AWL day schools: racism and Islamophobia
Saturday 1 April 2006
14:00-18:00, Sebbon St Community Centre, Sebbon St, London N1
12:00-17:00, Room K/133, Kings Manor building, Exhibition Square,
York
are fairly straightforwardly racist against Arabs.
(Nearly half would not allow an Arab in their
home, etc.: Guardian, 24/03/06). So isn’t the
common charge that Zionism is racism, and Israel
is a racist state, confirmed?
Discussion points
Racism and xenophobia
Hostility to or prejudice against “outsiders” by
human communities is very old. Yet the term
“racism” dates only from the 1930s, and theories
about humanity being divided into different
“races” only from the 19th century. What’s special
about racism, as distinct from xenophobia in
general?
Free speech
What is the difference between fascism and
racism? And between Marxist responses to racism,
and Marxist responses to nationalism?
Where are there grey areas and overlaps between
fascism and racism?
What is the difference between racism and
nationalism? And between Marxist responses to
racism, and Marxist responses to nationalism?
Is “no platform” a good policy?
Is it possible for oppressed communities to be
“racist” against oppressors? If the nationalism of
the oppressed has a progressive content, does the
racism of the oppressed also have a progressive
content?
Islamophobia
Although discrimination against or oppression of
Muslim communities in various countries is very
old, the word is “Islamophobia” is new (basically,
since the 1990s). What does it mean? Consider
various meanings it is given in current discourse,
and say what you think of them.
Is racism worse than other forms of xenophobia?
We have argued that much of modern antisemitism - “absolute anti-Zionism” - is antisemitism, but not racism. Are there other species
of xenophobias important today which are not
racist? How does our attitude to them differ from
our attitude to racism?
On which of the various meanings of
“Islamphobia” were the September 2005
Muhammad cartoons Islamophobic?
Were they racist?
According to the Israeli polling organisation
Geocartographia, a large percentage of Israeli Jews Were we right to republish the cartoons?
1
The first Asian elected to parliament was an Indian man,
Dadabhai Naoroji — a campaigner against British policy in
India — and, although elected as a Liberal (in Finsbury in
1892), he was a good friend of HM Hyndman, the British
Marxist pioneer and campaigner for colonial independence.
The Indian intellectuals in Britain were mostly radicals —
Hyndman was invited to open the Indian Home Rule
headquarters, in Highgate, in 1905. Indian revolutionaries
found support on the left.
Pan Africanism began as a political current following a
conference held at Westminster Town Hall in July 1900. One
of the conference papers used a phrase the black American
writer and campaigner WEB DuBois was later to make
famous: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of
the colour line.”
The outbreak of war, in 1914, meant work for black
workers in munitions factories. By 1918 there were about
20,000 black people in Britain.
After the war, and against a background of
unemployment, there were race riots in Tyneside, Cardiff
and Liverpool. At the start of 1919, 120 black workers were
sacked in Liverpool after whites refused to work with them.
Racist campaigns which were reflected even in the militant
mainstream left paper, Labour Herald, were replied to by the
US socialist Claude McKay in Sylvia Pankhurst’s
revolutionary socialist paper Workers’ Dreadnought.
In 1922 the Indian revolutionary Shapurji Saklatvala
became MP for North Battersea. He left the Independent
Labour Party to join the Communist Party in March 1921
and was elected on a Labour Party ticket. He lost the seat in
1923, but won it back with local Labour Party support and
against the wishes of the national party, keeping the seat
until 1929.
George Padmore, the Trotskyist CLR James and Jomo
Kenyatta were all active while living in Britain in the 1930s.
Anti-colonial movements in Africa and the West Indies were
linked via a pan-African centre in Britain.
On 22 June 1948 the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury
with 492 Jamaican workers on board. The workers quickly
found jobs — there was a shortage of workers: the London
Evening Standard’s report was headlined “Welcome Home”.
Over the next few years others followed. By 1958,
125,000 West Indians had arrived. There were about 55,000
Indians and Pakistanis living in Britain. All these workers
were British citizens — the 1948 Nationality Act had granted
citizenship to all those from Britain’s colonies and former
colonies.
These workers faced discrimination and “colour bars”
which prevented them entering some pubs, clubs and other
facilities. They often had to take the dirty jobs, and the night
shifts.
Half the white population had never met a black person
and over two thirds held a “low opinion” of black people.
In 1958 there were race riots in Nottingham and London.
Black militants attacked a fascist HQ in London in
retaliation. The British Trotskyists proposed that the trade
unions create workers’ defence squads to stop the racists in
such places as Notting Hill.
Over the next 10 years racist agitation grew, demanding
an end to black immigration. Peter Griffiths, Tory candidate
in Smethwick in the 1964 General Election, beat a Labour
minister on the slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour,
vote Labour”.
Labour both tightened the immigration rules and passed a
weak Race Relations Act. In 1968 Labour panicked and
A short history of black people in
Britain
From How to beat the racists
The history of black and Asian people in Britain is a
history of racism and of resistance to racism.
The victims of racism often received white working class
solidarity and had the backing of radicals and socialists.
Workers’ Liberty surveys the history.
Individuals and small groups of black people have been
living in Britain for at least 500 years. But only after the
1650s did their numbers begin to rise significantly.
When the “triangular trade” began, manufactured goods
went from Bristol, Liverpool and London to the African
coast, where textiles and guns were bartered for black slaves.
The slaves were taken across the Atlantic to the Leeward
Islands, Surinam and Jamaica, and there exchanged for
sugar, spices and rum. These goods were then brought back on the third leg of the “triangle” — to Britain, and sold.
It was an enormously profitable trade — one product of
which was the creation of black communities in the slave
port towns, as slaves and black sailors found their way to
Britain.
By 1800 the black population of Britain was probably
around 10,000, from a general population of 9 million.
The first black political leader in Britain was Olaudah
Equiano who was kidnapped by slave traders as a child. By
saving from petty trading he bought his own freedom for
£40. Equiano travelled widely; in Britain he participated in
the — largely white — abolitionist movement, wrote a key,
popular expose of the slave trade, Interesting Narrative, and
joined the radical London Corresponding Society.
One of the five poor and determined radicals hung after
the “Cato Street” conspiracy, in 1820, was a black man,
William Davidson. A black tailor, William Cuffay, was a
hero and martyr of the Chartist movement — transported
with two white comrades to Tasmania in 1849 he died there,
in a workhouse, in 1870.
The British slave trade was only abolished in 1807;
slavery itself in 1833. Racism, which had developed as a
justification for slavery, continued, expanded and mutated to
justify Empire. Peter Fryer writes, “From the 1840s to the
1940s Britain’s ‘native policy’ was dominated by racism.
The golden age of British Empire was the golden age of
British racism too… the flood-tide of racism never
completely submerges the image of black as ‘man and
brother’... kept alive by three distinct traditions:
humanitarian abolitionism; radicalism; and working class
solidarity.”
