This presentation, under the umbrella of the COMBAT research project, analyses the ways in which the European media problematized the implementation of the ‘race directive’ as well as their dominant discourses on race and racism. My goal is to show that the contours of the discussions which resulted from the European racial legislation mirror the perspectives emerging from public debate in each country. The Portuguese and the British context are the main focus. Since the post-war period the dominant narratives in europe have been based on conceptions of tolerance and respect by cultural differences as inherent characteristics of the European civilization. The dominant media discourses on race and racism have been relying on the prejudice paradigm, which considers racism as a set of ideas or beliefs shared by certain individuals. So, and drawing from Barnor Hesse, what remains is seen as ’a pathology, a profound moral deviation from the western liberal and democratic ethos’. Metaphorically speaking, those individuals are rotten apples.As stressed by Frantz Fanon, +than 50 years ago, race is central to the construction of European project. So, we should abandon those conceptions that classify racism as a kind of mental disorder.

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Racism,Legislation,Media,Europe,Portugal,Anti-racism