Excellent. Gets to grips with complex and changing ideas. - Rated 
Ali Rattansi's `Very Short Introduction to Racism' is an excellent overview and update on some of the latest social scientific understandings of racism, it's history and the evolution of racist ideas. Rattansi also tackles issues which many people will find difficult, such as why there isn't actually any such thing as race and, therefore, how can there be racism if there is no race? It's excellent, although I do have a few quibbles.
Rattansi starts with an understanding of what racism is rather than a precise definition of racism, which he regards as unhelpful in attempting to understand an ever evolving phenomenon. He also offers an overview of the history of racism, confirming that such notions are not present throughout most of human history and are the product of the modern era, beginning, according to Rattansi, with the age of discovery and the start of European colonialism in Africa and the New World.
Here's a quibble, Rattansi says; "The question of exactly how much slavery contributed to doctrines of race is a matter of dispute." True. But he could mention that the idea that it is not is very much a minority position. Rattansi does not deal, for example, with the change in slavery's `racial' practice in the period after Bacon's Rebellion.
The role of the Enlightenment is neatly dealt with by reference to Linnaeus' `scientific' categorisation of humanity and the further development of scientific racism in the nineteenth century.
The role of nationalism in the development of racist ideas is explored and the complexity and confusion of national and racial notions are shown in the coalescence of ideas of race, nation, people, citizen, culture and class. Rattansi shows the paradox of the British working class and the Irish being portrayed as `negroid' in the early part of the nineteenth century, only to be admitted to the ranks of the `white race' at the height of the imperial age and the scramble for Africa.
Rattansi then discusses the Holocaust and the consequent loss of credibility for scientific racism that occurred as a result. A second blow is delivered to scientific racism by science itself, by biology and genetics - the fact that, as individuals genetically vary more than the supposed racial groups into which they have been categorised - race does not, actually, exist.
We are thus left with the conundrum of racism without races. Rattansi tackles this well at the start of the book by pointing out that the Nazi definition of `Who is a Jew?' always contained a cultural as well as a supposed biological element. He goes on to demonstrate, through the speeches of people like Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher, how the process of racialisation works; an acknowledgement of a wide spectrum and confusion of views with a myriad of taken for granted assumptions regarding race, nation, ethnicity and `way of life'.
Understanding this process enables Rattansi to see Islamophobia as racism. He, rightly, dislikes the term `Islamophobia' - it is not, after all, a psychological condition - but does not offer the obvious alternative of `anti-Muslim racism'. Rattansi also misses a chance to demonstrate the continuity between `Islamophobia' and previous racist ideas: the Powell/Thatcher notion that New Commonwealth (ie black) immigrants are culturally inferior due to their `race', the notions of the Eurabia conspiracy theory and how that borrows from traditional anti-semitism. Rattansi does give an excellent example in the opposition to Turkish membership of the EU on the basis that Turks can never be European because they are Muslim but, again, misses the continuity here from Enlightenment ideas that `Europe ended at the mind of the Turk'.
Interesting discussions follow on the notion of intention in racist ideas, illustrated by well known recent quotes from Robert Kilroy-Silk and Ron Atkinson.
The notion of scapegoating as a Freudian explanation for racism is, rightly, dismissed. Although, here, I feel, Rattansi missed an opportunity to make a point about power and powerlessness in class society and how this feeds racist scapegoating.
The book finishes with interesting discussions on notions of institutional racism, affirmative action, the increasing success of fascist parties such as the BNP and how notions of a Clash of Civilisations also can feed racist ideas.
So, recommended reading. I'd follow this up with Arun Kundnani's excellent `The End of Tolerance'.
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