White Backlash and the Politics of Multiculturalism

The 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black student, led to the widest review of institutional racism seen in the UK and revealed that nearby white working-class communities displayed deep hostility to multiculturalist practices. This book examines this phenomena within the context of changes in social class, evolving national political agendas and responses to race inequalities in the UK, the United States and elsewhere from the 1960s to the present.

Roger Hewitt is Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has published widely in the fields of racism, language and cultural processes and is the author of White Talk, Black Talk: Inter-racial Friendship and Communication amongst Adolescents (Cambridge, 1986).