Racist Murder Research Articles

Race, policing and me: Inclusive leadership in the twenty-first century for the 25th anniversary of Macpherson Report and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

‘Race, policing and me: Inclusive leadership in the twenty-first century’ is a participant observer’s experience of policing, politics and prejudice from a 30-year career in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) that spanned the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, the 1999 Macpherson Report, which labelled policing institutionally racist, and the battle to come to terms with the fallout that created. A battle this observer believes policing has lost. He reveals how the most senior officer of colour in the UK for the past decade battled racism as a child, adolescent and young professional before joining a profession that did not act as it though it wanted people like him. The early successes to improve its diversity after Macpherson were not sustained and policing now rejects the term and Basu provides some thought for police leaders at how they might tackle issues of diversity and prejudice to regain their legitimacy with minorities who have been over-policed and/or under-protected for too long. To ignore this requirement to regain its legitimacy lacks the humility to understand that it is wrong about this debate on diversity. After the catastrophic loss of trust and confidence following the 2023 Dame Louise Casey Report into culture in the MPS, policing's refusal to admit it remains institutionally racist by the Macpherson definition, and indeed institutionally prejudiced by the Casey definition, imperils the Peelian concept of policing by consent. If policing cannot accept the moral case for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, it should think of the business case that Peel, Rowan and Mayne built that underpins consent. It may be the only way to maintain order and keep communities safe, which must be its primary mission.

(Re)inspiring Narratives of Resistance: COVID-19, Racisms and Narratives of Hope

In 2020, COVID-19 took many people by surprise, as did the intercontinental waves of protest triggered by the casual racist murder of George Floyd by a US policeman. The years of 2020 and 2021 will undoubtedly be remembered for massive, unexpected disruptions that require new social normalities to be negotiated. These social disruptions were triggered by unexpected viral pandemics and viral video footage. Yet they built on already existing, entrenched inequities marked by the intersections of racialisation/ethnicisation, social class and gender. It was common, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, for politicians and commentators to espouse a narrative that COVID-19 “does not discriminate”. This is, of course, true. However, the research analyses that followed showed that both COVID-19, and the measures taken to arrest it, exacerbated already existing social inequalities. This paper draws on two narratives of the racialized impact of COVID-19 to examine the ways in which the authors mobilise intertextual narratives to protest against racism and call for resistance to the racisms they identify. The paper argues that, while the authors do not overtly position themselves as calling for change, their narratives are crafted in ways that resist current constructions of their racialized or religious groups.

Murderous Racism as Normal Psychosis: The Case of Dylann Roof

Dylann Roof killed nine people in a Black church in 2015 in order to start a "war" between the white and Black races. This case is used here to develop a psychoanalytic theory of murderous racism, and even genocide. Major concepts from Freud (self-preservation, hatred, narcissism, life and death drives, delusion), Klein (projective identification), and Bion (psychotic and nonpsychotic parts of the personality) are employed. Particular attention is given to the hearing to determine Roof's capacity to represent himself after he dismissed his lawyers, who wanted to use an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty. This hearing was confronted with an undecidable dilemma, which led to legal cooperation with Roof's suicidal impulses. The deconstructive approach to undecidability, and its use in questions of law, especially as concerns the relation between psychoanalysis and the death penalty, leads to tentative recommendations for the prevention of racist murder.

Model Minority (Tres)Passing in the BLM Age: Asian Stereotypes as Subversive Strategy for Combating Anti-Blackness in Yamamoto’s “A Fire in Fontana” and Ty Pak’s “The Court Interpreter”

Refracted through the lens of the current BLM movement and the resultant exposé of the longstanding history of anti-Blackness, this essay reexamines two narratives grounded in the historical junctures of interethnic racial turbulence: Hisaye Yamamoto’s “A Fire in Fontana,” spanning the 1945 racist murder of a Black family by arson to the 1965 Watts uprising, and Ty Pak’s “The Court Interpreter,” a fictional tale closely mirroring the 1991 Latasha Harlin murder case and the ensuing 1992 Los Angeles unrest. This essay foregrounds the trope of passing to imagine Asian model minority stereotype as a kind of (tres)passing that can potentially expose and explode instances of anti-Blackness both within interethnic communities and in the larger dominant culture.

Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy

Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy

Anti-Racist Activism in London; Exploring Multidirectionality at Commemorations of the Battle of Cable Street and the Murder of Altab Ali

ABSTRACT The paper examines the multidirectional character of commemorations of racist and fascist violence in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. It does so by studying commemorative events taking place in Altab Ali Park in the borough between 2016 and 2018 to address contemporary political issues. Specifically, the study documents the 80th anniversary of the Battle for Cable Street in 1936, celebrated as a local victory against fascist organisations, and the 40th anniversary of the 1978 racist murder of a Bengali textile worker called Altab Ali. Combined, these events illustrate how Holocaust remembrance, anti-fascist movements and anti-racist initiatives are interconnected and draw on one another in meaningful ways. The paper evaluates the value of applying Michael Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory in understanding commemorations by drawing on textual analysis of local histories and use these to more fully understand commemorative practices. Such an approach reveals both the value of multidirectional characteristics of memory practices to address contemporary issues, while pointing to the difficulties that arise as a result of the selective character of memory practices that may reduce the possibilities of bringing to light the linkages, in the cases discussed between colonialism, the Second World War and contemporary racism.

LANDSCAPE MEMORIES

Chantal Akerman’s documentary Sud [South, 1999] investigates the brutal racist murder of James Byrd Jr that took place in Jasper, Texas in 1998. Sud is a socio-political documentary, but it is also, as the director explains, an experimental film about the relation between physical and mental landscapes, between social and affective ecologies. This article places Akerman’s film in the context of contemporary debates about non-anthropocentric ontologies. Whereas some critics have been keen to assert a strong distinction between socio-political analysis on the one hand and affective and ecological analysis on the other, Sud demonstrates not only how these approaches can combine but also how the ecological and the affective can extend a political critique of inequality. To explain how this is achieved, the article draws on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, and introduces the notion of the “spectator-environment.”

Roil Britannia! Al Sharpton, the British Press, and the 1991 Murder of Rolan Adams

ABSTRACT Drawing on archival material from the Black Cultural Archives, the British Library, and the Institute of Race Relations, this article sheds fresh light on a largely overlooked 1991 visit to Britain by controversial Black American preacher Al Sharpton following the racist murder of Black teenager Rolan Adams. The extraordinary response to Sharpton’s arrival by the British mainstream press revealed racist patterns of news reporting and a chauvinistic rejection of ‘outside agitators’, while the minister’s intervention drew a mixed response from local activists. However, the furore sparked by Sharpton’s visit also helped to raise public awareness of Adams’ murder and galvanise local Black communities, providing an important insight into anti-racist organising and British media coverage of high-profile racist incidents prior to the death of Stephen Lawrence.

From “Big Red” Hydrick to Goat Dykeman: Eudora Welty’s Navigation between the Fictional and the Real in “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”

Abstract Known for her lyrical evocations of the American South, Eudora Welty’s short story “Where is the Voice Coming From?” is unique in her oeuvre for both its intense topicality and its direct treatment of the Southern racism that is often only obliquely acknowledged in her fiction. This article examines how Welty maintains her characteristically deep sympathy for her characters, and her profound attention to detail, while narrating the event of a horrific and racist murder. Furthermore, by providing biographical details of the real life “Goat Dykeman”, G.W. Hydrick, informed readers see how even in a brief story about contemporary events, Welty is continually aware of regional history and assumptions, and she uses details, sometimes very subtly, to attach layers of meaning to her stories.

The Shaping, Enactment and Interpretation of the First Hate-Crime Law in the United Kingdom - An Informative and Illustrative Lesson for South Africa

Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by personal prejudice or bias. Hate-crime laws criminalise such conduct and allow for the imposition of aggravated penalties on convicted perpetrators. This article examines the historical, social and political factors which influenced the shaping and enactment of the first British hate-crime law. The South African context is also considered since the Department of Justice has recently released the Prevention and Combatting of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill for public commentary and input.
 While Britain has had a long historical record of criminal conduct that was motivated by the race and the ethnicity of victims, it was only in the twentieth century that civil society first drew attention to the problem of violent racist crimes. Nevertheless, successive British governments denied the problem of racist crimes and refused to consider the enactment of a hate-crime law. Following a high-profile racist murder and a governmental inquiry, a British Labour Party-led government eventually honoured its pre-election commitment and passed a hate-crime law in 1998.
 Some parallels are apparent between the British and the South African contexts. South Africa also has a long historical record of racially motivated hate crimes. Moreover, in the post-apartheid era there have been numerous reports of racist hate crimes and hate crimes against Black lesbian women and Black foreigners. Despite several appeals from the academic and non-governmental sectors for the enactment of a hate-crime law, and the circulation for public commentary of the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill, such a law has hitherto not been enacted in South Africa. This article posits that the enactment of a hate-crime law is a constitutional imperative in South Africa in terms of the right to equality and the right to freedom and security of the person. While the enactment of a hate-crime law in South Africa is recommended, it is conceded that enacting a hate-crime law will not eradicate criminal conduct motivated by prejudice and bias.
 

