekh<\/a> \u2013 was not a radical document. It was studiously considerate. Contrary to the Telegraph<\/em> front page, it didn\u2019t claim \u201cBritish\u201d was a racist word. It said that \u201cBritishness, as much as Englishness, has \u2026 largely unspoken, racial connotations\u201d. This was the sentence that launched a thousand tirades, but where did this idea come from? Follow the footnote in the offending paragraph and you arrive at the work of an academic called Paul Gilroy<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Britain\u2019s most influential scholars has spent a lifetime trying to convince people to take race and racism seriously. Are we finally ready to listen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,6941,26,23674,10],"tags":[1592,2103,31952],"class_list":["post-61592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-social-justice","category-uk","tag-paul-gilroy","tag-the-guardian","tag-yohann-koshy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61597,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61592\/revisions\/61597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}