Race Rights Reparations

This book considers institutional racism as a problem that exists within modern societies. Its roots lie with the transatlantic slave trade and slavery and the solution involves ridding society of the problem. It is argued here that, first, there needs to be an acceptance of its existence, then developing the tools needed to deal with it and, finally, to implement those tools so that institutional racism can be permanently removed from society. The book has four themes: the first considers the nature of institutional racism, the second theme looks at instances of institutional racism through matters such as deaths in custody and skin lightening, the third considers the concept of reparations and the final area looks at the development of social movements as a way of pushing institutional racism up the political agenda. The development of a social movement is part of a social discourse which would, for example, push mentoring as a form of reparations. There is a need for more research on the manifestations of institutional racism and this book is part of that discourse. It is argued that the legacy of the slave trade and slavery is continuing and contemporary through the presence of institutional racism in society. This problem has not been addressed through legislation and policies devised to combat racial discrimination. Institutional racism needs to be understood as being located in the processes and procedures of societal institutions.

In this new book Fernne Brennan has made an important and highly original contribution to the study of institutional racism . She links this insidious phenomenon, which first came to public awareness in 1999 through the Macpherson Report on the failure of the police following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, to the issue of reparations for slavery. Brennan has already made a significant contribution to this field by editing, with John Packer, the collection Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the Past? (Routledge 2012). This new book, passionately argued and supported by wide-ranging research, analyses institutional racism as a modern legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. It is not simply a work of legal history. Brennan goes further: she provides carefully considered proposals for reparation, meeting the many objections which have been made. Brennan identifies a new social movement for reparations, on a global scale. Readers will be challenged and, I hope, inspired by Brennan’s work. Professor Bill Bowring, Barrister, Director of the LLM/MA in Human Rights, School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London

Fernne Brennan is Senior Lecturer in Law, head of the Slave Trade Reparations Project (STeR) @ www.essex.ac.uk/reparation, School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, UK. She has written on and regularly speaks on the subject of race crime, institutional racism, and reparations.