But in forcing workers to unite to defend their living standards capitalism creates the basis for undermining racism, even as it perpetuates it. So successive generations of newcomers to Britain and those who settled here earlier have whittled away at prejudice. Women today do not fear being drugged and shipped to Shanghai when they go to a Chinese takeaway. Racism, however, remains. It is concentrated in the institutions of capitalist society.
Black people are five times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than whites.
That institutionalised racism perpetuates the stereotype of young black men as criminals. And new scapegoats are found, as is happening today over asylum seekers. The result is racism, not only against asylum seekers, but against other immigrant groups as well. Robin Cook praises the multicultural mix that makes up Britain today. Labour has attacked Tory racist scapegoating before.