Anti-Racism as a Legal Principle

Abstract

Is there anything like a principle of anti-racism in law? Anti-Racism as a Legal Principle is dedicated to answering this question. The book shows that racial discrimination law is effective only against a rather narrow range of interpersonal or individual racism. Racial discrimination law leaves intact structural racism or the drivers of racial disadvantage. Racial discrimination law needs anti-racism as a legal principle to address structural racism or transform the drivers of racial disadvantage. Further, such a principle needs to be located not in the way law is written (legislated by Parliaments or declared by courts) or talked about (as a matter of discourse) but in the way it is practised. The book presents a theoretical account of anti-racism as a legal principle and locates it within the legal doctrine of British, comparative (Canadian, Indian, and South African), and international law. It shows how the personal, material, evidential, and remedial scope of racial discrimination law across these contexts is limited in the absence of anti-racism as a legal principle. It also shows how, occasionally, anti-racism is genuinely embraced when structural racism (how state and state-like entities racialize to instate a framework of racial disadvantage) is addressed in a broad-based and intersectional way (as opposed to individual, incremental, or piecemeal way). Ultimately, the book shows that law, especially racial discrimination law, can and indeed should be anti-racist by committing to transform structural racism.