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This chapter traces the evolution of the European Union (EU) law and policy on racism with the objective of identifying the factors that led the Member States to extend the Union's role in this field. It examines how anti-racism policy progressed given the market integration model of European social policy. It explores the influence of various political events in the development of anti-racism policy. These include the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1957, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1991, and the issuance of the Racial Equality Directive.

This chapter examines the development of health policies for the black population in Brazil from 1988, a year that marked the 100^th anniversary of Brazilian abolition and the promulgation of a new democratic Constitution, to the early 2010s. The analysis places the development of health policies for the black population within a larger context of race-conscious policy development, particularly in relation to the Statute of Racial Equality and affirmative action policies for higher education. As this chapter argues, political openings were created during the mid-1990s and early 2000s that facilitated the development of health policies for the black population. However, such policies were often highly contested and their full implementation was often undermined.

This chapter examines both secular and religious pacifists, the movement's reaction to prewar preparedness, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the vital role that peace activists and conscientious objectors played in supporting civil liberties during the ensuing war, and the latter's heroic role in serving the mentally handicapped in often dangerous and appalling conditions. It also traces how peace activists, especially the Fellowship on Reconciliation, fought Jim Crow by helping to create the Congress of Racial Equality. Many in the so-called “greatest generation” nobly served the republic without taking up arms, and the chapter explores the histories of those pacifists who served as medics in some of the most brutal war zones. Just as military service provided veterans with newfound skills and abilities, so too did conscientious objectors emerge from prison and Civilian Public Service camps with valuable skills that shaped a generation of postwar activism.

This chapter examines the passage of the EU’s Racial Equality Directive. The preceding chapter showed that member states did not necessarily want a European policy on racial antidiscrimination, and in the Treaty negotiation process they secured an ambiguous Article that required unanimous member state support for any subsequent European action. With the variety of national policy approaches to the issues of race and racial discrimination, one could reasonably expect protracted negotiations and difficulty in reaching final agreement on a Directive. The Commission, however, released its proposal for a Directive in November 1999, and just seven months later the Council of Ministers adopted the RED on July 19, 2000. No other Directive of comparable breadth and complexity has been adopted in such rapid fashion.

The vision Esther and Jack had for the postwar years did not materialize, and they found themselves navigating increasingly intense anti-Communist trends in US politics. The Cold War inaugurated a period of fear and anxiety that intersected with the black freedom movement in the South. No longer able to sustain a movement that fused leftist economic reform and racial equality, the Southern Negro Youth Congress folded in 1949. Jack worked briefly for the Louisiana Communist Party, and the family then moved to Detroit, Michigan. There, Jack worked with the Communist Party to organize autoworkers, and Esther was an activist with the Civil Rights Congress and the Progressive Party. In 1951, the couple moved to New York City, where Jack was indicted under the Smith Act.

The Racial Equality Directive required the enactment of national legal protections against racial discrimination within three years of its adoption, by July 2003. As described in the previous chapter, its adoption followed nearly a decade of lobbying by a coalition of NGOs known as the Starting Line Group and was made possible by a propitious set of circumstances that created a window of opportunity for its rapid adoption. Transposition of the RED, however, occurred in different circumstances, and it involved an entirely new and distinct political process, one that in some cases involved domestic actors who were marginalized from the Directive’s development and negotiations. This chapter evaluates the extent to which these factors, including partisan differences, explain the pattern of transposition observed in Britain, France, and Germany.

This chapter examines the factors which have helped (and inhibited) race relations in the US from the time of Dr. Martin Luther King to the nation’s 44th President, Barack Obama. In this chapter, the authors examine the ebb and flow of racist sentiment that continues to permeate American politics, despite the political gains of African-Americans in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. The authors examine how, despite policies designed to foster and enhance race relations in America and benefit the progression of African-Americans in the US, African-Americans are in some ways no better off than they were in the 1950s. This is especially true with regard to voting rights, reception of the first President of the United States of African-American heritage, and the and social, economic, and political implications of having an African-American in the White House over the past eight years. In all, Dr. King’s “dream” has been realized in part, and deferred in part. As a nation, the U.S. is long overdue on a national forum on race relations to address (1) the unfortunate endurance of racism and racial resentment, (2) positive strides made by African-Americans (including the President), which are still subjected to denigration by whites harboring (and perhaps acting on) racial resentment, (3) the socioeconomic and sociopolitical implications of white privilege and its disparaging effects on African-Americans, and (4) to address possible ways for all races to move past stereotypical notions of the “other” and attempt to understand those phenotypically different from themselves.

This chapter is based on the findings from national research commissioned by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which aimed to examine the differences between ethnic groups in terms of levels of non-political civic participations, and the motivations and barriers to civic participation. Although it is recognised that civic participation has the potential to promote and encourage self-confidence, this chapter discusses the importance of self-confidence in enabling and motivating people from ethnic minorities to take advantage of civic participation opportunities. The chapter recommends that policies to encourage participation and inclusion should progress beyond information access. They should instead include active consultation with communities and community leaders, and recognition of the importance and potential of political identity and confidence in enhancing civic participation amongst ethnic minorities.

This chapter covers the Reconstruction era, as Douglass shifted his focus from abolition to the crusade for true racial and gender equality. It explains how Douglass’s uncompromising call for full political and civil equality for racial minorities and women was inspired by his prophetic Christian faith. The chapter shows how Douglass adapted his pre-war faith to decidedly new social and political problems after the Civil War.

