“Don’t bring race into it”: white ignorance, UK counterterrorism and the impact agenda

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on interviews with UK civil servants working on counterterrorism, this article examines how racialised and gendered organisational norms govern the production and circulation of knowledge in government departments. It further reflects on their implications for policymakers and academics seeking to introduce critical perspectives into counterterrorism policymaking. Mobilising Charles W. Mills’s concept of white ignorance, I explore how routinised practices serve to suppress knowledge about the racialised impacts of UK counterterrorism, and particularly the Prevent programme, within policymaking spaces. The article outlines eight practices that effect the suppression or delegitimisation of testimony substantiating critiques of counterterrorism policies as racist: framing accusations of racism as misunderstandings; focusing on intentions over impacts; self-silencing; limiting what counts as evidence; framing critics as emotionally-oriented; decisions concerning who participates in these policy discussions in the first place; the siloing of discussions about racism in dedicated spaces; and efforts to frame analyses of structural racism as breaking civil servants’ obligation to political neutrality. I conclude that, because the persistence of colonial counterterrorism practices is, fundamentally, not a problem of knowledge but a problem of power, it will not be solved through the kind of policy advocacy scholars are encouraged to undertake to demonstrate “research impact”.