Indeed, there has been a strong tradition of white racism
in Britain, but there is also a strong current of anti-racism
and solidarity, too. For example, during the US civil war
(1861-5), the British government was sympathetic to the
slave-owning Southern states. The British workers were
generally for the North and abolition (Karl Marx, for
example, reports on attending large workers’ meetings called
to back the Northern states), and even at great cost to
themselves: the workers of old Chartist centres of north-west
England suffered tremendous hardships because the North
was blockading the slave ports and stopping the flow of
cotton to the British textile industry. But they stood solid
“for Lincoln and liberty”!
2
passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in three days of
emergency debate, restricting the entry into Britain of
Kenyan Asians — British passport holders who were being
expelled from Kenya, the victims of “Africanisation”.
Tory MP Enoch Powell made a bid for the leadership of
Britain’s racists. His “Rivers of Blood” speech predicted
blood, violence, packed maternity wards and national
disaster if black immigration was not halted. Dockers and
Smithfield meat porters marched in support of Powell. Racist
violence spiralled and, in 1971, the Immigration Act (which
came into force in 1973) ended primary immigration.
In the 1970s the fascist National Front grew. The antiNazi Kevin Gately, a student from Warwick, was the first
person killed on a British demonstration since 1919 as antiNazis fought fascists in Red Lion Square, London.
Rock Against Racism was founded by anti-racists who
were outraged by racist remarks made by David Bowie and
Eric Clapton. In 1977 the Anti-Nazi League was formed as
an umbrella group of over hundreds of local anti-fascist
initiatives.
Between 1976 and 1981 there were 31 racist murders in
Britain.
In the 1960s and early 70s there were many instances of
racism in the unions — discrimination against black workers
and even racist strikes.
The turning point was the Grunwick strike where a
largely Asian women workforce struck — against an AngloAsian employer — to demand union recognition in 1976-7.
The women were backed by mass mobilisations of building
workers, miners and electricians who fought the police on
mass pickets alongside the Grunwick workers.
By the mid-70s there were two million black and Asian
people in Britain, in a general population of 57 million.
Police violence and malpractice against black people
escalated. The political police, the Special Branch, kept a
watch on black activists, leading to the Mangrove Nine trail
in 1971. A black radical meeting place, the Mangrove in
west London, was repeatedly raided, and following a
demonstration nine leaders were arrested. The defendants
were acquitted by a white jury, some of whose members later
went out drinking with the defendants.
The 1976 Notting Hill Carnival was attacked by police.
The notorious “Sus” laws were used to systematically
stop and search black youth. A major explosion of anger —
rooted in racism and poverty — took place in the summer of
1981. Handsworth, Toxteth and Brixton erupted in rioting.
At a set-piece confrontation in Southall 3,000 riot police
and mounted police attempted to protect a fascist meeting
booked for Ealing Town Hall from 5,000 anti-Nazis. Three
hundred and forty-two, mostly Asian, people were arrested
and white anti-fascist Blair Peach was killed by the police.
Asian youth organisations were formed. In areas such as
Southall, west London, these youth groups were capable of
fighting and beating the fascists. On 3 July 1981 Asian youth
fought the police and burned down a west London pub which
was being used to hold a Nazi skinhead gig, and ran 300
fascists out of the area.
Police in Newham, east London, and in Bradford
attempted to criminalise Asian youth in the 1980s for the
“crime” of self-defence against racist attacks.
Since Grunwick, the attitude of the British trade unions
has shifted. Bill Morris was elected to lead the TGWU in
1991. Now the TUC organises anti-racist festivals and
marches.
Some of the more offensive manifestations of popular
racism — for example, in 1970s TV sit-coms — and some
common racist language have gone from “respectable”
conversation.
Many of these changes — in attitudes as well as
government laws and formal union policies — have been
won by “from the ground up” campaigning in which white
and black workers have stood side by side.
On the other hand, both Tory and Labour governments
have run racist campaigns on asylum; immigration rules are
strict. The police, having made nods in the direction of
equality following the Lawrence case, and the Macpherson
Report, continue to arrest, brutalise and even kill black
people.
United against racism, we can win!
The roots of racism
From How to beat the racists
Modern anti-black racism has relatively recent roots, in
the history of slavery and colonialism.
Racism did not start as a divide-and-rule trick imposed
by the ruling class. The racist practice of slavery and
colonialism came first; racist ideas came later.
When the slave trade started in the 16th century, the
British capitalists took slaves and sold them like cattle,
bullied them and beat them. Then, they began thinking of
them as subhuman.
That is the natural way of things for slave owners. When
Britain conquered territories and peoples and assumed the
right to rule and make decisions for them, British people
began to believe those peoples were inferior.
The roots of modern racism can be traced back to the
planter class of slave owners. Although fear and suspicion of
the stranger and the outsider had existed before, it had not
been fear on the basis of skin colour.
In the ancient world there were many societies based on
slavery. But there was no idea comparable to “race”.
The ancient Egyptians looked down on the black peoples
to their south, but they were just as scornful of other, lighterskinned, neighbours. Egyptian artists caricatured the captives
taken in war — but the peculiar dress of the Libyans or
Hebrews was held up for ridicule as much as the features of
the black southerners.
In Greek society the slaves were frequently of the same
colour as their owners. There were many white slaves from
the north and the east.
In Rome any citizen might become a slave and any slave
a citizen. Slaves came from every province and every skin
colour — so did the Emperors, of whom some were black.
There is nothing “natural” about anti-black racism in the
psychological-biological make-up of whites. This can be
seen today by watching the way young children of different
skin colours play together quite happily.
Racism was a product of the beginnings of capitalism. As
Karl Marx summed it up: “The discovery of gold and silver
in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in
mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the
conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa
into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins...
The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised
looting, enslavement and murder flowed back to the
mothercountry and were turned into capital.” Pre-feudal
3
slavery was wedded to the most modern merchant capitalism
in a drive which helped produce the capital for the future
industrial revolutions.
Tens of millions of African slaves were taken across the
Atlantic. The population of Africa remained stagnant in the
period 1650 to 1850, while that of Europe nearly doubled.
The slaves were part of the “triangular trade”. Boats took
slaves to the plantations, brought sugar back to Europe, and
then took manufactured goods to Africa.
In the beginning there were Indian slaves and white
indentured labourers too as well as Africans. Black slaves
were taken from Africa as a simple commercial decision: it
was cheaper than going elsewhere. The reasons were
economic, not racist.
Racist ideas squared an ideological circle for the
capitalists. Their anti-feudal revolutions took place under the
banner of liberty. Yet there was no liberty for the slaves.
Paradoxically, it was because capitalism had developed
the ideas of universal human rights and equality — the same
ideas that would later inspire the revolts of the colonial and
enslaved peoples — that it also developed the ideologies of
racism. Previous societies had had slavery and conquest —
but their rulers had no need for general theories of racial
superiority to justify the slavery and conquest.
The poor had no rights, whatever their skin colour and
whatever their ethnic origin. There was no need for special
theories to cancel the human rights of a special category of
poor people.
