R-A-C-I-S-T, find out what it means to me

A local Standards Committee last week cleared Councillor Gail Kenney of Cambridgeshire of the ‘racial offence’ of ‘offending a group of Muslim girls’. Kenney met with the Soni Kuriz Young Asian Women’s Group last June. She demanded to know why someone would want to wear a headscarf, saying she found burkhas ‘frightening and intimidating’ and that they could be used by terrorists as a disguise (which is true, and has already happened). Kenney also said in response to a request for another mosque that, ‘we’ve got one already – do you want one on every street?’, and suggested that a college drop-out present at the meeting would ‘end up getting married to someone illiterate from back home’. Not the most diplomatic of performances, certainly – but did Kenney’s remarks really deserve a 9-month long investigation?

Article 2 of the Local Authorities Model Code of Conduct (2001) states that councillors should ‘promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person’ and should ‘treat others with respect’, while Article 4 cautions against bringing one’s ‘office or authority into disrepute’. The young Muslim women claimed Kenney had broken these rules.

The danger in submitting elected representatives, or indeed anyone else, to codes of conduct that prescribe ‘respect’ is of course that in today’s censorious climate, almost anything can be (and is) interpreted as disrespectful. Indeed, the Cambridge Campaign Against the Arms Trade has accused another Cambridgeshire councillor of violating the Code of Conduct by calling them ‘pathetic’. Rather than focusing on the issues at stake – say, the right to dress as one pleases, rallying community support to demand the council build a mosque, or take action against the arms trade – groups instead cry foul about the way they are treated and spoken to. The claim is not that Kenney is corrupt, incompetent, or even wrong to hold the views she does, but that her replies conveyed inadequate ‘respect’ for someone else’s point of view.

But whether someone’s view is worthy of respect is contestable, not something to be pre-determined by a Code of Conduct, or indeed by someone's identity. Ideas should be judged on their merits and be debated openly and robustly – that is the only way we can test their validity. The Soni Kuriz group could have responded to Kenney by explaining their desire to wear headscarves, or making the case for additional mosques. If they felt strongly enough, they could have campaigned against her publicly and let the electorate decide her fate. Instead, they threw their hands up and cried foul, attempting to have her removed by a Standards Board comprised of mostly unelected representatives, on the grounds that she was rude to them.

Events like this are increasingly common and show up three troubling trends. The first is the use of unelected authorities to try to get rid of or silence elected representatives – highlighted most memorably by the campaign to have London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone, removed from office for a supposedly anti-Semitic comment. This degrades public life by allowing a handful of ‘offended’ individuals to pursue a politically-motivated campaign that is not subjected to public involvement.

This is facilitated by the second trend, the rise of speech codes in public life. This gives ammunition to those who want to bring down elected officials without going to the trouble of using democratic means.

This produces a third, and possibly the most dangerous trend: the tendency to suppress all speech on ‘controversial’ racial or religious issues. This simply reinforces the public image of Muslim groups as particularly sensitive to criticism and as unable or unwilling to engage in robust discussion. Indeed, the Soni Kuriz group has now vowed to never invite a councillor to speak again. Speech codes that seem to pander to such groups simply tend to infuriate everyone else. More importantly, they do absolutely nothing to challenge racist or other discriminatory attitudes in society. Councillor Kenney’s views were never countered with better arguments and shown to be wrong. In this case they are not even ruled to be disrespectful. No one has changed their minds after this episode about the nature of burkhas, the socio-economic conditions of young Muslim women, or the need for another mosque in Arbury. Its only outcome is the further retreat of the Soni Kuriz group from public engagement, and a chilling effect on free speech.

Lee Jones

Leave the idiots to it...

The proposed code of conduct for blogs has highlighted a common confusion between censorship and editorial judgement. While the idea of 'content warnings' for uncensored blogs is patronising, the implication that decisions about publication can or should be made according to a code of conduct is downright objectionable. The web as a whole is quite rightly unregulated, but there's no reason people shouldn't make their own decisions over what they allow on their own sites. Dissenters are free to post comments elsewhere, or to set up their own sites. What is difficult is settling on what is a reasonable degree of regulation to facilitate open debate, rather than a straightforward editorial line.

At a public meeting, a good chairperson will shut people up if they speak too long or talk nonsense, and will also set the tone of debate, usually discouraging abuse or swearing. Nobody sensible thinks of this as 'censorship'. Indeed, in a narrow legal sense, the organisers of a meeting (or whoever is paying for the room) have absolute discretion over who speaks and what they are allowed to say. If the organisers want the event to be taken seriously as a debate, however, they are obliged to allow dissent, subject to commonly agreed terms of civility. Most of the time, this happens fairly spontaneously and without controversy. While the same principle applies to online discussion, various factors make the issue more vexed: the psychological distance afforded by the medium, and the possibility of anonymity, both contribute to a weakening of civility. Perhaps more importantly, the diversity of possible contributors to a discussion, and their often conflicting agendas, mean there is often little or no agreement about what is and is not reasonable.

