Coburn, Racism and Race.

You’ll be aware by now that David Coburn, the UKIP MEP elected last May, is at the centre of yet another controversy caused by his foolish comments.  I hadn’t wanted to dignify his idiocy by giving either the remark or the man too much attention, but that ship has well and truly sailed, and the incident is now widely being used as a hook upon which to hang a debate about racism.

In the remote possibility that you were unaware, he is quoted as referring to the Scottish Government minister Humza Yousaf in these words: "Humza Yousaf, or as I call him, Abu Hamza".

Humza Yousaf was understandably outraged by the comparison, calling the remark racist and Islamophobic, and many have concurred, calling on Coburn to apologize, but some people have responded by saying it was a stupid remark in poor taste, but not racist.

So, what is racism?  Well, let’s start off with what it isn’t: it isn’t scientifically correct.  Race is not a biological or genetic reality.  Scientifically speaking, there are no races; there's only one human race.

The genetic differences between people from ostensibly different "races" are no greater than the differences between individuals from the same "race"; human "races" are not biologically meaningful entities. Whatever your "race", neither you reading this, nor I, differ by more than 7 or 8% of our genes from anyone else.

There is therefore no point in appealing to science to say “that can’t be racism; Muslim’s aren’t a race” (or the Irish, or West Indians, or whatever category is being contested). There are no biological or genetic races within humanity, because ‘race’ isn’t a valid scientific category.  Rather, it’s a social and political construct. 

So how do we define where the boundaries of these social constructs lie?  That vagueness is part of the inherent danger in the notion of race.

Take as an example, forms we have to fill in from time to time - diversity surveys attached to job applications, perhaps, or the National Census.

Forms hope to fudge the difference between a race, a culture, a nation, a population by talking of "ethnicity", but the truth is that there is little agreement on where any of those terms overlap and coincide. Many of my traceable ancestors were Irish, so is my culture Irish? Not really, since I have never lived there, nor did my parents or grandparents. Am I ethnic Irish? The problem is that ethnicity, like race, is difficult to define, and there are no objective rules for deciding what constitutes a race, or for deciding to what race a person belongs. The 2011 Census asked me to choose between being (amongst other things) White Scottish, Other White British, White Irish, Other White, and Any Mixed Background. The truth is that we can all tick that last one, but that none of them really formed any conscious part of my identity, of how I see myself.  If someone asked me to describe myself, at no point would I consider using the phrase “White Scottish”, although I suppose that is what the Census wanted me to tick.

Despite never having lived in Ireland and not possessing an Irish passport or accent, I have nevertheless been called Irish, and abused as having stereotyped supposed Irish traits, because I belong to the population group in Scotland that is descended from Irish Catholics.  It seems incredible now, but a teacher at my school used to regularly call me Irish, despite my attempts to correct her. She would attribute various negative traits to that Irishness – untidiness, laziness, explosive temper, and a disproportionate fondness for the colour green (she was an art teacher). 

It is my contention that this was indeed racist abuse.  It was abuse based on prejudices held by that teacher, and related to what she conceived of as congenital, genetic or inherent traits she claimed she saw in me that she believed were typical of “Irishness” (none of which I recognised in myself, including the supposed fondness for green!).  Sometimes she wouldn’t add any slur on the Irish character, but simply say I was Irish.  But that was more than just inaccurate, because I knew the attitude and implications that went with it.  Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t feel scarred or traumatised by these events.  I simply recount them as an illustration of my point: the race here was in the eye of the beholder; I did not feel Irish, nor did I consider myself Irish, nor did I consider my family culture to have been Irish.  But the fact of my ancestry was used by my teacher to make discriminatory remarks. It was racism.

So did David Coburn do something similar?  On the face of it his “joke” was that part of Humza Yousaf’s name is a bit like part of Abu Hamza’s name.  But there is more to it than that.  Wordplay, in order to be worth repeating, has to carry some sort of meaning.  Coburn wasn’t just repeating nonsense syllables, he was playing on a perception that has currency about Muslims and terrorism.

Nor was it equivalent, as a letter in today’s Scotsman suggested, to calling George Bush a terrorist.

George Bush is called a terrorist by some because of his actions, not because his funny foreign name sounds a bit like another man who is a terrorist, nor because there’s a perception that people from Bush’s cultural background are inclined towards terrorism.  There is no such stereotype. 

Humza Yousaf has no history of initiating or supporting foreign wars, as Bush has.  The “joke” Coburn made was based purely on the name and the cultural background of both men.

It’s quite clear cut as far as I’m concerned – Coburn’s remarks can be categorised as a racist slur.  It was anti-Muslim racism.  (I discuss the term Islamophobia elsewhere in this blog). 