Under the pressure of economic compulsion — the
economic need for slavery — writers and thinkers developed
the gut reactions of the planters into fleshed-out theories.
Those theories are as recent as the 18th century. Black
people were called sub-human, allowing the bourgeoisie to
have their “liberty” and their slaves too.
Pseudo-science said black peoples were inferior —
because of head shape or some other rubbish.
Some of the ideas that were developed were perversions
of real facts.
Take the racist view that black people are “lazy”. In fact
the slaves were not lazy, they were just rebelling.
In modern capitalist society the basic form of revolt is the
workers’ strike; the basic form of revolt in Stalinist society,
where unions were forbidden, was absenteeism and, perhaps,
throwing a spanner into the nearest machine. The equivalent
on the plantation was: I am damned if I am going to work
hard.
The slaves were not “lazy”, they were fighting back! But,
perversely, their struggle was turned back on them.
Colonialism and the slave trade also wrecked societies
and civilisations. Much of the African past was destroyed.
Colonial intervention in India reduced a fabulous
treasure-house, the world’s leading industrial nation, to
backward poverty.
Europe reduced Africa and India to poverty — and then
built a whole racist ideology that the peoples of Africa and
Asia were naturally “backward”. In Ireland the British state
brutalised the people and then blamed them for their own
condition. They were described as “unstable, childish.
violent, lazy, feckless, feminine and primitive”.
But it is not true that only white men made slaves. The
black Iraqis on your television screen during the Gulf War
were brought there by Arab slave traders. The Arab trade in
African slaves started earlier and finished later than the
European trade, and probably enslaved more people. The
history is not a simple black-versus-white one; in fact the
African trade depended on the co-operation of the many
African chiefs who benefited from it.
At the same time, there was opposition to slavery, in the
name of human equality, from white radicals. In Britain, for
instance, during the American Civil War, the workers were
solid for the Union despite their government siding with the
slave-owning South, and despite the unemployment caused
by the Northern blockade of the South and the consequent
lack of cotton for the Lancashire mills.
In the heyday of the British Empire, racism and
nationalism penetrated every part of intellectual life.
They had the effect of pinning the workers to the bosses
in the mistaken belief that they had more in common with
Queen Victoria than with the Indian poor. Frederick Engels
wrote to Karl Kautsky in 1882: “You ask what the English
workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same
as they think about politics in general: the same as the
bourgeois think. There is no workers’ party here, you see,
there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the
workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the
world market and the colonies.”
Many labour movement leaders campaigned to restrict
the entry of Jews fleeing eastern European pogroms at the
end of the last century. The first modern immigration act was
passed against the Jews — the Aliens Act of 1905.
Immigration laws have been one of the major
mechanisms of state racism over the last 40 years. After
World War Two, capitalism expanded, and the British bosses
toured Africa, the Caribbean and India looking for workers
to work in British industry.
As the boom slowed the racist right mobilised. It was led
by Winston Churchill, the supposedly great leader of British
democracy in World War Two. In 1955 Churchill proposed
“Keep Britain White” as a Tory election slogan. The
Metropolitan Police described “coloured people” as “workshy and content to live on National Assistance and immoral
earnings”.
Black workers found “colour bars” in clubs and housing.
Black community organisations began life as self-help
groups in response to this racism.
Racist attacks became more common, and in 1958 there
was a riot led by organised racists in Notting Hill, west
London. The Immigration Act of April 1962 began the
current process of formal racism — laws which discriminate
against black people. Immigration Acts of 1968 and 1971
completed the process, barring almost all immigrants from
Africa, the Caribbean and India except those joining close
family here.
In addition to legislation there have been assaults from
the right: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote
Labour” was a Tory election slogan in 1964. Margaret
Thatcher said that “this country might be swamped by people
from a different culture” before her election victory in 1979,
taking some of the political ground from under the fascist
National Front who, during the 1970s, organised some
thousands of white British people.
On the street the police have posed a constant threat to
black people. A Policy Institute report from 1983 shows that
in the Metropolitan Police racism is “expected, accepted and
even fashionable”. Racist stereotypes have moved on to
target black youth as drug dealers and criminals. Take the
Evening Standard’s coverage of Operation Bumblebee police
“crackdown on crime”. The Standard’s reporter went with
police on a raid: the young woman “claimed she was 18” and
4
her partner’s wall was “covered in Bob Marley posters”. Got
the message?
More recently, and despite the past, the Macpherson
Report’s denounced the police as “institutionally racist”.
But the story of racism is also the story of struggle and
resistance. In the last 40 years the battle to confront all forms
of racism has broadened out.
The fight against racism must be bound up with the
struggle to replace capitalism with democratic, working-class
socialism. As Malcolm X said: “you can’t have capitalism
without racism.”
l A workers’ united front for physical self-defence.
Trotsky argued against any support for bourgeois state
bans on fascists on the grounds that they would be
ineffective and inevitably, by increasing the repressive
powers of the bourgeois state, facilitate blows against the
workers. Nevertheless, he argued for the fight against
fascism to be carried out in a civil-war spirit, with no
tenderness for any democratic right of the fascists.
Why does not that contradict our general position for free
speech? In more or less normal bourgeois-democratic
politics, working-class socialists have a framework to
operate mostly through peaceful agitation. Even in the best
bourgeois democracy we usually need a constant struggle to
stop our own democratic rights, even our formal rights, being
nibbled away. Short of civil war — which must, of course,
be fought as civil war — we have no tactical interest in
attacking the democratic rights of other forces within the
bourgeois democracy, even those we abhor. Here and there it
may be possible to secure the suppression of right-wing
forces when they are outside the currently dominant
bourgeois consensus. Often we will shed no tears. But to
champion such suppression places us on the shaky ground of
demanding the silencing of those outside the bourgeois
consensus when we, in fact, are outside that consensus
ourselves. It will rebound on us just as soon as our voice
becomes annoying or threatening enough for the capitalist
class.
“No platform” and free speech
From How to beat the racists
Our basic policy is free speech. The capitalist class has a
partial interest in free speech — within limits. The working
class has a much more profound interest in free speech.
Socialism means the defeat of entrenched power by the
mobilisation of long downtrodden millions of people who at
last dare to have thoughts and dreams other than those
handed down by official society; thus it needs free debate.
And free speech (real free speech, not the limited free speech
available in a society where a wealthy minority monopolises
the media, education, leisure...) is a vital part of the socialism
we fight for.
Of course, we know that history proceeds through class
struggle. We are not pacifists, abstract idealists or
dogmatists. The needs of the class struggle stand higher than
any democratic principle; moreover, there is no God, no
umpire standing above us, to impose democracy on the
contending forces in the class war.
But we are not short-sighted pragmatists, either. Any
political party, at any time, obviously appears likely to have
short-term gain from suppressing and silencing those whose
views it detests. Any but the most short-sighted, or most
determinedly totalitarian, political party will, however,
consider the danger in such action of isolating itself and
turning the sympathy of democratically-minded but nonpartisan people towards its opponent. Socialists will consider
the additional danger of any short-term gains compromising
the long-term aims of working-class democracy.
