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The New Racism and the Racial State

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New Right, New Racism

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Abstract

The weapons used in symbolic conflict are ideas, but the outcome can be measured only in terms of the impact of those ideas on government policy formation and the construction of popular opinion. The categories of meaning employed by government in defining an event or issue do not passively reflect an objective reality, but rather actively construct which social problems are significant and which insignificant, and accordingly, which political solutions are judged beneficial and which misguided. Thus, since every policy issue is contested in a symbolic arena, an analysis of the new racism of the New Right would be incomplete without an examination of the symbiotic relationship between it and the policy formation process in the era of Reaganism and Thatcherism and beyond.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA

    Amy Elizabeth Ansell (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Director of International Programs)

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  1. Amy Elizabeth Ansell
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© 1997 Amy Elizabeth Ansell

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Ansell, A.E. (1997). The New Racism and the Racial State. In: New Right, New Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13927-9_6

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