Race out of the closet

Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered in 1993, has launched a broadside against Boris Johnson, citing a 2002 article in which he refers to ‘flag-waving piccaninnies’ (a pejorative term for black children) and suggesting that when Tony Blair visited the Congo, ‘the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief’. According to Lawrence, ‘This is the most offensive language of the colonial past and it shows that the Tory party is riddled with racial prejudice. No one with such views can be the mayor of a city with the largest black population in Britain.’

Have Lawrence, or the MPs Diane Abbot and Dawn Butler who have jumped on this bandwagon, even read the article? The Telegraph op-ed piece is actually an attack on the British political elite – not black people. Johnson suggests the Queen travels to the Commonwealth so often because it’s the only place she can attract large crowds of flag-waving kids – which is arguably true. More substantively, he lambastes Tony Blair for his constant jet-setting around the world’s troubled hotspots with his arrogant conviction that he can bring peace – while ignoring problems at home such as transport, healthcare and education. It is in fact a perfectly reasonable article that uses the ‘offensive language of the colonial past’ to ridicule Blair’s liberal imperialism and his disconnection from the ordinary people who elected him to solve their problems – not gallivant around the world dispensing his own brand of messianic wisdom. The failure of the ‘liberal’ media to explain this in their reports means Johnson’s enemies can slur with impunity.

It seems pretty obvious that Lawrence has been put up to this by Ken Livingstone’s office. On Radio 4’s Today programme last week, he said he was half-way through reading Johnson’s old columns to dredge up muck against him. Very likely the quotations in this article were fed to Lawrence so she could use her apparently apolitical position to attack Johnson as a racist. These are smear tactics of the worst kind, playing on the iconic status of a 14-year-old murder (the police’s role in which, incidentally, Boris recognised – despite his broadsides against political correctness – was marred by ‘racialist’ attitudes) to score cheap political points.

If this is the best evidence they could dig up to ‘prove’ Johnson is a racist, their case is pretty weak and reflects the Labour party’s own desperation – its tactics of trying to discredit Tories by suggesting they’re all closet racists is wearing decidedly thin. Moreover, Lawrence’s attack reveals the regulatory thought-policing that is commonplace among supposedly ‘liberal’ opinion today. In another article, Johnson slammed proposals to make racist speech in private illegal, noting that ‘not even under the law of Ceausescu’s Romania could you be prosecuted for what you said in your own kitchen’. Lawrence refused to accept this, saying: ‘clearly it can never be acceptable to hold those views. Anyway, what is said in private normally manifests itself out in public’. Since Johnson’s enemies are apparently woefully unable to find any public ‘manifestation’ of his supposed racism, perhaps their next call will be for MI6 to bug his kitchen.

Lee Jones

Chants, rants, Rangers and racism

Glasgow Rangers’ new American winger DaMarcus Beasley may have helped his club by more than just scoring the only goal in Tuesday night’s Champions League qualifier against FK Zeta in Montenegro. Rangers went through 3-0 on aggregate, but it was Beasley’s complaints about racist chants from the Zeta fans that made the headlines the next day. Abuse of visiting black players is still common at matches in that part of the world, and no doubt unpleasant for those on the receiving end, but the real significance of the story was that it meant for once it wasn’t the Rangers fans who were being scrutinised.

In recent years, fans of the Glasgow team have been under increasing pressure to stop singing their traditional songs and chants, which have a notably anti-Catholic flavour (long story – I refer curious readers to something I wrote last year). While the songs in question are undoubtedly offensive – as with many if not most football songs, that’s kind of the point – they have little bearing on the real world, and it is not at all clear who is supposed to be harmed by them. The growing clamour to stamp out these songs, with official threats to deduct points from the club if the fans persist, has less to do with the behaviour of Rangers fans themselves than with a colossal loss of perspective on the part of the chattering classes. The sentiment behind calls for something to be done was perfectly expressed by Mike Small, a Scottish lefty from central casting, in a Guardian Comment is Free post this week. It is not only unworldly, but mean-spirited and unbearably self-righteous; I’m tempted to say bigoted.