Bureaucratic and suppressive methods of maintaining
left-wing control in trade unions have frequently undermined
the strength of the union and, sooner or later, rebounded.
In the student movement in the 1980s, “no platform”
policies against right-wingers paved the way for advocates of
“identity politics”, or demagogues, to brand the left as racist,
sexist and homophobic. Policies of “no platform” for
fascists, racists, or right-wingers of one sort or another
spiralled into great confusion. The Easter 1986 conference of
the National Union of Students saw one low point. One
faction of leftists wanted “no platform for Zionists”; the
conference enforced “no platform for idiot anti-Zionists” by
banning a badge which compared Zionism to fascism.
Fascism is different
Fascism is different from other strands of right-wing
politics, in that it threatens, immediately and physically, the
very existence of working-class organisation and, often, the
lives of oppressed minorities. The basic Marxist policy
against it is:
l Mass working-class mobilisation for socialism as the
answer to the crisis of capitalism which breeds fascism;
The American experience
Unless free speech is free speech for ideas that someone
finds repulsive or offensive, it is not free speech; and we
need free speech.
James P Cannon explained this well in his pamphlet
Socialism on Trial. The US Trotskyist movement which he
led organised many big and militant demonstrations against
fascists, but never under slogans like “no platform”. In a
country where civil liberties ideology was strong — so they
argued — and anti-communism was at least as strong as antifascism, to be seen as going for the forcible suppression of
the speeches and meetings of the far right could only isolate
the socialists, make them appear anti-democratic, and open
them to witch-hunts. It was better and more effective to take
a stand on the right to self-defence and to counterdemonstrate.
In Minneapolis in the 1930s they organised a workers’
defence guard. It never said it wanted to stop the fascists
meeting or marching — only that it wanted to defend the
labour movement. But the fact of its existence led the local
fascists — the “Silver Shirts” — to declare that they were
afraid to meet or march in Minneapolis.
“No platform” for racists?
Violent racist groups should be fought according to the
laws of war, even if they are not strictly fascists. However,
the general slogan “no platform for racists” creates more
problems than it solves. Racism is a widespread ideology.
Any working-class activist knows that you have to argue
with racists, not just proclaim that they are beyond the pale.
We should argue in such a way as to make clear that we do
not see racism as a normal difference of opinion; and we
supplement argument by actions and by support for various
forms of autonomous black organisation. All that is different
from “no platform”.
5
So also is a rule in a trade union or other working-class
organisation barring racist or sexist comments in meetings
different from “no platform” for racists or sexists. There
must be a grey area between upholding standards of civilised
behaviour inside the labour movement, on the one hand, and
upholding the rights in the wider society of speech and
advocacy which the bourgeois consensus does not consider
civilised. And a grey area, too, between general racist (or
other reactionary) ideas at one end of the spectrum, and
direct incitement to violence at the other. But grey areas
between different things do not mean that there is no
difference between them. If we slip into advocating “no
platform for racists” on the grounds that racist ideas are
repulsive, offensive, lead ultimately to violence, etc., then
why not “no platform for sexists”, “no platform for
Zionists”, “no platform for Arab chauvinists”, “no platform
for Tories”, “no works by D H Lawrence in public
libraries”...?
Fascism is different from other strands of right-wing
politics. It grows from the start by violent, unlawful attacks
on its opponents and scapegoats. And its forces are irregular,
street-fighting groups: they can be defeated by the workingclass movement short of a full-scale civil war against the
state.
The classic Marxist discussions are focused on defending
working-class buildings, meetings, demonstrations and
newspapers against fascist bands. They relate to situations
where the fascists are so strong that a slogan of “no platform
for fascists” is senseless. But their spirit is clearly not one of
a purely defensive stance or waiting for the fascists to strike
the first blow. Trotsky wrote about workers’ defence guards
going out to smash fascist meetings.
Fascism is a movement of immediate civil war against
the left, against those whom the fascists choose to scapegoat,
and against the working class, and war must be fought as
war.
It does not follow that “no platform” is the best slogan to
express that thought, still less that it is a principle.
War knows tactics other than the offensive. There is no
principle which says that socialists have to strive to break up
every fascist meeting. Such a “principle” would just
consume our energies in endless chasing after right-wing
cranks, and in ill-chosen battles with the police. Tactically, it
would also put us in a position where we seem not to be
striking blows in a war for democratic rights against the
fascists, but to be starting our own war against democratic
rights.
has retained about 10% of the vote in France, sometimes
more, ever since then.
For small left groups to attempt to “no platform” the
French fascists now — exclude them from public life by
sheer force of militant demonstrations — is not feasible.
More energetic “no platform” tactics back in the 1970s —
but how could they have been more energetic than the
LCR’s? — would not have prevented the mass disillusion
with the Socialist Party-led government.
All that could have made a difference was the buildingup of the working-class left to a stature where it could more
successfully appeal to the disillusioned.
‘Islamophobia’
By Rumy Hasan
Since 11 September 2001 , the epithet ‘Islamophobia’ has
increasingly become in vogue in Britain – not only from
Muslims but also, surprisingly, from wide layers of the left,
yet the term is seldom elaborated upon or placed in a proper
context. Invariably, it is used unwisely and irresponsibly and
my argument is that the left should refrain from using it.
Shockingly, some on the left have, on occasion, even
resorted to using it as a term of rebuke against left, secular,
critics of reactionary aspects of Muslim involvement in the
anti-war movement. So what does the term mean? Literally,
‘fear of Islam’ but, more accurately, a dislike or hatred of
Muslims, analogous to ‘anti-Semitism’. Since September 11,
there has undoubtedly been an increasing resentment and
hostility by some sections of the media towards Muslims in
Britain and more generally in the West that, in turn, has also
given rise to some popular hostility. But this is rarely made
explicitly – rather it is coded as an attack on asylum seekers,
refugees, and potential ‘terrorists’, above all, on Arabs from
North Africa and the Middle East. This has been most
intense in America, where there has been systematic
harassment of Arabs for almost two years.
Surprisingly, however, all sections of the media,
including the gutter press, have largely refrained from open
attacks on British Muslims. In terms of physical attacks,
including fatalities, to my knowledge these have been
relatively few. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of
September 11, it was a Sikh man who was murdered in the
US because he wore a turban in the manner of Bin Laden.
But there were certainly attacks - both on individuals and on
mosques - in Britain, especially in Northern towns, probably
by BNP thugs; and other notorious acts such as leaving a
pig’s head outside a mosque. But these largely abated soon
after, though such incidents still periodically occur. Hence
there is certainly no room for complacency. But does all this
amount to Islamophobia? Clearly not: we are not dealing
with a situation comparable to the Jews under the Nazis in
the 1930s, nor even of Muslims in Gujarat, India, that is
currently run by a de facto Hindu fascist regime. Arguably,
the situation in the 1970s, when the National Front was
becoming a real menace in Britain, was more dangerous for
Muslims and non-Muslim ethnic minorities alike.
