Race for recognition

Being described as a bear and held up to ridicule as a "professor of hip hop" are occupational hazards. But I would like to clear up a more important misapprehension. I have never proposed the ditching of anti-racist policies. Britain needs them now more than ever. Those initiatives are necessary, but, by themselves, they are insufficient to bring about more just and democratic arrangements. That distinction is difficult to explain.

Paul Gilroy Professor of sociology and African American studies, Yale University