While the Scottish Premier League delegate (or chief inquisitor) reported fans for shouting ‘Fuck the Pope’ at Rangers’ opening game of the season in Inverness on Saturday, it seems those who travelled to Montenegro heeded the club’s warning to ‘behave’ rather than risk having the team forced to play behind closed doors. The attention given to racist chants by Zeta fans may be a welcome relief for the time being, but ultimately any defensive finger-pointing (like the tiresome insistence that Celtic fans sing sectarian songs too) is only likely to reinforce the censorious culture that threatens to make Ibrox sound more like a kindergarten than a football stadium.

As a Rangers fan, I’m looking forward to the new season, and hope we stick it to the Celtic. I’m less interested in DaMarcus Beasley’s colour than in whether he can be the new Peter Lovenkrands, but with more consistency. That’s the sort of question people should be debating the morning after a match, rather than scrutinising the repertoire in the stands. The inquisitors of UEFA, the SPL and the comment pages can just fuck off.

Dolan Cummings

Is it cuz I iz in your mind?

Nigel Marlow, principal psychology lecturer at flagship managerialiser of universities, London Metropolitan University, has developed a programme for businesses to test for ‘implicit racist attitudes’ in job applicants. Dubbed 'violator of the subconscious' by the mainstream press, and recently bemoaned by shadow work and pensions secretary Philip Hammond ('where does it stop?'), the test has quickly gained stardom as the 'thought-police' of our times.

Its celebrity, however, is likely to be short-lived, given its utterly reductive measurement criteria: the test consists of a quick-fire flicking of black and white faces on a screen which the potential racist immediately puts into categories of ‘good/positive’ and ‘bad/negative'. It begs the question: which is worse? That all people are exhaustively either black or white or that we’re allowed only two responses to those we meet – positive or negative? As the Telegraph points out, people hold associations for all sorts of reasons. The test assumes our primary reaction to each other is based on skin colour, not, for example, on whether we are attracted to each other’s faces or are distracted by that spot under your nose. It will only ‘catch’ people who aren’t aware enough of their reactions to control them. If you’re one of those pesky racists with phenomenal mind-control however, you get to prolong your silent and harmless affront to humanity.

Throw in the language of ‘unmasking’ racists, and you have the perfect game of tag for bored office-workers. But beyond the distraction of the test's obvious absurdity lies the more worrying assumption that an instantaneous, pre-rationalised generalisation based on skin-colour counts as racism, and that civilised society is therefore being undermined by our subconscious. Apparently, for Nigel Marlow and London Met, attempting to monitor and manage attitudes I’m not even conscious of and making my knee-jerk emotional responses more important than my rationally reflected ones counts as upholding civility. If this is the thought police, they'll be no more effective than the body police who hang around London tube stations, glaring at all the brown people.

Sarah Boyes

OfCom Slams Channel 4 Reality TV Racism! … Oh… wait… no they don’t…

Anyone who’s been following the news in Britain in the past few months can’t have escaped the Big Brother racism rows. Firstly, ‘celebrity’ Jade Goody became a national hate symbol for her bullying of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, calling her amongst other things “Shilpa Poppadom”. Channel 4 were roundly condemned by everyone from Gordon Brown, to a Bihari mob (who burnt effigies of executives), to Ofcom, Britain’s self righteous post-hoc TV censors. Then, in the next series of BB, Emily Parr was unceremoniously cast out of the house for using the “N word” (bizarrely quite innocently) to another contestant. The chastening effect of Ofcom’s condemnation and the media furore around CBB seems to have prompted the producers’ tough action.

But almost simultaneously, on the show Shipwrecked, ex-public schoolgirl Lucy Buchanan was busy declaring that black people were “bad”, that she hoped for the restoration of slavery and the British Empire, and that she didn’t like fat and ugly people (insert uncharitable joke here). Ofcom’s recently published reaction this time defended Channel 4’s right to include unpopular views in the programme (of course with the proviso that these were “in context”).

Whilst of course it’s always good to hear anyone attacking limits on freedom of expression, frankly what the hell is going on? To me, Lucy’s views are a lot more coherently obnoxious that the rather arbitrary faux pas committed by the other two; more reminiscent of the traditional racism of the elite, rather than the ‘chavtastic’ chauvinism of someone like Goody. However in a time where xenophobia is seen as a rather proley pursuit, and often as a tool to bash the white working class, Goody makes a good punchbag.