Moreover, perhaps as a counter-balance, the more
responsible TV and press media have, in fact, been
portraying a number of, if anything, over-positive images of
Islam and Muslims (examples include the BBC’s series on
Islam – which was a whitewash; a highly sympathetic weeklong account of Birmingham Central Mosque; and a 2-week
The French left
In France, in 1973, one of the biggest revolutionary
socialist groups, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR), mobilised many thousands of people to try to stop a
meeting of a fascist fringe group in Paris. The result was a
very violent battle with thousands of police, and the
outlawing of the LCR. The LCR suffered a major setback,
and its later comments indicate that its leaders came to
conclude that its tactics in 1973 had been foolish. Though
brave, those tactics certainly did not stop the fascists.
Until 1983 the fascists remained a more or less isolated
minority, not particularly weaker than in 1973 but not
particularly stronger either. Then, in 1983, they rapidly
gained electoral strength on the back of mass disillusion with
the Socialist Party-led government elected in 1981. The
Front National (together with its recent split-off, the MNR)
6
long daily slot on the Hajj by Channel 4 that downplayed the
appalling death toll which occurs there every year). An
establishment paper such as the Financial Times has had
front-page photos of the Hajj and of anti-war placards of the
Muslim Association of Britain. Soon after September 11,
both political leaders and the media – out of concern for the
backlash this was likely to generate, dropped the term
‘Islamic fundamentalist’ from usage. In the same vein, Bush
invited an imam to the special religious service held soon
after S11 in Washington; and Blair met Muslim leaders in
Britain. This was a symbolism that went down well with
Muslim leaders in these countries.
Nonetheless, many Muslims still believe that the US-led
‘war on terror’ is in fact a war against Islam and therefore is
the clearest expression of Islamophobia. But such reasoning
overlooks some uncomfortable realities. The country at the
forefront of this ‘war’ is of course the US. Let us, therefore,
summarise briefly its relations with the ‘Islamic’ world:
i.
The US has long propped up the Saudi regime, a
crucial ally in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has the most
sacred sites of Islam. But there has never been a squeak of
protest by the US government against the brutality and
oppressiveness of this barbaric society – rather, the US has
gone out of its way not to criticise it out of ‘respect for
Islamic values and culture’. This, of course, is humbug, but
the fact remains;
ii.
The second largest recipient of US aid (after
Israel) is Egypt – a Muslim country;
iii.
In 1991, the US-led coalition ‘liberated’ Kuwait,
a Muslim country – with the help of practically all the
Muslim Gulf states;
iv.
In 1999, the US and its NATO allies ‘liberated’
Kosovo – a predominantly Muslim province, from
‘Christian’ Serbia. The ex-Serb President Milosevic is
undergoing a show-trial in The Hague for ‘crimes against
humanity’ (specifically, against Kosovar Muslims);
v.
The US armed, trained, and funded the Islamic
fundamentalists of the Afghan Mujahideen in the fight
against the Russians. This included nurturing one Osama Bin
Laden.
vi.
The US had no problems of the takeover of
Afghanistan in 1996 by the Taliban – the creation largely of
Pakistan, a strong ally of the US and an avowedly ‘Islamic
Republic’.
vii.
The US has been strongly pushing for Turkey’s
membership of the EU – though Turkey is a secular state,
most Turks are, nominally at least, Muslims.
The list could go on. One might, therefore, wonder where
is the ‘war on Islam’ or ‘Islamophobia’ of US foreign
policy? It is not for nothing that leaders of Muslim countries
rarely talk about ‘Islamophobia’. Moreover, it is a rarely
stated fact that Muslims say from the Indian sub-continent or
East Asia are likely to experience much harsher treatment
and discrimination at the hands of ‘fellow Muslims’ in Arab
(especially Gulf) countries than they are in the West. So,
woe betide those who parrot the Islamophobic argument
against the Western right - for those foolish enough to do so
will surely be in for a serious hammering. Moreover, by so
doing, they will let the imperialists off the hook. In reality,
US imperialism does not give a damn about the religion of a
country as long as its economic and strategic interests are
served. It has long supported the most reactionary, dictatorial
regimes in the Muslim world – as long as they do its bidding.
If they fall out of line, as with Iraq, then they are subjected to
the full imperial onslaught. At most, we could say that there
has been a degree of Anti-Arab hostility that has spilled over
into anti-Muslim sentiment as one of the justifications for
this. But this does not alter that fact that, both domestically
and internationally, there is simply no material basis to
‘Islamophobia’.
The term Islamophobia seemed to first appear in Britain
during the Rushdie affair in the late 1980s. This was an
attempt by fundamentalist Muslims to silence critics such as
Rushdie and his supporters for free speech by arguing that
only the wider Islamophobia of British society and state
allowed this to pass unpunished. The implication was clear:
criticism of Islam is tantamount to ‘Islamophobia’ and is
therefore out of bounds. This is a situation that progressives
cannot and should not accept. For those on the left who are
not convinced by this analysis, some crucial questions need
to be posed. What is your position on, for example, the
stance of thousands of women in Pakistan who courageously
demonstrated against the Islamic hudood ordinance in the
mid-1980s that the dictator General Zia (a key Islamic
fundamentalist US ally at the time) was imposing – whose
aim was to reduce women, in law, to second-class status?
These women were clearly acting in an Islamophobic
manner – any mullah would have told you that. Similarly,
what is your position on those protesting against the Sharia
law in Northern Nigeria that recently saw the imposition of a
death-by-stoning sentence on a Nigerian woman for
adultery? These demonstrators are clearly acting in an
Islamophobic manner, as any mullah must tell you. Or, your
position in regard to the ex-Muslim Dutch MEP who has
been witch-hunted by Muslims for asserting that Muslim
men oppress women?
What is clear is that such questions and implications have
been blatantly ignored. Much of the left has simply been
unwilling to critically engage with the reactionary beliefsystem of its new-found allies. Not only that, but there has
also been an extraordinary indulgence – as, for example, in
the toleration of Muslim Association of Britain’s (MAB)
members and spokespersons at anti-war demonstrations in
London and elsewhere to incessantly chant the ‘takbeer’
(‘Allah-o-akbar’). Absolutely no such indulgence was
allowed for members of other faiths (so, for instance, no
chance of the Lord’s Prayer or Buddhist chants) or of no
faith (no singing of the Internationale or Red Flag). Instead,
in the aftermath of the Iraq war, there is talk by some of an
electoral pact between the Socialist Alliance and Muslim
groups and mosque leaders along the lines of a ‘Peace and
Justice Coalition’. It appears that those who have decried
against ‘Islamophobia’ have gone further and are now
engaging in a kind of ‘Islamophilia’. Matters are at an early
stage but this really seems to be about converting the Stop
the War Coalition into an electoral body. Were this, by hook
or crook, to materialise, it would be a strange creature
indeed: an electoral grouping of atheistic progressives and
religious zealots who, on many core issues, are profoundly
reactionary. Before any such fiasco begins to take shape,
some more sobering facts need to be pointed out. One
presumes that there would be attempts to deepen links with
the MAB – the key Muslim organisation in the anti-war
movement. Now the MAB is clear and proud of where it
stands: it takes inspiration from the ideas of Maulana
Maududi, the founder member of the Jamaat-I-Islami in
Pakistan (Tariq Ali exposes his ideas in Clash of
Fundamentalisms). Let us remind ourselves that the Jamaat
and fellow Islamist reactionaries have won a large number of
seats in Pakistan’s elections and are already making life hell
7
not just for women and progressives but for anyone with an
even the remotest semblance of modernist thinking in the
North West Frontier Province which they now control.
