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/