Some have suggested that Coburn should be arrested for hate speech.  I think that would be foolish and counter-productive.  He’s a boor and a buffoon, and the best response is to tell him so, not to criminalise his actions.  UKIP repeatedly show themselves to be a party of pub bores, the type of person who you can imagine spouting half-baked theories and petty prejudices in a golf club clubhouse in 1970.  They should be challenged on their nonsense, not arrested.

Useful links: 

http://www.kenanmalik.com/lectures/multiculturalism_if.html

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/category/politics/multiculturalism/

If I Call You a Liberal

If I call you a liberal, I mean it in a specific sense.  Not to mean that you belong to a capital L political party, nor, as those on the American right do, to mean that you are somewhere to the left of wherever the speaker stands, nor do I mean that you are generous in some way.

Rather, I use it to mean that your position ignores the structural issues in the problem being discussed.  I use it to mean that you are seeing the problem in terms of individual behaviour rather than social construction.  I use it to mean you are missing some important systemic formation, such as class. Usually class.

For example, if you are complaining of media bias but are seeing that bias in terms of the individual behaviour of individual journalists, then your approach is liberal.  Here, Ed Herman explains why he and Chomsky believe a structural explanation is the one that’s needed. 

The liberal limits ideas to individual behaviour.  The liberal thinks that in order to free the media from bias, all that is needed is for individuals to behave better, more morally, more fairly.  While these aims may in themselves be laudable, they will have limited effect, as the structures will not have been tackled.  The liberal’s ideas therefore lack rigour.  If I call you liberal, I am saying your analysis lacks rigour.

This limiting lack of rigour defines the liberal response to the ills of capitalism for a reason.  Liberalism became a political expression of the capitalist class.  It offers a lack of rigour because it doesn’t want to overturn the privilege of the elite.  It limits the debate to a discussion of individual morality, because that way change itself is limited. Liberalism offers individual guilt that change has not come fast enough, but it does not offer real change.

If I call you a liberal, I don’t mean it as a compliment.

Accuracy of terms – lamenting the currency of the term “Islamophobia”

The following is definitely a case of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted, but I think there are real dangers inherent in one particular term that has wide currency: “Islamophobia”.

Given the misunderstandings that arise whenever I discuss this, let me lay out a few things first.

Although I am myself an atheist, I think it an important tenet that we strive to uphold both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. People should not be persecuted for their religious beliefs (or for their lack of religious belief).

We should also recognise that racism exists in our society, and across the world.  Muslims suffer racist oppression in a number of guises in the UK and across the world.  This is real, and we must deplore it and fight it.

Further to that, we should also recognise that “race” is a social and political construct, not a biological or genetic fact.  Muslims can and do therefore face racism.

But let’s look at the term Islamophobia.  It means fear or hatred of Islam.  Islam is a philosophy, a religion, a set of views and ideas.  It is perfectly possible to dislike Islam or aspects of Islam without hating Muslims.  Dispute and disagreement are part and parcel of having ideas.  Indeed, they are part and parcel of a healthy society.

The trouble with the term Islamophobia is that its net is too wide.  It is too easy for people to say that disagreeing with some aspect of Islam is akin to racism; too easy for them to say “you mustn’t say that: it’s Islamophobic”.

Questioning and challenging beliefs is not the same as hating the people who hold them.  I don't think there's anything wrong with hating or being afraid of a philosophy, a set of ideas. As an atheist, there is much I dislike about Islam. Just as there is much I dislike about Judaism.

But anti-Semitism is the term used for racism towards Jews; we don’t call it Judaismophobia.  Having disputes and disagreements with Judaism is not in itself racist.

If we need a term analogous to anti-Semitism to refer to racism towards Muslims (and I’d argue that we do), then a better term would be Muslimophobia.

If religious lobbies are permitted to suggest that criticising religion, criticising ideas, is akin to racism because of flabby terms like Islamophobia, then we’re storing up future problems for all of society. 

This fudging of terms is being widened out by the neoliberals in power to include not just religious ideas, but also political ideas. Disliking political ideas can now be hate speech.

The various pieces of legislation which add up to the "hate speech" laws have allowed, for example, Harry Taylor to be fined and given community service because an airport chaplain was "insulted, deeply offended and . . . alarmed" by cartoons he left in an airport prayer room. And allowed Stuart Rodger to be arrested and convicted for shouting "No ifs, not buts, no public sector cuts" at David Cameron.

Those in political power are using these sort of notions to limit what we're allowed to challenge. That's a problem for us all, from progressives within minority communities, to wider movements for defence against austerity attacks, and those advocating social change. 