Europeans, like Bell, can be racist towards other white
Europeans, like Berlusconi, etc.
Faz Velmi
Excerpts from the AWL e-list
discussion
What exactly are you trying to say Jim? It seems by your
glib and stupid remarks that you have not much of an
understanding of ‘oppressed’ communities in Britain. In fact
it all seems such a joke to you.
As if the Italian community which happens to be
WHITE-is as under attack as the Muslim/Asian communities
in the UK - by the BNP (remember them?) and then racist
asylum immigration laws etc.
The BNP have declared the up and coming elections as a
‘referendum on Islam’. They are winning something like
more than a third of all votes in some Yorkshire
constituencies.
This is pretty fucking scary to me... being a member of a
few oppressed minorities and all...
To be honest I find Jim’s comments quite offensive... and
this combined with what I believe has been a real hamfisted
inconsiderate approach to the original cartoon issue... makes
me ask the question:
‘Why is racism against the Muslim communities not
taken seriously by some members of AWL?’
Jim Denham
Have comrades seen the Steve Bell’s “If” strip on the
back page of today’s Grauniad G2 section? Is it simply
taking the piss out of Berlusconi, or is it a pretty crass
example of racial stereotyping? If you were Italian, would
you be offended?
Alan Thomas
The answer would be “yes it isn’t very nice, however
Italians aren’t an oppressed minority in Europe and this
therefore doesn’t further marginalise them”. In fact, they’re
part of one of the world’s richest nations and their Italianness is not treated in general as a predilection to terrorism.
Racism is an issue of power, marginalisation and prejudice,
not just purely of being nasty about a nationality or culture.
The day I see anyone worrying about what an Italian guy
has in a rucksack on the tube, or stories about how Italian
moderates need to stop the extremist bomb-throwing Italians
in their midst, I’ll see the parallel in terms of racism. For the
time being, I really don’t.
Anyway, are you arguing that the AWL should publish
cartoons which stereotype Italians? If so, we could do the
French too. I know of a highly amusing picture of a Frog
holding a glass of Pastis with a Gitane hanging out of its
mouth that’s been doing the rounds on the internet... all in
the interests of free speech of course :-)
Jim Denham
If different criteria of what objectively constitutes racism
apply to different groups depending upon the degree of
oppression they suffer then I think it’s difficult to have any
sort of rational discussion about racism. There surely have to
be objective standards that are universally applied. That’s a
different matter to whether some ethnic groups suffer more
oppression than others, which is a matter we take up more
generally in our politics.
What I’m saying, I suppose is that although the Irish (or
Welsh) are not significantly “oppressed” in Britain today,
that does not mean that “Paddy” (or “Taffy”) cease to be
racist, or that we are indifferent to such racism. I think the
Steve Bell cartoons in the Guardian are grotesquely and
gratuitously racist in a way that even the “worst” of the
Danish cartoons were not. The fact that Italians are not an
oppressed group in Britain today is irrelevant to that
judgement.
I am most emphatically not denying that Asians in
Britain suffer considerably more racism than most people.
But it’s a different argument.
I think those who argue that different criteria apply to our
assessment of what is and what isn’t “racism”, depending
upon the degree of general oppression faced by particular
ethnic groups, are in danger of turning racism into an entirely
subjective and relativist concept. And also, entirely
unintentionally, of infantilising oppressed groups.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but what the “relativist”
position on racism seems to be saying is that because the
most oppressed (racially and in class terms) groups in society
are (understandably) usually the most sensitive to perceived
racial and other insults, we have to adopt a different criteria
when assessing what is and isn’t “racism” than we would use
when dealing with non-oppressed groups. In fact, we
basically have to accept their (or, rather, their community
leaders’) criteria. Is that a fair summary?
And if so, then were we wrong about the ‘Satanic
Verses’?
Jim Denham
The point that Alan raises doesn’t address the question of
whether the Bell cartoons are racist or not; it addresses
another point: whether the “targets” of the ridicule are “an
oppressed minority” or not. Two different questions.
Are you, Alan, saying that different criteria apply to
“oppressed minorities” (like Muslims) than apply to others
(like Italians?): again, this is not a trick question. I’m not
sure about this myself. But I think it’s worth teasing out.
Alan Thomas
Au contraire, I think I do address the point about racism what I was illustrating is precisely why I don’t think the
Berlusconi thing is racist. The point about repression comes
in because racism (as against “being nasty”) is, at least in
part, a tool of repression. It’s a way of oppressing people or
enhancing marginalisation - marginal and oppressed being
statuses that I find it hard to attribute to Italians in Europe.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think that you and I
understand the same thing by the term “racism”. I think this
is why you don’t think I’m addressing the point, where in
fact I am.
This is all notwithstanding the ages-old (and less
interesting in some ways) question of whether white
8
quite possibly Berlusconi himself) really do have a history of
mafia connections.
Matt Cooper
Racism is the belief that humanity is separated into
distinct biological groups and that behavioural,
psychological and cultural traits are determined by this.
Some racists use arguments that their belief are based on
culture, but if you scratch the surface you usually find that
this makes little sense unless the culture is immutable, and
thus determined by the supposed biological race. Racism is
often - but not necessarily - linked to the idea that some
supposed races, and the traits based on them, are superior to
others. Name calling is at the dumb-arse end of this - to call
someone by a name that is pejorative (or even flattering hey, you must have a great sense of rhythm) is often to
suggest that they have the individual shared the alleged
characteristics of that group.
Racism is often linked to oppression, but not necessarily
so. Racism is bad whether it is oppressive or not (Some of
my best friends are Jewish, but they are so terribly mean etc.,
hey, you’re Welsh, let us have a listen to your lovely Welsh
baritone etc. etc. )
There is obviously a grey area where a group have a
common culture, and one dislikes that culture. But cultural
cohesive groups - ethnic groups - really do exist and are not
biologically fixed, and both an individual from that group
can not conform, and that group or substrata of it, can
change. Mr B is in a long line of corrupt Italian politicians.
The Mafia is a powerful institution in Italy etc.
