When Racism Became Taboo: Intolerance, Anonymity and the Public Sphere in England, 1960-1990

英国现代史上最具标志性的多元文化主义形象之一是20世纪60年代末的一张照片，照片中一名身着西装的非裔加勒比海男子大步走在一堵涂鸦墙前。涂鸦上写着“鲍威尔当选首相”。这张照片令人震惊，因为它捕捉到了生活在不宽容中的行为，它的无处不在的存在铭刻在大都市生活的建筑上。不出所料，这些话是匿名的，大步走的人也没有名字。这或许是这张图片不断流传的原因。然而，尽管口述历史项目自20世纪90年代以来已经完成了重要的工作，以捕捉英国黑人不宽容的经历-接近移民和定居的集体记忆，这可能开始接近照片中人的视角-但几乎不可能捕捉到故事的另一面。在1960-1990年间，很少有历史著作接近于揭开英格兰日常不宽容的信仰。相反，历史学家倾向于通过最暴力和最极端的政治形式来分析英国的种族主义，认为这是一段可以归结为国民阵线或类似组织的历史。1960至1990年间，中产阶级、住房、就业和英国本土文化中常见的歧视行为和不容忍表达仍然在很大程度上隐藏在人们的视线之外。关键的是，正是因为种族主义当时正处于转型时期--日益成为一种禁忌，与这一时期日益增长的反种族主义共识格格不入--它才被很好地隐藏在历史记忆中。这一历史转折值得重新引起学术界的关注。1965年和1968年，两部种族关系法将种族和民族歧视定为英国社会和经济生活中的民事罪行，并引入了反仇恨言论法。这项平等立法的诞生在英格兰的民众层面上产生了深远的、迄今尚不清楚的后果。除了反种族主义运动，这项立法还挑战并在一定程度上改变了英格兰公认的种族主义场所。到1976年，这些旨在控制歧视的法定努力已经发展成为一个巨大的官僚机器，留下了令人难以置信的文件痕迹。值得注意的是，在此之前，还没有历史学家将这些庞大的档案作为了解日常经历和不宽容表达的窗口。该项目致力于通过对这些和其他机构档案和定性社会调查采取自下而上的方法，发现一幅不容忍的历史地图，超越其最极端形式的历史。这位研究员和RA将与这些档案中的第一人称账户密切合作，解开和解构种族主义在数百个人的个人叙事中不断变化的位置。重要的是，这个项目根据当代关于网络媒体中仇恨言论和辱骂的辩论，探讨种族主义及其控制的社会历史。它将为那些试图理解仇恨表达、社会禁忌和匿名之间关系的人提供丰富的实证材料和分析。它将为当代关于如何最好地在公共领域控制仇恨的辩论带来新的历史视角。它将受到致力于捍卫反种族主义、政治异议和隐私的实践者和活动家的关注。最后，它将向公众发出挑战，让他们超越历史上对种族主义的讽刺，认识到过去和现在普遍存在的普通歧视行为。一方面，《当种族主义成为禁忌》是一个早就应该开展的大型研究项目。另一方面，这是一个学术和公共活动的合作方案，将以新的方式看到历史和当代为生活在一个没有监视和没有仇恨的世界所做的努力。

One of the most iconic images of multiculturalism in modern British history is a photograph of an Afro-Caribbean man in a suit striding in front of a graffitied wall in the late 1960s. The graffiti reads 'Powell for PM'. The photograph is striking in that it captures the act of living with intolerance, its pervasive presence inscribed on the very architecture of metropolitan life. Unsurprisingly, the words are anonymous and the striding man has no name. This contributes perhaps to the image's recurring currency. Yet, while oral history projects have done important work since the 1990s to capture Black British experiences of intolerance - approaching a collective memory of migration and settlement which may begin to approximate the perspective of the man in the photograph - it has been near impossible to capture the other side of the story. Few historical works have come close to unpacking everyday intolerant beliefs in England, 1960-1990. Instead, historians tend to analyse English racism through its most violent and extreme political forms, as a history reducible to the National Front or its equivalents. Ordinary acts of discrimination and expressions of intolerance between 1960 and 1990 - among the middle classes, in housing, in employment and across English vernacular cultures - remain largely hidden from view. Critically, it is precisely because racism was in transition at this time - increasingly a taboo and out of step with a growing anti-racist consensus in this period - that it has been so well hidden from historical memory. This historical transition deserves renewed scholarly attention. In 1965 and 1968, two Race Relations Acts made racial and ethnic discrimination a civil offence in English social and economic life and introduced anti-hate speech law. The birth of this equality legislation had profound, and as yet uncharted, consequences at the popular level in England. Alongside anti-racist activism, this legislation challenged and to an extent transformed the accepted locations of racism in England. By 1976, these statutory efforts to control discrimination had developed into a large bureaucratic machinery that has left behind an incredible paper trail. Remarkably, no historian has before now approached these vast archives as a window into everyday experiences and expressions of intolerance. This project is concerned with uncovering - through a bottom-up approach to these and other institutional archives and qualitative social surveys - a historical map of intolerance, moving beyond a history of its most extreme forms. The Fellow and RA will work closely with the first person accounts in these archives to unpack and deconstruct the shifting place of racism in hundreds of individuals' personal narratives. Critically, this project approaches the social history of racism and its control in light of contemporary debates about hate speech and abuse in online media. It will provide rich empirical material and analysis for those seeking to understand the relationship between expressions of hate, social taboos and anonymity. It will bring new historical perspective to contemporary debates about how best to control hate in the public sphere. It will be informed by the concerns of practitioners and activists working to defend anti-racism, political dissent and privacy. And, finally, it will challenge public audiences to move beyond a historical caricature of 'the racist', to recognise the pervasive presence of ordinary acts of discrimination in the past and present. 'When Racism Became Taboo' is on the one hand a large research project that is long overdue. On the other, it is a collaborative programme of academic and public events that will develop new ways of seeing both historical and contemporary efforts to live in a world free from surveillance and free from hate.