Anti-racism shouldn’t be a last minute add-on to justice campaigns, or focused solely on personal prejudice at the expense of structural conditions. Marking the 50th anniversary of its radical transformation, The Institute of Race Relations is one of the few organisations that has always linked racism to imperialism, particularly through its journal Race & Class, founded by the late socialist internationalist, A. Sivanandan. This panel of young researchers, activists and IRR director Liz Fekete discuss the key issues for anti-racists today, as well as foregrounding ‘organising from below’ – whether in anti-raids networks, police monitoring groups, or pushing back against manufactured culture wars.
Chantelle Lewis is a public sociologist and podcaster. She is the co-host and co-founder of the Surviving Society podcast and the Deputy Director of Leading Routes. (opens in a new tab)http://twitter.com/chantellejlewis
Liz Fekete is the director of the Institute of Race Relations and author of Europe’s Faultlines: racism and the rise of the Right. She has been involved with many anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns for over forty years.
Azfar Shafi is co-author of Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism, and an editor at Ebb Magazine, an independent online magazine which critically assesses British politics from a communist perspective. He researches and organises against state violence and national security policies.
Sophia Siddiqui is the deputy editor of the IRR’s journal Race & Class and co-ordinator of IRR News. She researchers and writes on issues related to anti-racist feminism.
K Biswas is a writer, critic and editor whose work has appeared in New Statesman, the New York Times and the Nation. He currently edits the Representology journal.
The Institute of Race Relations is at the cutting edge of the research and analysis that informs the struggle for racial justice in Britain, Europe and internationally.