Cathy Nugent
Isn’t the kind of racism Matt talks about and Jim
identified in the Steve Bell cartoon sometimes called
xenophobia? It is hatred of “foreigners”. We English seem to
have a particular gift for inventing and holding on to
xenophobic stereotypes. Sometimes they have come out of
colonial situations (Ireland). Sometimes out of wars and
imperialist rivalry (Spanish, French, Germans). I think you
can say, or at least think of it being, a form of racism — it is
stereotypes and prejudices being expressed about people
from different nationalities/countries, it is a hatred against
peoples....
All stereotypes are idiotic. But not all are xenophobic —
they might express affection for a nationality e.g. that all
Italians love bambinos. All xenophobic stereotypes are not
good...
• Are often a bit more than “not nice”.
• Cannot be dismissed as politically unimportant or
uncomplicated. E.g. the anti-English prejudice of some
Scottish people is an expression not so much of historical
oppression by us English bastards but the grip of low-level,
mindless Scottish nationalism which mitigates against
working class unity.
• Can stoke up nationalism, reaction and other forms of
racism.
• Can lead to actual discrimination... e.g. at times of war.
On the other hand this kind of hatred and prejudice is not
usually based on actual discrimination. The racism that is so
based and which serves to marginalise and oppress people
from different minority ethnic groups within a particular
society, or globally, is clearly more urgent, more actively
damaging to peoples’ lives, more politically corrosive and
therefore is objectively more important.
Alan Thomas
That is an understanding of race and racism, I grant you,
but a very anthropological (in the old-school sense of social
anthropology) one. Although it’s certainly good for a debate
in terms of whether we can say “race” exists or not (this is
still not a dead debate in some quarters), I’m not so sure that
it’s helpful in the context of a political understanding of
racism and anti-racism.
Surely when we talk about racism, we refer to it in the
context of a society riven by class and economic divisions,
and other oppressions. We can’t easily divorce our
understanding of a phenomenon such as race/racism from the
way in which we see wider society. We’re concerned with
racism as it manifests in the form of a factor reinforcing
social oppression - literally in the form of attacks upon
people but also in terms of at-work discrimination, economic
disparities etc. Racism in the sense of people simply being
nasty about a particular ethnic or cultural group, has far less
significance unless it is tied to some form of discrimination
or oppression.
Obviously, we’d prefer it if people could be nice about
each other, but the difference say between someone calling
me a “white bastard” and me calling someone a “black
bastard” is surely that no generally held negative stereotype
(or related economic/social oppression) is being reinforced
when someone has a go at me for being white.
In this sense, I really and honestly don’t see how Jim’s
correlation of a cartoon lampooning a (white) member of the
Italian ruling class with cartoons which reiterate stereotypes
about Muslims (I know we have our disagreements on
“cartoongate”, but we can at least agree that), makes any
sense at all. As you quite correctly add, that’s
notwithstanding the fact that Italian rightist politicians (and
Jim Denham
I think I agree with Cathy’s comments on “xenophobia”
and general divisive, nationalistic/racist backwardness. Why
I (implicitly) compared the Steve Bell cartoons with the
Danish cartoons was precisely that one of the latter
(Mohammed with a bomb in his turban) had been objected to
on the grounds that it perpetuated a racist stereotype.
Looking at the cartoon, it seemed to me at the very least
debatable that this was any sort of racism, or even that it was
intended as a comment on Islam in general - only the jihadi
strand. The Steve Bell cartoons, on the other hand, whilst
being aimed at Berlusconi quite clearly perpetuate all sorts of
racist stereotypes about Italians.
Alan Thomas
I get the impression that some people almost seem to
think that racism is about “making generalisations about a
group in a nasty way”, whereas in fact it’s a far more
concrete, complex and deep-set social phenomenon than that.
As I’ve already said to him in person, Jim’s comparison
between anti-Muslim racism and taking a poke at Italians is
absurd in my view, precisely because he seems to be
working off a wrong (and shallow) understanding of racism.
I don’t think he’s being intentionally offensive, so much as
not really understanding the question that’s being tackled.
9
but this is a confusion. I will try to explain what I mean
clearly (although this will make the presentation rather
formalistic, but I want to be brief and clear).
Racism is a set of ideas. As such it may, or may not, be
linked to oppression. There is a degree to which we care
much more about oppression than racism, we care about the
oppressed. If I were black and hated all white people, that
would be of far less concern than the apartheid regime in
South African. But this does not alter how we define nation.
I think that you do have a point, but one that is a little
submerged, about what this says about the nature, the
essence, of racism, but I think we need to be clear about the
basics before we get on to that.
There are of course other ideas on which oppression of
groups of people can be based. Nationality is one Russification for example is a form of oppression that clearly
not racist, it states that people’s ancestry is less relevant than
their current culture. It is not racist, but it is oppression.
Specifically it is national oppression.
This cultural phenomenon can, as Cathy and Cath have
both suggested, be called xenophobia, chauvinism etc. Very
often the distinction between such ideologies and racism,
there is a short step from xenophobia against, say, Slavs as a
cultural entity, and then suggesting that they are of “inferior
stock”. This is not at all unusual. But, there is no necessary
link between racist ideas and oppression, nor is there a
necessary link between xenophobia and oppression. Nor is it
necessary that oppression based is racism is worse than that
based on xenophobia. All of this does not emerge form the
categories, but form concrete historical/social analysis.
However, where Alan does have a point, and it is an
important point, is that the above is formalistic. To
understand racism, and indeed to define, is not to play with
abstract definitions, it is to look at its concrete emergence. I
this I think we can say that racism tends to oppression (this is
not a political slogan), that often oppressive relations grow
up with an associate ideological justification that can be
racism (or something else), and this is certainly the case with
anti-black racism and its association with the growth of
colonialism and the slave trade.
Jim Denham
Alan (Thomas) seems to want to subsume the concept of
racism into “other oppressions”. In doing so, he robs the
term of any specific meaning: (to quote Alan): “Racism in
the sense of people simply being nasty about a particular
ethnic or cultural group, has far less significance unless it is
tied to some form of discrimination or oppression”.
Leaving aside the confusing issue of what exactly a
“cultural group” is, I would reply:
1/ “Being nasty” about particular ethnic/biological groups
is precisely what racism is - if the scale of “nasty” can be
stretched to include genocide at one end and negative racial
stereotyping in jokes, at the other;
2/ Of course if racism is combined with other forms of
discrimination/oppression (most obviously: economic and
legal), then it is a much more serious matter. But that doesn’t
mean that racism can only exist in conjunction with other
forms of oppression.
...Prince Phillip, Lord Levy and Michael Portillo have all
been subjected to racial ridicule/abuse - sometimes from the
“left”. None of those people are subject to any economic or
legal discrimination, that I am aware of. None of them are
individuals that we would feel any personal sympathy
towards. But we should still object to any racial ridicule or
abuse towards them. Not out of any sympathy for those
particular individuals, but because that sort of low-level
racism is ideologically divisive , making the task of uniting
the working class that much more difficult. Never mind that
it may be aimed against a ruling - class figure: it is still the
“Socialism of Fools”....
