The Contract Compliance Policy: an Illustration of the Persistence of Racism as the Failure of Modernity

Abstract

This paper is a study of the contract compliance policy, a policy aiming at imple menting more racial equality by using public procurement as an incentive for com panies to adopt an attitude of non-discrimination in employment. This policy was recently the subject of the attention of the Commission for Racial Equality. This paper presents the policy, delineates its legal framework and sums up the results of the research carried out by the Commission as to its effectiveness. It also examines the conformity of the policy with European legislation in the field of public procurement. An attempt is then made to account for the relative failure of the policy in terms of the tensions inhabiting the modern nation as well as the European Union. Namely, racism - and the subsequent low effectiveness of racial discrimination policies - will be envisaged as the outcome of the irreducible contradiction between the modernist desire to accommodate all particularities since the modern nation claims to embody universality, while the need for a community of blood and soil as between members of the same nation - the justification of the persistence of the nation-state as the unit of government - requires that racial others be always considered as less than nation als.