SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This collection seeks to address a persistent blind-spot in United Kingdom (UK) constitutional theory and scholarship by offering a diverse series of contributions underscoring the importance and relevance of race, racialisation and racism in UK constitutional law and theory. This short piece is intended only as a taster of a longer piece I am developing on how race, racialisation and racism is addressed in introductory or general public law texts and textbooks in the United Kingdom. In this piece, I will argue that there are three ways students and scholars of public law can be attentive to race, racialisation and systemic/institutional racism in the United Kingdom. First, they can consider and reflect upon the disappearance of race from public law discussions and scholarship. This will entail paying attention to the colonial and imperial history of the British constitution and offers an answer to the question I posed at the beginning of this piece that interrogates UK public law’s past(s). Second, they can note and scrutinise the putative irrelevance of race in current and persistent debates with which the field of public law in the UK is preoccupied. This constitutes an answer which interrogates public law’s present, a present I argue characterised in part by “facile postracialism”. Finally, they can note the intractability of racism in the UK, that is to say, they can try to understand the reasons for its permanence in the field of public law, the ways in which racial injustice – which is intertwined with other systems of oppression - is sustained by both the operation and conceptualisation(s) of UK public law, and begin a discussion as to how - and whether - this may be overcome. This constitutes an answer which engages with public law’s future.