[Laura Sinclair <lesincla@CASBAH.ACNS.NWU.EDU> writes:]
I have been encouraged by some of the other bios--I had felt up to now like
an eavesdropper on this list, but it's good to see that other people are
interested in the same kinds of questions I am.
My name is Laura Sinclair. I am a PhD candidate in modern British history at
Northwestern U., Evanston, IL. My dissertation, still in the research stage,
is on how Britain dealt with race between 1948 and 1962--that is, between the
British Nationality Act 1948, which made ALL Commonwealth citizens equal
citizens of the U.K., and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, which began
the official repeal of free-entry privileges for Commonwealth citizens.
That's the framework, but my focus is on how racial issues and the meanings of
race were worked out at local levels in Nottingham, Birmingham, Cardiff, and
part of London. My hypothesis, in brief, is that Brits in this period
changed the way they used racial language. In the past, racial distinctions
had been applied to many different groups--ALL immigrants, ESPECIALLY Irish
and Jews, and yes (though mainly in the 19th century), even the working class
("a race apart")--but in the 1950s "race" (and related connotations about
ethnicity and nationality) became conflated with color differences, possibly
because of the increased visibility of non-whites in urban areas (due to
increases in Commonwealth immigration), possibly influenced by U.S.
sociology, possibly because of other factors relating to housing,
employment, or gender and sex distinctions.
I echo the earlier recommendation of Thomas Holt's article in the _American
Historical Review_ on race and "everyday-ness". Studies of official or
institutional policy about/definitions of race are absolutely necessary, but
the really interesting stuff is at the level of everyday, local interaction.