The Architects of Integration: Research, Public Policy, and the Institute of Race Relations in Post-imperial Britain

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACTThis article traces the evolution of the field of race relations by exploring the thinking of Philip Mason, a former agent of the Indian Civil Service who built a second career as the elder statesman of this emerging discipline in Britain. Mason led the well-funded Institute of Race Relations, an independent organisation that brought together academics, public policy analysts, and journalists to address concerns about the integration of black and Asian migrants in Britain from the 1950s. Mason brought his imperial expertise to bear on the new discipline, and imagined the new subject in light of a wide range of shifting international concerns: imperial race relations, the decline of the British Empire, the Cold War, and the persistence of racially-divided states like South Africa and the United States. To address these anxieties, race relations experts suggested that race relations studies should be comparative across several different imperial and post-colonial locales, building towards a master project that would provide suggestions on mollifying racial tensions across the globe. Using the United States as a key referent, Mason and others ushered in a transitional era, moving the discipline from a paternalistic and superior approach to formerly colonised subjects to articulations of liberal inclusion and cultural integration. Tracing the life of the Institute, and Mason's influence on policy and subsequent anti-racist organisations, reveals how the early assumptions of the field positioned Britain's integration problem as temporary, indeterminate, and aided by the imperial, post-imperial, and transatlantic similarities they examined.