‘Is there anywhere left that is not considered racist?’: Demystifying the online backlash against rural racism

Racism in the British countryside is under-acknowledged due to the dominant conceptualisations of the “rural idyll” – as opposed to the unstable and insecure urban life, the rural is romanticised as problem-free, idyllic, and a sanctuary from the harsh realities of everyday life. The objective of this study is to contribute to the creation of a more inclusive countryside through unpacking the varieties of online backlash provoked by the topic. A corpus of approximately 193,000 words was compiled from online news websites and social media. The analytical approach draws on methods of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Four major types of strategies were identified in response to discussions of race and racism in the rural context: us versus them, unleashing emotions, denial, and engagement with racism. The backlash stems from a lack of understanding of the significance of rural racism and evolving conceptualisations of racism.