However I think incoherence is more of a motivation than class war. Without a clear idea of what it wants to censor or why (unlike for instance with Irish Republicans in the 1980s), Ofcom has made it up on the hoof, condemning displays of pseudo-racism one day, and permitting real displays on another. But as was noted previously on this blog, the encouraging part of this story was the reaction of the other contestants who argued against Lucy’s bigotry- they had faith in talking and arguing rather than shutting people up. If only the same could be said for Ofcom.

Robin Walsh

Showing the race card

With depressing predictability, incoming Fifa vice-president John McBeth is to be investigated by a new ethics committee following some unguarded comments to a group of Scottish Sunday newspaper reporters. The former Clyde FC chairman's brief with football's international governing body - assuming he still gets the job - will be to tackle corruption, and he suggested that the African associations are particularly guilty: 'I know two or three whom I'd want to count my fingers after shaking hands with them', he said. Inevitably this has provoked charges of racism. In reality, McBeth's only crime was to be in possession of conventional prejudices about Africa (which may be well-founded in this case) in lethal combination with a sense of humour. He also joked that he only got Britain's vice-president slot because everybody hates the English. Didn't he know football bureaucrats are supposed to be boring?

Dolan Cummings

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

Desert island discussions

More than any of its rivals in the reality TV market, Channel 4 has proved the most adept at stimulating and satisfying our taste for violent confrontation. Moments of explosive conflict between contestants have now become the primary aim of much of C4’s output in this field. The channel’s success owes much to the cherry-picking of individuals willing to speak their minds, irrespective of what ugly thoughts might spew forth. The latest of such gems, 18-year-old Lucy Buchanan, can be found roaming the desert island reality show Shipwrecked.

Fresh from public school and complete with Victorian perspectives on race and sex, she already stated, in one of the first instalments, that slavery ought to be brought back. On this past Sunday’s episode she once again obliged by commenting on women’s supposed inherent inferiority to men. When a fellow contestant, Jo Davis – an outspoken lesbian DJ – heard the comment, she gasped in horror before fiercely reproaching Lucy. The trailer for the episode predictably featured this tantalising glimpse, and viewers were promised the thrill of a fiery shouting match.

As it turned out, it didn’t live up to its promise. Rather than a verbal battering of the prim and privileged Lucy by the forceful Jo, viewers were treated to a thoughtful discussion between the two. Jo invited Lucy to explain her views before suggesting that these probably did not correspond with Lucy’s and her own experience, inherited as they probably were from her parents and grandparents. The discussion lasted about five minutes, at the end of which Lucy accepted the force of Jo’s argument and both went back to lounging in the shade.

The discussion may have been brief, but it was significant. Not because the ‘right’ view won out, but rather because of the exemplary attitude shown by Jo: she engaged with a position that she found abhorrent and self-evidently wrong, and rather than denying Lucy a voice by denouncing her as a bigot, Jo entered into dialogue and a constructive exchange of ideas ensued.

It is precisely this sort of attitude that encourages others less bold – or more circumspect – than Lucy to speak freely where they might otherwise have bitten their tongues and censored themselves for fear of giving offence or attracting censure. I say this not simply to encourage more people to air racist or misogynist views, but rather because it is only through doing so that such prejudices can be properly challenged. Jo provided a telling reminder of how fundamental such an attitude is to free and frank discussion and, more generally, to the establishment of a robust discursive culture.

Beau Hopkins

More PC at the FC

Yet another story involving racism and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club: last week, eight schoolchildren in Ware, near London, were arrested after a teacher saw a video on YouTube showing them chanting 'Yid Army' at his leaving do. As argued previously, this has nothing to do with racism; rather this incident highlights a growing tendency to assume the worst, and to apply informal but fastidious speech codes in ever more bizarre contexts.

In any case, football crowds have never been known for their PC sensitivity, and their rowdy chants and songs have often attracted the attentions of the censorious. While racist chants were relatively common when black players first began to appear in British football in the 1970s and 1980s - in the context of a far more racist society - they are largely unknown today. (The reaction to racist chants by a small number of Motherwell supporters at a recent game showed that racism is considered embarrassingly beyond the pale by football fans today.) Nonetheless, fans will use just about any other kind of abuse to wind up opposition players and supporters, with 'sectarian' chants and songs common in Scotland, and 'homophobic' abuse common everywhere. The authorities are increasingly anxious to rid the game of these unseemly features. The European football body UEFA recently fined Rangers because their fans sang the sectarian song 'Billy Boys' in Villareal, Spain, while the English Football Association recently decided to ban 'homophobic' chanting.