Rather than despairing at the deterioration of some online discussions into childish abuse and worse, however, we should take heart from the fact that so many online discussions work so well. This happens when people do share at least a basic idea of what the discussion is for, and the terms of engagement. Often this develops spontaneously, but sometimes a little moderation is required: as long as everyone involved acts in good faith, it really doesn't matter. We all make judgements when looking at online forums about how seriously to take them, and whether it is worth taking part. The smart thing to do is to steer clear of flame wars, and leave the idiots to it. And those of us who believe in free speech should lose no sleep over advising childish and abusive contributors to our websites to go exercise their freedom elsewhere.

Dolan Cummings

Codifying conduct on the 'net

A blogging code of conduct has been devised by Tim O'Reilly, the digital media developer, which aims to restrict any content deemed to be abusive, harassing or threatening to others from appearing in blog spaces. Although, the report begins with the phrase, 'we celebrate the blogsphere because it embraces frank and open conversation,' it then goes on to say that any unacceptable content should be deleted. The new code could possibly be implemented after it has been amended by other bloggers.

The idea of online censorship follows complaints from a prominent blogger, Kathy Sierra, after she received death threats on her blog. Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that Kathy may just be oversensitive and lack perspective when it comes to online banter. Surely we must challenge the idea that we are not robust enough to handle the occasional insult or bad-mannered blogger in the name of a more open online dialogue.

Although one can make the case that you don't have to be insulting to get your point across, how long will it be until certain unpopular ideas, such as opposing the ‘green’ agenda, are deemed ‘insulting’? It is not right that blogs - which enable discussion between millions of people on the internet - should be censored to prevent a small number of people from being offended.

So much for the web being an open forum for discussion and debate...

Suzy Dean

Reasons for the irrational

Last night’s television threw up a thoughtful challenge to free speech advocates. The program I refer to was the latest documentary from Louis Theroux. In it, he spends a few weeks embedded with the Phelps family, who call themselves the Most Hated Family in America. This moniker is quite possibly true: the extended Phelps family, which together with a few other friends and converts comprise the Westboro Baptist Church, are notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq with gaudy yellow signs that scream pleasantries such ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Thank God for IEDs’ (Improvised Explosive Devices, as used by Iraqi insurgents). The reason they do so, naturally, is that America is doomed to hell as a result of its tolerance of homosexuality, and therefore any soldiers that die in its name are worthy of the most vicious censure. Significantly, Congress has passed a number of laws specifically to limit the activities of the family, including making them stage their demonstrations a good distance from the funerals themselves.

It is not hard to condemn the repellent doctrine of the Phelps. But what makes their case relevant to the defence of free speech doesn't lie in finding strong arguments with which to confront this kind of doctrine, but in the difficulty their critics have in meaningfully engaging with them at all. They resisted every argument put forward by Theroux, both theological and humanistic, without even the merest hint that they might waver from their church’s orthodoxy. This is not to say that a professor of theology would have succeeded where Theroux failed, as his engagements with them hardly turned on the finer points of biblical doctrine, and in any case the lanky journalist is a master at probing the weaknesses of any rigid standpoint. The reason why his discussions with the family were entirely fruitless was not that he lacked the necessary theological understanding, but rather because the ideology of the Westboro Baptist Church is impervious to reason. This then raises the interesting questions: what is the relationship between reason and free speech, and to what extent is the former a constitutive ingredient of the latter? Certainly reason is an indispensible building block in the construction of a robust discursive culture, for in the absence of reasoned arguments real debate is effectively impossible. So is free speech concerned only with an engagement that carries the possibility of a constructive, or meaningful outcome?

The danger lying in wait for this line of argument can easily be anticipated. Once an opinion is deemed irrational it is a small step to say that it doesn’t deserve public expression, or even that it should be legislated against, particularly if it is pernicious and driven by hate. The problem clearly concerns who is to make such judgments. Reason, just as much as dogma, can easily become a powerful tool for oppression. Further, it should be noted that part of what it means to debate is concerned with smoothing out the irrational in any given perspective, and about having the weaknesses or unsubstantiated elements of an argument tested against the minds of other people. It is therefore very difficult to divide the rational and irrational into clear-cut categories in this context. A tentative answer might then be that while reason is necessary to a constructive debate, the right to free speech goes further than this, and must embrace speech that is not sustainable (by most people's standards) by reasoned argument. Indeed, there does seem to be some merit in even the most unconstructive discussions, if they are open and frank, even if such merit lies only in the very fact of their taking place as opposed to their suppression. This question must be explored further, but for the time being we can thank the Phelps for highlighting the contentious importance of pointlessness.

Beau Hopkins

Bad language

As was pointed out in a recent post below, the case of George, the 10-year-old whose parents were shocked to receive a visit from the police after he called another boy ‘gay’ in an email, is indeed disturbing. But what is the proper response to this kind of incident? We can cry ‘police state!’ and remonstrate about ‘PC gone mad’. We can also be sensible and point to the waste of police time. We can even be more nuanced and take issue with the policing, in the place of the parenting, of children. But that misses the point.

