Rationalising racial inequality: ideology, hegemony and post-racialism among the Black and South Asian middle classes

Meghji, Ali and Saini, Rima ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2115-1206 (2018) Rationalising racial inequality: ideology, hegemony and post-racialism among the Black and South Asian middle classes. Sociology, 52 (4) . pp. 671-687. ISSN 0038-0385 [Article] (doi:10.1177/0038038517726645)

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Abstract

Drawing upon 38 qualitative interviews with Black and South Asian middle-class individuals we theorise post-racialism as a hegemonic ideology. While research tends to focus on how racialised people experience racial inequality, some of our participants rationalised such inequality through a post-racial understanding. This post-racial understanding involves commitments to racial progress and transcendence, the view that racism is no longer a societal issue; race-neutral universalism, the belief that we live in a colourblind meritocracy; and a moral equivalence between anti-racism and anti-racialism, allowing for forms of ‘cultural’ racial prejudice. We examine how these components of post-racialism travel from the political macro-ideological level, to the micro-phenomenological level. Through this analysis we argue that these post-racial rationalisations are not the result of false consciousness, but reflect how post-racialism, as a hegemonic ideology, can manifest itself as common-sense and consistent with particular individuals’ histories of mobility and success.

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