Structural Racism and Race Discrimination

What is the relationship between ‘racism’ and ‘race discrimination’? The paper explores this question. It shows that once we look beyond racism understood colloquially as individual bigotry, to racism understood in a structural sense as embedded in the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of the State itself, it is possible to locate racism in the practice of discrimination law, within the category of race discrimination. Yet, discrimination law frequently fails to grasp structural racism. The paper reveals how this happens and in turn shows how race discrimination can be infiltrated with a structural view of racism. The overall purpose is to establish that discrimination law fails to be relevant in the face of contemporary forms of racism in the absence of a structural view.