Review of Racial Violence in the U.K

I will be reviewing Jon Burnett’s article called, “After Lawrence: racial violence and policing in the UK”. This is regarding the incident of the murder of a black youth and the government policies that took effect leading up to after his death. Burnett is arguing that asylum policies issued by the government of the United Kingdom are the main reasons that racism has been increasing in the UK since 1993, by looking at statistics of racial crimes in certain neighborhoods inhabited by large groups of minorities. http://rac.sagepub.com/content/54/1/91.full.pdf+html One particular government policy that Burnett touches on is asylum policies. These are used in order to keep a certain group of people within a specific urban or rural area, however due to the economic structure some people who are committing racial acts towards asylum seekers feel that these people are after their jobs.
These developmental policies are in fact creating new forms of racism. Racial ideas are deeply embedded within society because it is due to these government policies that are creating extreme hatred for certain groups of minorities such as people from the Islamic community. Burnett uses Goldberg’s theoretical perspective on race in his article, because Goldberg often uses the concept that the idea of race is deeply implanted within society, and one way that this happens is through discourse. The way in which society talks about a specific group of people has enormous consequences for marginalized groups. How do you think Jon Burnett’s article look if other theorist’s perspectives were used? Also what are some other ways in which this article pertains to what has been discussed in class?
  Burnett talks about what has happened to the Muslim community in the U.K after the 7/7 bombings took place and how violence against this marginalised group of people has increased. How the media describes certain people often has racial consequences against certain communities. If we take a look at, “the war on terror”, which has been a media phenomenon in the west since September 11th 2001, the news is constantly trying to portray the Muslim population as animals. For example when the United States invaded Iraq they described Saddam Hussein as a spider living in a hole. Messages like this that dehumanize others are conveying to the general masses that this group of people is enemy and it is acceptable to go to war and kill marginalized groups because they are less human and pose a threat to western values. Ethnocentric messages such as these are the roots of modern racism and they come from government officials making the public feel as if they are better than the people they are at war with by creating certain stereotypes about people that are supposedly against western values. What does this say about western values? What are messages from the media in Canada saying about groups of minorities?