Leaving aside the straightforward free speech argument - these are chants and songs, not sticks and stones - the bans are based on a basic misunderstanding of what is happening at football matches. A football stadium is not a debating chamber or a public square where ideas are taken seriously and have bearing on real life. As Mick Hume has argued, 'football is the home-ground of the id', where people go to unwind by indulging their irrational passions for ninety minutes. As a matter of fact, there is virtually no sectarianism in Scotland today outside football grounds - the 'sectarian' songs are a peculiar expression of football rivalry, not a window on the soul of the nation. Similarly, 'homophobic' chants are not meant to insult gays and lesbians in general - again, there is overwhelming indifference to homosexuality in the world beyond the turnstiles - but to antagonise particular players, who may or may not be gay. (It's not big and it's not clever, but the implication that someone is gay is the cell form of male humour, and says pretty much nothing about broader social attitudes.) Banning this kind of abuse does not simply deprive people of the right to express their opinions; worse, it deprives them of the right to spout nonsense even when they don't mean it.

This is not simply irritating for those of us who enjoy the free and anarchic atmosphere of the football stadium - or indeed the leaving do. It encourages a humourless, witchhunting mentality that sees every slip from PC orthodoxy as something to be punished, and refuses to distinguish between the meaningful and the trivial. What we desperately need is not more bans, but the robust arguments to deal with actual bigotry, the good humour to deal with daft football chants, and the common sense to know the difference.

Dolan Cummings

Some Independent thinking...

The Independent has launched a pious crusade against ‘racism’ in British institutions, with one of its targets being Professor David Coleman of Oxford University (see Oxford students prefer taboo to argument, 5 March). As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, this is an egregious assault on free speech and academic freedom that can only harm the pro-immigration cause. But according to The Independent’s editorial, ‘we should dismiss [the] claims that these are matters of free speech’. Why we should simply ‘dismiss’ them is not made clear. The Independent thinks that while Coleman should not be sacked, ‘students should not be compelled to take lessons from someone about whose views they feel deeply uncomfortable’. This makes a mockery of university education.

Meanwhile, commentators have been falling over themselves to point out the troubling character of recent 'race rows'. One such writer is leading black journalist and campaigner Darcus Howe. Lamenting that there is no one to speak up for black and working-class people, he stated that ‘[t]his is not the same country I came to 50 years ago. I have great sympathy for the whites because everything has been swept away by Mrs Thatcher and now Tony Blair but there is nothing to take its place.’ Open, rational debate remains the only way of challenging the implicit forms of racism we have seen in recent 'controversies'. However, when students and newspapers who supposedly pride themselves on being ‘free thinking’ are the first to call for restrictions on speech, there is little hope of progressing.

Lee Jones

I'd rather be a censor than a football fan?

The metropolitan police are investigating a racist incident at a premiership match between West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur on 4 March. Fans allegedly chanted such lovely slogans as ‘I’d rather be a Paki than a Jew’. Spurs are well-known for their Jewish following and this was definitely unpleasant, but is it something to be banged-up for?

This, the latest in a long line of interventions by the police into the world of football, will unfortunately not be the last. No speech, however offensive, should have the threat of police action hanging over it. Moreover, a football match isn’t a dinner party and some of the normal rules of polite society are suspended for 90 minutes. Where the line should be drawn is a matter for football fans themselves, not the police.

Equally concerning is another story, also involving Spurs. Luminaries from that club as well as the FA and the anti-racism campaign ‘Kick It Out’ are to debate later this month whether there should be an ‘education campaign’ to phase out Spurs fans’ reference to themselves as the ‘Yid Army’. Although less obviously repressive, this restriction on what is appropriate for football fans to say or call themselves is a threat as equally pernicious as that posed by the 'boys in blue', those West Ham supporters. Let’s kick speech codes out of football along with racism.

Robin Walsh