Such a reimagining would speak both to the increasing number of people who have 'multiple identities' and the 'hybrid cultural forms' emerging in music and the arts. In one fell swoop, the Parekh Report not only undid Macpherson, but undid anti-racism too. Macpherson had put racism, and especially institutional racism, four-square on the nation's agenda. Racism, we were being told, was really about identity, inclusion and rebranding. And the fight against racism had once again been degraded to a fight for culture and identity.
Representation is all.
But, as A. Sivanandan commented, 'changing the tag does not change the goods'. It was the fact that those first 55 pages, and particularly the section on Britishness, were couched in the private, elitist, postmodern gobbledygook beloved of the ivory tower intellectuals, that really did for the report. The Conservatives now have an excellent chance to make good their past silence on Macpherson', it editorialised on 12 October. Home Secretary Straw himself was the first to defend Britishness from the alleged racist slur, attacking the political left as 'unpatriotic'. For not since the hey-day of the Greater London Council and the attacks on the 'Loony Left' have Norman Tebbit, Roger Scruton and even Ray Honeyford had so much coverage.