This is a free speech issue at heart. And it’s more complicated than it appears.

As a way of clarifying the matter, let’s compare George’s case with a hypothetical ‘hate crime’: a gay man is bullied, perhaps even assaulted, during the course of which he is called ‘gay boy’ in a derogatory manner. In such a case, it would be foolish to focus on the aggressor’s use of the word ‘gay’. Firstly there is the criminal issue to deal with and then, more importantly (socially speaking), there is the real underlying problem of homophobia. A case such as this would warrant our moral condemnation and a political argument against homophobia, not speech codes against the use of the word ‘gay’.

On the other hand, you have little George in Cheshire. In his ‘bullying’ of the other boy, his use of the word ‘gay’ is purely incidental. It bears about as much relation to homophobic assault as the fumigation of your house to deal with a pest problem does to Saddam Hussein’s attack on Halabja (i.e. they both used gas). This emphasises the real problem with the above responses to this case: they all work on the assumption that the boy is at fault and that the very use of the word ‘gay’ is wrong.

Leaving aside the question of bullying, what is there to suggest that George’s use of the word ‘gay’ is problematic? Do we think he is a homophobe, that he’ll grow up to attack gay men? As I’ve argued before, this relatively recent tendency to endow words with greater meaning than that which was intended by the speaker draws undue attention to the capacity of language to cause offence, rather than language’s paramount importance in permitting rational argument. The consequence of taking issue with the language we use amongst ourselves is the legitimisation of third party intervention, which in this particular case seems so utterly preposterous.

Alex Hochuli

Unmaking history

April Fool’s day has come and gone, but at least one crazy story remains real: schools are dropping History lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades for fear of offending Muslim pupils. A Department for Skills and Education report revealed that a school in northern England avoided the Holocaust for fear of confronting ‘anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial’ among some pupils, while another avoided the Crusades because ‘their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was being taught in some local mosques’.

This is the politics of multiculturalism taken to its most relativistic and dangerous limits. The pernicious notion that all cultures and beliefs are equal and should be elevated above criticism in order to promote social harmony naturally translates into a degraded relativism where there is no one truth whose foundations cannot be assailed on cultural grounds. Because some -in practice, probably very few indeed- Muslim pupils are peddled propaganda at home or at the mosque, everyone learning history at these schools is denied the opportunity to learn about these important historical events is not only reprehensible, but also potentially dangerous, as those children who are fed lies will never see them challenged in an open environment.

The stupidity of such practices, particularly at a time when bleating about ‘Holocaust denial’ has reached epic proportions, is astounding. Here we have schools practically guaranteeing ignorance about the Holocaust, and thereby creating fertile ground for denial to take root, simply because of their own cowardice in trying to avoid a clash of cultures in the classroom. Education should be challenging. It should open up new worlds for students and, yes, shock them out of narrow-minded prejudices and encourage them to engage critically with what they encounter. Otherwise, what is the point? We might as well leave kids at home and let them simply parrot whatever they overhear. Or invite religious organisations to take over education wholesale. Ah, but I forget: that policy is already being implemented.

Lee Jones

Speech police

That it is ridiculous to try to ban the use of the word ‘gay’ in the sense of ‘naff’ or ‘rubbish’ has already been amply demonstrated. Any attempt to impose such a ban not only fails to address the issues surrounding its use in a properly homophobic sense -thereby doing nothing to tackle real homophobia in society- but it also imposes a creed of appropriateness on people's behaviour. The response to the use of the term is more concerned with creating an atmosphere of ‘ooh, you can’t say that!’ than actually defeating any underlying prejudice, which is actually more often imagined than real.

These speech codes are usually policed by self-righteous, hand-wringing ‘liberals’ in human resources departments, local councils or student unions. But if you want evidence that the codes are becoming more rigorously enforced, look no further than an incredible incident in Cheshire on Saturday, when no fewer than four police officers turned up to reprimand a 10-year-old child for using the word ‘gay’ in an email to his friend. The friend’s parents reported this to the police, who tracked down the dangerous perpetrator with the help of his school – which is appropriate, since the boys in blue now seem to be very concerned about playground banter. Reportedly, 10-year-old George is now terrified of being thrown in jail, though the police insist their response was ‘proportionate’. Still, he won’t be saying ‘gay’ again any time soon, eh?

Lee Jones

UPDATE: Resistance melts

Tragically, the people of New York will be deprived of the exhibition 'My Sweet Lord' after management at the Roger Smith Hotel, site of the Lab Gallery, pulled the work, caving into pressure from the Catholic League.

The gallery’s creative director, Matt Selmer, has tendered his resignation in protest at the ‘strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing. They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions’. But it is his employers’ spinelessness that will further intensify the ‘chilling effect’ for any artist who dares to offend the fragile sensibilities of Catholics, or any other religious group for that matter.