Racism and cultural identity: the reflections of two Black trainee teachers' engagement with the Stephen Lawrence Symposium

The Stephen Lawrence Symposium held in London in 2013 provided an opportunity for academics and educators to reflect on changes in education and wider society resulting from the legacy of Stephen Lawrence over the 20 years since his racist murder. A Black African trainee teacher and a Black Caribbean trainee teacher in post-16 teacher training at a large university in the North of England participated in a series of lunchtime discussion groups as part of their university-based training. This led to them presenting a workshop at the Stephen Lawrence Symposium in London based upon artefacts that conjured up memories of racism for them. Reflections on their experiences of engaging with the Stephen Lawrence symposium suggested that family-support and support from the wider Black community was important to them in sustaining their engagement. Such family and community support may ameliorate the sense of alienation that Black trainees may experience from their predominantly White-British peers in university-based teacher training. Whilst such support may be more significant for Black trainee teachers than that provided through formal student support systems, it is not widely recognised as such by universities and may be seen as contrary to university-culture. Personal experiences and memories of racism were key to the Black trainees' engagement with the Stephen Lawrence Symposium. Capturing those memories through the writing of personal narratives was more problematic than presenting at the Symposium itself. Structured support with collaborative writing is needed if the 'student-voice' on student-engagement is to be heard. Keywords : Stephen Lawrence; Black trainee teachers; memories of racism; family/community support; student voice; student engagement.

Feltham: time for a new start

Feltham Young Offenders Institution (YOI) has had a troubled past and a fearsome reputation for violence and brutality. In 2000, the racist murder of Zahid Mubarek by Robert Stewart, another prisoner at Feltham, exposed fundamental flaws in the way young people were dealt with in custody at the time.

After Lawrence: racial violence and policing in the UK

As the UK celebrates the conviction of two men for the racist murder nineteen years ago of Stephen Lawrence, the author draws on research into racial violence being carried out by the Institute of Race Relations to show that violence is still at very high levels and is becoming dispersed to new areas. The Macpherson Report may have brought in changes to police practices, but violent, popular racism, encouraged by wider government policies, such as the war on terror, is still a national scandal.

Book Reviews: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation

Book Reviews: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation

Mediatized public crisis and civil society renewal: The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence

There have been many racist murders in Britain both before and since the killing of Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black student, in April 1993. This particular murder, exceptionally, prompted widespread re-examination of questions of (in)justice, cultural identity and continuing racism in British society and it eventually initiated processes of institutional reflexivity including government policies targeting institutionalized racism within Britain’s most powerful organizations of state and civil society. The Stephen Lawrence case unfolded within the arenas and processes of the criminal justice system, but the public story of ‘Stephen Lawrence’, the central concern of this article, was principally played out within the nation’s media (and some international media too). It was here that the symbolic and moral charge of the case became generalized outwards to different publics in society, galvanizing emotions and appealing to a sense of moral solidarity subjunctively oriented to how society should or could be. This article, based upon analysis of the extensive media reporting over the ten year period 1993-2003 and developing theoretical ideas of ‘mediatized public crisis’ as a form of ‘society in action’, explores how the mainstream British media ‘performed’ the Stephen Lawrence case and thereby transformed it into a ‘mediatized public crisis’ embroiling as it did so powerful institutions of state (police, judiciary, government) and unleashing institutional reflexivity, social reforms and cultural change.

Evolution of a Company

TARA presented its first production, Tagore's Sacrifice, in 1977, so this year marks the company's Sacrifice, in 1977, so this year marks the company's twentieth anniversary. How did it come into being?It was, as with most companies, a mixture of accident and intention. The intention part of it relates to 4 June 1976, which was a day when this young Sikh lad in Southall, Gurdeep Singh Chaggar, was killed. It became very obvious within a day or so that this was a racist murder. In retrospect it doesn't seem to be a terribly significant thing, because we've had so many; but at the time it galvanized a particular generation of Asians.

Theatre of Migration and the Search for a Multicultural Aesthetic: Twenty Years of Tara Arts

This year sees the twentieth anniversary of the foremost British-Asian ‘company of identity’, Tara Arts, directed throughout that time by Jatinder Verma – a major interview with whom forms the core of this celebratory feature. This traces the history and evolving philosophy of the company, from its origins in outrage at a racist murder, through changing perceptions of how multicultural identity can best find its dramatic expression, to a discussion of Verma's own recent work for Contact Theatre and the National. Contributions from other leading participants in the company's work are complemented by a selection of press reactions to major productions, and a survey of bibliographical and other resources. The compiler of this feature, Graham Ley, presently lectures in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter, having previously taught in London and New Zealand. He is currently completing a book on theatrical theory, on which he has previously also published in NTQ, most recently in ‘The Role of Metaphor in Brook's The Empty Space’ (NTQ35, 1993) and ‘The Significance of Diderot’ (NTQ44, 1995). Among his publications on ancient performance, A short introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre appeared from the University of chicago Press in 1991.