Violent Racism

This work documents the everyday abuse, assault and intimidation that is suffered by black and Asian people in Great Britain every day, using information gathered in an East London case study. The author explains and analyzes the process through which violence is targeted at these minorities, and the role that the ideas and language of racial exclusion take in this process. The failure of the police to respond to this problem is then looked at in depth. This book is based on detailed analysis of official documents, a victimization survey, interviews and direct observation, seen in the overall context of the history of race relations in Britain. The author describes many of the thousands of racist attacks that have occurred in recent years and the events in the last two decades that have shaped English racism, and the political response to it. In this edition Ben Bowling's Preface examines the racist murder of the black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, whose killing in cold blood on an ordinary English street in April 1993 did not hit the headlines until February 1999, causing reverberations across the whole body of British politics and beyond.

... undoubtedly the most rigorous and searching study of its kind, while also being readable and accessible., What is particularly admirable about this most admirable of contributions to the literature on racism, is that Bowling succeeds in balancing commitment with scholarship. He eschews misleading simplification in favour of recognizing and seeking to understand the subtle complexities of the subject., His grasp of the subtle complexities of the issues posed by this topic are evident in the central theme that informs much of the analysis., a most excellent contribution to scholarship ... the editors of the Clarendon Studies in Criminology ... are rapidly establishing this series as pre-eminent in criminology., This is a comprehensive, well laid out, state of the art, survey of the police response to violent racist behaviour, set in context of the history and sociological literature of racism and policing in this country ... This brilliant study will become an essential text for anyone (and everyone should be) concerned with racism and policing.

Benjamin Bowling is a lecturer in Law at King's College London. He gained his doctorate from the London School of Economics whilst working as a senior research fellow in the Home Office. He was then a visiting professor at John Jay College, City University of New York.