It’s true that sometimes racists, like Pegida, like the BNP, try to obfuscate and say that they aren’t criticising Muslims, they’re criticising Islam. But that is obfuscation, and it’s made possible because terms like Islamophobia leave room for confusion.  Racist sophistry is one more reason that we need greater accuracy in our terminology.

I concede that this is a contentious issue.  And some would argue that there is already a perfectly good term for Muslimophobia – “racism”.  I disagree.  I think there is, sadly, enough particular anti-Muslim hatred to require a specific word.  I just don’t think that the term that currently has currency - “Islamophobia” - is at all helpful.

Philip Hammond and the "responsibility of apologists".

Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was widely reported yesterday to have told a meeting of the defence and security think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, that "apologists" for those who commit acts of terrorism are partly responsible for the violence.

His words, in context, were:

"We are absolutely clear; the responsibility for acts of terror rests with those who commit them.

"But a huge burden of responsibility also lies with those who act as apologists for them."

We should be wary of this line of thinking for three reasons.

First, it continues to propagate the superficial and facile account of how “radicalisation” occurs, an account that does nothing to tackle the reasons that some people are attracted to Islamism and other terrorist creeds; secondly it raises the notion of restricting what the state will allow people to say, while being vague, yet again, about what constitutes being an apologist; and thirdly it seeks to widen the definition of “responsibility”.

How is being an apologist to be defined?  And who does the defining?

Definitions are important. It is quite easy, for example, to be accused of defending views you actually despise simply by opposing state intervention against those who utter the views. And which acts of barbarism are to be beyond the pale?  I consider the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza to be a reign of terror; will those who support the Israeli state be considered by Hammond to share the burden of responsibility for that violence? It seems unlikely.

But what of acts that attract wide consensus: don’t we all agree that ISIS are bloodthirsty murderers? Well, I certainly do, but we need to examine more closely what Hammond might mean by saying someone is an apologist for those types of acts.

A recent poll of 1000 Muslims in Britain got a lot ofcoverage. It was a Com Res survey for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.  One finding that provoked coverage was the response to the question, “do you agree or disagree with this statement?”: “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris”.

Much of the reporting picked up on the fact that 27% said they agreed with the statement.  But look at the question more closely. It’s vague.  The possible motives were not suggested; respondents were left to guess what the motives were.  Furthermore, importantly, note that having “some sympathy with” a motive does not necessarily mean you think that the motive justifies carrying out murder. 

It was assumed in the media that this 27% approved of the Charlie Hebdo murders, but the poll does not justify that reading.  Since motives were not suggested in the question, respondents were providing their own list, many of which perhaps even I would have “some sympathy” with. I say perhaps, because I don’t know – nobody does.  The question, however, does not ask people to agree or disagree with the statement that ‘The motives justify the murders’. So we don’t know how many, if any, of that 27% thought so.

Does Hammond have these people in mind?  Does he think a “huge burden of responsibility” for the Charlie Hebdo murders “also lies with” that 27%? If he does, then he is clearly just looking for people he can pin blame on. 

Let’s say the state decides to ban people saying something even as mild as that they have “some sympathy with” what they assume to be “some of the motives behind” an atrocity.  What effect would that have?  First, it would create resentment.  Some of those assumed motives might include just grievances.  But even if some of the motives are based on intolerance and bigotry (and let’s make no bones about this, there do exist some pretty unpleasant and reprehensible ideas), criminalising their expression will not stop those ideas - they will fester and grow, and their causes will not be addressed. Secondly, the act of state repression of the ideas will give them currency and a certain “legitimacy”; merely by seeking to silence them, the state will add weight to them.  “See how they suppress our beliefs!”

The ideas will still be there.  The reasons they arose will not have been tackled (indeed, they’ll have been exacerbated).  And the net will have been cast far too wide.

Let us not forget that the definition of “domestic extremism” used by the police has been ludicrously loose, and has been used to justify surveillance of journalists and that “dangerous” Green party peer, Baroness Jones.

If they can be caught up in these loose and meaningless definitions, then so can you and I.

What, then, is Hammond’s statement all about?  It’s about selling an idea that “radicalisation” is caused by “hate speech”, and that the way to stop radicalisation is to clamp down on what people are allowed to say.  But more importantly, it’s about the state wanting to look as if it’s doing something.

So what is “radicalisation”?

According to forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, who has studied the issue in some depth, “The notion that there is any serious process called 'radicalisation', or indoctrination, is really a mistake. What you have is some young people acquiring some extreme ideas - but it's a similar process to acquiring any type of ideas. It often begins with discussions with a friend.”