Ten years after the passage of the Racial Equality Directive many EU governments were slashing funding and moving once-independent entities into larger human rights bodies, thereby diluting their influence. The institutions created by the equality Directives were under fire partly because of the ongoing fiscal crisis, but also due to political pressure. The RED was a set of policies which developed along with European integration in the 1990s, but ran into the integration slowdown after enlargement in the mid-2000s and a lack of prioritization by mostly conservative governments. This chapter continues the analysis of the impact of politics, focusing on the implementation of the equality Directives during a time of fiscal crisis for the EU. Using data from a 2010 survey distributed to EU equality bodies by staff of the Migration Policy Institute, the chapter compares implementation and the impact of budget cuts.

This chapter offers a historical summary of the emergence of the territorial nation-state as a universal political standard. It highlights an unequal and heterogeneous international system that prevailed at the beginning of the twentieth century. It shows how Japan, India, and Ireland, in different ways, struggled to overcome the power of existing international norms. The chapter then explores how positive international law used external recognition as a structural condition to control entry into the international system. Through a discussion of the Asian Relations Conference (1947), the final section argues that newly independent Asian countries rapidly internalized prevailing norms of territorial sovereignty by identifying ethnic minorities as a major political problem.

This chapter takes seriously the concept of Christian brotherhood, which emerged in the early civil rights years as a family language with the potential to undermine hierarchies involving racial difference. Brotherhood (and sometimes sisterhood) became a crucial idea for reformers hoping to get deeper inside human relationships than legal solutions to problems of discrimination seemed to promise. The chapter presents short intellectual studies of individual reformers who used the concept of brotherhood.

This chapter examines the development of antidiscrimination policy using a quantitative approach to discourse analysis. A series of documents is analyzed, beginning with the European Parliament’s first Committee of Inquiry which resulted in the Evrigenis report of 1986 and a second report in 1991. As the governments of France and Germany pushed for deeper political integration of the EU, they called for the creation of the Kahn Commission which produced a report that began to shift the discourse from anti-racism to antidiscrimination policy. The Amsterdam Treaty allowed the Commission to propose legislation in the area of antidiscrimination, so that after the Austrian parliamentary election of 1999, the Commission was able to present the draft Directive as a response to the entry of the far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government. The result was the passage of the Racial Equality Directive (RED) in 2000. The discourse analysis tracks the development of strategies and ultimately policy.

Born in August 1938 in Quincy, Florida, Priscilla Stephens was a civil rights activist along with her sister, Patricia. Priscilla and Patricia Stephens’s activism stemmed from an event of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in Miami during the summer of 1959. On July 1, 1960, Priscilla Stephens delivered a speech that was broadcast over the KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California. This chapter reproduces Stephens’s speech, in which she talked about how she and her sister Patricia established a CORE chapter in Tallahassee, integration in relation to the buses in the city, and the nonviolent protests and demonstrations they organized. She also recounted their experiences as leaders of the sit-in movement in Tallahassee.

This chapter examines the youth movement in Baltimore, from early NAACP college chapters to other groups in the 1960s. It looks at the NAACP’s creation of Youth Councils and College Chapters to sustain and mold the ongoing struggle and create continuity across the generations by socializing youth into black activist history. The chapter also considers how the NAACP channeled youth activism and discusses the role of the youth movement in pushing the anti-lynching campaign in Baltimore. Furthermore, it looks at the role of Juanita Jackson, daughter of NAACP Baltimore branch president Lillie M. Jackson, in the City Wide Young People’s Forum, and the group’s connection to the NAACP, along with the emergence of the radical youth group known as the Civic Interest Group and the Congress of Racial Equality.

This chapter analyzes the evolution of the first generation of women racial reformers after the 1954 Brown decision. Brown marked a turning point in the history of these “lady activists” for it led them to condemn segregation publicly, putting them at odds with their communities and leaders. Although their support of the Brown decision placed them among radicals in the eyes of segregationists, these women continued to rely on suasion and a non-confrontational approach to win the hearts and minds of their white fellow southerners. Churchwomen continued to advocate racial equality in the name of God's will. The chapter also examines the key contribution of the older generation to racial progress, through organizations such as the Fellowship of the Concerned, Councils on Human Relations, and local and state Leagues of Women Voters. It then focuses on “save-the-school” groups created by white women in Little Rock, Atlanta, and New Orleans between 1958 and 1961. It finally demonstrates that all these women developed similar tactics during the desegregation crisis, playing the cards of respectability, moderation, and ladyhood to confront segregationist male leaders successfully. At the same time, it analyzes the sense of empowerment that the crisis brought to many of them.

This chapter analyzes developments in antidiscrimination policy at the supranational level. In 1997, thirteen years after the European Parliament first placed the issue of racism on the European agenda, national governments unanimously agreed to add Article 13 to the Treaty of Amsterdam, thereby assigning the EU explicit authority to act with regard to discrimination on a number of grounds, including race and ethnic origin. They adopted the Racial Equality Directive three years later. The RED required member states to adopt within three years a specific set of national laws that prohibit discrimination on grounds of racial or ethnic origin in a wide array of public and private areas of life. Racial antidiscrimination policy was thereby unequivocally Europeanized.