The politics of anti-racism in Belgium

In the present environment of advanced industrial society and post-war migration toEurope it is impossible to ignore the role of ideas about immigration, nationalidentity and ‘race’ in shaping social and political relations.Although there is a public commitment in terms of official policies to the promotionof anti-racism and a multicultural society, racist movements and ideas areincreasingly part of the public political debate. The question of what can be doneto counter the influence of racist ideologies and extreme right-wing politicalparties is at the heart of contemporary concerns. Yet, there is considerableconfusion of what is meant by anti-racism and the policies and practices associatedwith it in different national contexts. Moreover, there are a variety of theoreticalapproaches and political perspectives about what kind of arguments and mobilizationsare necessary to curb the growth of racism. In Belgium, the anti-racist movement,Hand in Hand, has developed a diverse range of strategies to answer the issue ofeveryday racism and intolerance, to counter right-extremist ideas and to limit itspolitical influence. In this article, the focus will be on the political rhetoricdeveloped by the anti-racist movement in the 1990s, at the times of the nationaldemonstrations against racism, triggered by the electoral score of the extremeright-wing party, Vlaams Blok, in 1991. The results of a qualitative analysis of theinformation campaigns and media coverage of the anti-racist demonstrations of 1992,1994, 1998 and 2002 when 100,000 people marched in the streets of Brussels claimingequal rights and opposing racism and discrimination, should offer insights into howthe racialization of social and political relations is shaped by both discourses onracism and anti-racism