Kenan Malik picks up the thread in his article “The Making of Wannabe Jihadis in the West”.  He writes:

“Simplistic narratives about ‘radicalisation’ miss the complex roots of homegrown terrorism. Proposed solutions, such as banning organizations, pre-censoring online hate speech, increasing state surveillance, and so on, betray our liberties without addressing the issues that has made Islamism attractive to some in the first place”.

Instead, we need to look at the processes by which people might become “disembedded from social norms”, but to recognise that the “radicalisation” notion looks at them the wrong way round.  

Malik says “the ‘radicalization’ argument looks upon the jihadists’ journey back to front. It begins with the jihadists as they are at the end of their journey – enraged about the West, and with a black and white view of Islam – and assumes that these are the reasons they have come to be as they are.”

For Malik, we need to recognise that society has become fractured, but that the issue is not that the “Muslim community” has become disengaged with wider society. The term itself encourages a misunderstanding - there is no one “Muslim community”, any more than there is a “white community”, for example; instead, we should refer to a Muslim population. No, the issue is that wider society itself is fractured and atomised, with many individuals finding themselves adrift and looking for identity and belonging, and this includes, but is not particular to, Muslims.

The way to address this is not to drive in further wedges and intensify feelings of alienation, but to engage, to challenge, to demonstrate which ideas are ridiculous, not to drive those ideas underground.

But then maybe just saying all this makes me an apologist in some people’s eyes.

The ID Database Hasn't Been Thought Through.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction of SNP supporters to criticism of what is officially called the “proposed amendments to the National Health Service Central Register”. Not least because the SNP itself is officially opposed to an ID database; its stated concerns include some of my concerns.

Here’s an SNP press release from 2009: http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2009/feb/snp-confirm-scottish-id-card-opposition

So where are these current proposals coming from? They originated when Labour was in office in Holyrood, but come from the Scottish civil service. It should be no surprise that many projects originating from the civil service continue no matter which party is in power.

That being the case, why are SNP supporters so keen to defend the plans?

It seems that many believe that it must be OK if the SNP is doing it. Well, that kind of faith is touching, but I’m unable to share it. SNP supporters need to ask themselves if they are completely comfortable that there will be no “mission creep”, bearing in mind that this proposal is being driven by civil servants. They also need to consider a future when the party they trust so much might no longer be in power: are they just as happy with someone else running this scheme?

I’ve heard some interesting views on the proposals. That it “isn’t data that’s being held, it’s your name and address”. Well, that is data. The proposal specifically says the point of the exercise is “to enable certain data contained on the National Health Service Central Register (“the NHSCR”) to be shared with certain named bodies and for the NHSCR to hold additional postcode data”. So, data given to the NHS will be shared with other bodies - up to 100 authorities and services within Scotland. The information I gave to the NHS – even just my name and address - was specifically given to the NHS to assist the NHS in dealing with me. I did not give my permission to the NHS to share that information with other bodies.

It may be that I’m less trusting about handing over my information in this data sharing age. I’m not on Facebook, for example, precisely because I have concerns about how my data would be shared. Many people are quite comfortable about a degree of data sharing. But perhaps they are too ready to see the advantages and therefore too keen to discount the possible dangers. One of the possible dangers is that systems can harbour errors. Data can be lost, corrupted, or incorrect to begin with. If those errors have only one source, against which every service or public body verifies their information, then countless problems can arise. Individuals might find themselves “non-people” because somebody has entered their name incorrectly once, and the error is repeated over several bodies.

For example, I had an issue with a bank, on their correspondence to me, issuing me with an extra middle name that I don’t possess. I noticed that they had begun doing this this several years ago, and went into the branch with my passport to prove that it wasn’t my name. They duly changed it in their records, but just recently the same erroneous middle name has crept back into their correspondence somehow. Many of you will no doubt be able to think of similar examples. So far, this particular issue has caused me no problems. Yet. But it could. And how much more so if the central registry makes such an error, and that becomes the verified “truth” against which my bone fides is checked?

A central registry is just a bad idea.

Another response I’ve seen is that this is all voluntary. “An individual will give, of their own free will, their details if they want to access a service, and this will then be checked against the central registry”.

Well, that’s not quite right, is it? The central registry will already have your details – they’ll have harvested them from details given to the NHS. And in any case this talk of checking someone’s entitlement against a central database doesn’t sit well with me at all. It doesn’t sound very voluntary; it sounds like a compulsory ID card without the card. The card itself was never the real problem anyway, it was the central register that was the problem – and here it is all over again, in a new guise.

Before you dismiss this as nothing to worry about, read the handy briefing from Open Rights Group:

https://scotland.openrightsgroup.org/policy/2015/02/19/the-scottish-national-id-database-your-questions-answered/