Alan Thomas
1) No, Jim, I don’t want to “subsume it into other
oppressions”. Racism is a question of oppression. I think you
want to divorce racism from questions of oppression, as (it
seems to me) your point “1” makes clear. This, in and of
itself, removes any political context from questions of
racism, and reduces them to “being unpleasant to someone”.
That isn’t what racism is all about. It’s about the facilitation
of social oppression by alienating and marginalising people
from “other” ethnic or cultural groups.
Unless of course you seriously believe that it’s possible
for you or me to oppress Prince Philip by making Ouzo
jokes.
2) I think you’re sufficiently capable of reading between
the lines, to realise that when I talk about to “being nasty”,
I’m not referring to genocide. My point was that (for
instance) an English guy calling a Welsh guy “Taffy”
(despite the fact that it’s derogatory, and I wouldn’t do it), is
clearly not the same as a white South African calling a black
countryman “Kaffir”. I’m sure you can see the difference,
and it rather does illustrate my point about racism and
oppression.
Alan Thomas
I didn’t “rubbish” what [Matt] wrote, in fact what I said
was that there were contexts in which it was very valid
indeed - it simply struck me that the framework you offered
was one which suited more anthropological debates about
the concept of race, rather than a more down-to-earth
political context. My degree is in Social Anthropology,
which is why the analogy sprang to mind. There was no
derogatory intent on my part.
Now, in answer to your question, I think racism is
inseparable from oppression - the two cannot be divorced.
Racism, in the sense that I understand it, is ethnic/cultural
prejudice which furthers social, political and economic
oppression of a particular group. A rather clunky and very
crudified definition, I admit, but one that I think sums up
more or less my view. Racism as a phenomenon always has
a concrete setting, and doesn’t stand in isolation from wider
social issues.
This also goes to further examples where racism is
involved in my view, but where “race” per se is less difficult
to fathom - for instance the historical case of Anglo-Saxon
discrimination and bigotry against people of Irish origin.
Matt Cooper
I asked [Alan] a direct question about what you thought
that racism was - I think that since you rubbished what I
offered in no uncertain terms you should respond. But you
have not. I think that there is a reason for this.
What you are doing, I think, is, as Jim is suggesting, is
collapsing the idea of racism into the action of oppression,
10
I do agree with Cathy’s point about delineating
xenophobia (for instance) from racism, and clarifying the
differences between the two. But I think that seeing racism in
the context of social oppression actually helps to make that
clarification rather than muddying the waters.
The point you make about the historical legacy of the
slave trade is very poignant and appropriate, and I think
shows exactly what I’m putting forward as an example of
deep-set racism.
(including second and third-generation Irish) still tend to be
in low-paid manual jobs, suffer high levels of unemployment
and are under-represented in higher education. I don’t have
the statistics on any of this, but I’m quite prepared to believe
that it’s all true. My argument would be that this is class not
race discrimination: the treatment that working class Irish
people experience is exactly what working class, white,
unskilled/semi-skilled English people experience.
However, “Paddy” jokes are still common and we would
still denounce them as racist.
Bruce Robinson
Cath Fletcher
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious and nobody will disagree
(surely not;) but I don’t think it is possible to reduce racism
either to a set of ideas or the exercise of power. It is both, but
not always simultaneously in every case. Not everyone who
is prejudiced is in a position to enforce discrimination,
exclusion etc however much they may want to. It is also not
necessary to believe in racial theories (at least in a precise
sense) to use power to enforce discrimination that is in
practice racist e.g. UK immigration laws.
There seems to be a lack of distinction in this discussion
between the concepts of “race” and nationality.
Oppression/discrimination/stereotyping based on either race
or nationality are bad things, however, they are not the same.
I think Cathy started to address this when she pointed to the
concept of xenophobia.
I think Matt is right to say that ‘Racism is the belief that
humanity is separated into distinct biological groups and that
behavioural, psychological and cultural traits are determined
by this’. However, these ‘biological groups’ - scientifically
spurious, of course - do not, in racist thought, necessarily
correspond to nations.
I am an English person who lives in Italy. When I am
treated differently from an Italian person, it is on the basis of
my nationality, not my race. I don’t think most Italians
would regard me as racially different from them.
In fact, quite a lot of people assume that I’m Italian (until
they hear my accent). At least some people here, however,
regard my friend Melissa, who is half Thai and half Hong
Kong British, as racially different (though not necessarily
inferior), not least because it is clear from the way she looks
that she is not Italian.
Of course there are points at which the lines between
discrimination based on nationality and discrimination based
on race are blurred. However, there are examples of
xenophobic mud-slinging which seem to have very little to
do with any concept of racial difference (e.g., historically,
that in England syphilis was called the “French disease”, and
in France the “English disease”). And on the other hand there
are racist insults that have nothing to do with nationality (e.g.
northern Italians calling their southern counterparts
“Africans” to imply that they are backward and lazy).
I haven’t seen the Berlusconi cartoon that Jim has
referred to. However, I find it odd to talk about “racial”
stereotyping of Italians by a British cartoonist. If anything,
Bell is using a national stereotype. However, I can’t really
see that it’s either racist or national stereotyping to portray
Berlusconi as a cartoon mafioso given his history and the
widespread allegations of his links to organised crime
(reported in detail by the Economist in 2001).
Jim Denham
Alan is obviously correct to argue that in Britain today
there is a fundamental difference between someone calling
him a “white bastard” and him (Alan) calling someone a
“black bastard” - the difference plainly being that black
people are still discriminated against racially and
economically. That fact would lead us to dealing with a
black person who used the term “white bastard” a lot more
sympathetically than we would a white racist. But it doesn’t
change the fact that “white bastard” is a racist term and one
that we would object to (this debate took place, I understand,
within the ANC and COSATU in the 1970’s and 80’s, with
the anti-Stalinist left arguing that there was such a thing as
anti-white racism). I suppose - to misquote Lenin - we can
sympathise with the racism of the oppressed but we still
recognise it for what it is.
The point about all this is that the term “racism” means
something specific - it means (as Matt says) “the belief that
humanity is separated into distinct biological groups...
(usually)...linked to the idea that some (supposed) biological
groups are superior to others”.
If “racism” doesn’t mean that (or something very close to
that) them I don’t know what it means.
Interestingly, Alan offers no definition or explanation of
his own understanding of what “racism” is.
The significance of all this with regard to the two sets of
cartoons under discussion (the Danish ones and Steve Bell’s)
is that whereas the single Danish cartoon that could
conceivably be considered “racist” (the ‘turban’ one) is
much more obviously understood to be an attack on jihadi
Islam than on Asian or Middle Eastern people as a whole,
the Bell cartoons about Berlusconi quite clearly and
deliberately perpetuate racial stereotypes.
The fact that Italians are not oppressed in Britain today
whereas Asians and people from the Middle East are, is
important but irrelevant to that particulate judgement about
what is and what isn’t racism.
Postscript:
A further illustration of my point:
I do not believe that there is any significant racial
discrimination against the Irish in Britain today. A lot of
people would disagree. They would argue that Irish people
11