Multi-culturalism and the politics of white identity

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 1st October

FOR many years, attacks on “multi-culturalism” in Britain were confined to the far Right, which argued, like its counterparts in other countries, that the nation could only survive if it was homogeneous, welded together by a single racial, religious or cultural identity.

However, since 9/11, “multi-culturalism” has come under increasing criticism from mainstream and even liberal sources. In recent months, it has been noisily blamed for the emergence of homegrown terrorism and the alleged “self-segregation” of minority groups, damned as a gateway to moral relativism and social disintegration. Ministers have echoed these notions, and the Government has set up a Commission for Integration and Cohesion, whose remit clearly includes a retreat from “multi-culturalism.”

It’s necessary to surround the term with quotation marks because its use, in Britain at least, is permeated by confusion about its history and meaning.

The anti-racist movements of the 1970s and 80s sought justice, equality and recognition for Britain’s growing non-white populations. The slogan “Here to stay, here to fight” summed up both the unequivocal claim on full human rights, and the determination to achieve these through collective struggle. Multi-culturalism emerged as a concession to this movement. While the acceptance of Britain’s diversity was a substantial gain – for the victims of racism, as well as for society as a whole – the manner in which multi-cultural policy treated that diversity was always problematic. For that reason it was criticised from the beginning by anti-racist activists.

In time-honoured colonial fashion, this policy conceived ethnic minorities as discreet self-contained entities, neatly demarcated, without inner divisions, and therefore appropriately represented by designated community leaders. The emphasis was on recognition – the visible inclusion of minorities in sports teams, advertising, television dramas, political posters or religious celebrations in schools. In a sense, multi-culturalism has become a victim of its own success. It has made ethnic minorities seem more accepted and more powerful, and racism less prevalent, than they actually are. That’s grist to the mills for the racists and a get-out clause for the political establishment.

One of the most depressing features of the current discussion in Britain is that so much of it rests on a false paradigm. “Multi-culturalism” is counterposed to “integration”, which has replaced the discredited term “assimilation” but carries similar implications. Behind both terms is a misconception of culture as reified and static, as well as a desire to manage diversity through imposed categories. The choice the paradigm offers is unreal: neither ethnic separatism nor cultural uniformity is either possible or desirable.

Headlines have warned of Britain “sleep walking” into segregation and “apartheid”, of “multi-culturalism” breeding ghettos. We are told that the common values necessary for a functioning society are being undermined by an excessive tolerance for cultural diversity.

Even as it grows more strident, the demand for integration becomes hazier. What is it that minorities are being asked to integrate into? When pressed on what they mean by British values, the integrationists are unable to reach beyond platitudes. The question is unanswerable: are British values the values of Sylvia Pankhurst or Winston Churchilll, Tom Paine or the Duke of Wellington, David Bowie or Geoff Boycott?

Meanwhile, the elephant in the sitting room remains unnoticed and unnamed. This is the reality of power, reflected in the assumption of white and Western supremacy and its manifestation in racism.

According to the Home Office, there were more than 40,000 racially- and religiously-aggravated crimes recorded in 2005-2006. The vast majority of victims were from ethnic minorities – people with roots in Africa, Asia or the Caribbean. What’s more, recorded offences are only a fraction of the total. Research by the charity Victim Support found that most victims of hate crimes suffer in silence. Of the minority who do report offences, only one in five felt supported by police.

Ethnic minorities are more likely than white people both to be victims of crimes (of all types) and to receive harsher punishment when arrested for committing crimes. According to a Prison Reform Trust report, ethnic minority prison staff are more likely to experience racial abuse from their colleagues than from prisoners. An investigation into a racist murder at a young offenders prison has identified 186 official failings and accused authorities of “institutional religious intolerance”.

Since 9/11, hostility to and discrimination against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims has multiplied. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the number of Asians stopped and searched on the streets by police increased from 744 in 2001-02 to 2,989 in 2002-03. In the five weeks following the London bombings in July 2005, the total stopped increased 15-fold; 35 per cent of those stopped in London were Asians, though they make up only 12 per cent of the city’s population. Not one of those stopped was charged with a terrorism-related offence. During the same period, London’s police reported a six-fold rise in racial attacks – 269 incidents compared to 40 in the same period the year before. In the wake of the alleged air terror plot in August, there’s been another spike, including attacks on three mosques.

Despite the statistical reality that ethnic minorities are on the receiving end of abuse and discrimination from their fellow citizens and the State, they are blamed for a failure to integrate. Facts on the ground, however, do not bear out the self-segregation thesis. According to the latest census, the indices of residential segregation for all ethnic minority groups fell between 1991 and 2001. The index of isolation – measuring how likely people are not to know people from other groups – is highest for white Christians, followed by white people with no religion. According to CRE studies, 95 per cent of white Britons do not have a Black or Asian friend and one in four would not want to live near them; in contrast, 60 per cent of Muslims have non-Muslim friends.

The preoccupation with cultural difference disguises the core problem afflicting race relations in Britain: the reluctance of a significant section of the white majority to “integrate” into Britain’s multi-cultural society, to accept its democracy, and the willingness of newspapers and politicians to pander to that reluctance. While condemning the identity politics of minority groups, the attack on multi-culturalism appeals to and bolsters the most powerful form of identity politics at work in Britain today, the identity politics of the white majority, inextricable from long-nurtured assumptions of Western power.

The same government that lectures minorities about democratic values has sought an opt-out from inconvenient clauses in the European Convention on Human Rights and violated the U.N. Charter (the invasion of Iraq) and Geneva Conventions (torture and attacks on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan). And the same ministers who lecture the nation about cohesion and integration have presided over growing economic inequality. Their policies have generated vast gulfs in income, differences in daily life far greater than the ones associated with cultural practices. Yes, the population is becoming more segregated – by wealth, which means, inevitably, by health. To cite but one statistic, individuals who are 50 – 59 years old from the poorest fifth of the population are ten times more likely to die than their contemporaries from the richest fifth.

The attack on multi-culturalism is unfolding within – and serves to mask – the twin pillars of British government policy: the war on terror and corporate-dominated globalisation. Those policies undermine democratic, civil and secular values far more extensively than any cultural differences.