A fact cannot be racist, but if not properly explained it can be explosive
Offence – the right to give it and how to take it – has been the hot topic of 2015. Trevor Phillips’ C4 documentary ‘Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True’ entered that debate with a well-intentioned forcefulness, laying the charge that our reluctance to talk about race has led to a climate of fear and enhanced segregation.
Phillips, a former chair of the Equality and Human Right Commission (EHRC) – which he partly blames for the ‘racket of multiculturalism’ – says many wise and interesting things, although the programme is not as ground-breaking as the crowing of the Mail would have us believe.
For example, he talks about how the confused mantra of political correctness, whose rules are ever shifting, has facilitated the rise of UKIP, and even more right-wing parties in Europe, because it gives them a weapon: the ability to say they are the only people who speak the truth. As Phillips wrote in a column for the Mail,
“Nothing could be further from reality. But the po-faced political correctness that cramps all the conventional parties is allowing these frauds to get away with it.”
This seems about right. The moment people feel that their opinions are suppressed they start to feel that they are victims of the state, and begin looking with renewed suspicion at their original scapegoat. This is what Phillips means when he says that political correctness is making segregation worse.
What the programme doesn’t do is explore the anatomy of racism. Phillips sets out a list of statistics that play into racial stereotypes but are, nevertheless, true: Romanians in London are far more likely to be pickpockets; black Britons are twice as likely to be sentenced for violent crime; Jewish households are twice as wealthy as the rest.
But these are behaviours, not characteristics. ‘ A fact cannot be racist’, Phillips says. This is true, but the problem is when facts lead people to conclude ethnic or racial traits. So while it is not antisemitic to point out, as Phillips does, that there are a relatively large proportion of influential Jewish businessmen in the UK, it is antisemitic to conclude that Jews must be money-grabbing. It would have been braver to explore why Jewish households tend to be richer rather than hiding behind numbers.
Similarly, Phillips does not look into the socio-economic factors behind his statistic about black Britons – he does say that we need to do this, but I think he should have used the programme to do it. Otherwise he’s just preaching to a choir who already think that black people are inherently more prone to violence, and not dismantling that connection at all.
Also: Stop and Search. Not only does the fact that black Britons are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white ones cast doubt on Phillips’ figures about sentencing, it puts a hole in his argument. Because if all white people are so afraid of being called racist that they accord ethnic minorities special treatment, then why are black – and Asian – people so much more likely to be stopped and searched by police?
The documentary showed Phillips talking to a strangely frozen-faced Tony Blair about the failure of the EHRC. They discuss Phillips’ view that the EHRC’s work to eliminate bigotry had the unwanted effect of making it impossible to report or investigate crimes with an ethnic dimension because everybody feels too awkward about it. Blair tells Phillips he is being too hard on himself and I’m inclined to agree.
The few high-profile cases where the fear of seeming racist has hampered the pursuit of justice – the Rochdale sex abuse scandal, the murder of Victoria Climbié – have blown this idea out of proportion. What about the case of Baby P, or the Jersey child abuse investigation, or the historic sex abuse at the BBC and in the Catholic Church? There were failures and cover-ups in all these cases, but not because of concerns about race.
Ann Cryer, the MP for Keighley who accused Blair’s government of covering up the Rochdale sex scandal was decried for blaming the abuse on ‘cultural practices that have been imported into this country from Pakistan’. This is the kind of thing that we need to be able to have a debate about – is there any truth in this idea?
And afterwards, can we look at the cultural backgrounds of white sexual abusers? What do they have in common? We shouldn’t only be looking at the cultures of minorities (incidentally this programme did end up being more about culture than about race).
Phillips is adamant that the failure of the EHCR was that it assumed that if people couldn’t express their prejudices, they wouldn’t feel them. Phillips has recanted on this, but it doesn’t mean that the opposite is true. People tend to talk about race and politics with people they trust, their friends, who are likely to hold similar views, so it’s not the case that airing bigoted views will spark a debate capable of stamping them out.
But this is not to say that there isn’t truth in what Phillips is arguing. And it’s not only the perpetrators of crimes we should be talking about, but the victims. The International Development Select Committee estimated that up to 20,000 girls and women in the UK were at risk of FGM because officials wouldn’t report their suspicions in case they were accused of racism.
We need to dismantle the idea of cultural and moral relativism, which so often makes women from ethnic minorities – the very people it is trying not to offend – its victim. And as Phillips says, we need to acknowledge that it’s time to create new rules about how to live and thrive in a diverse UK.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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24 Responses to “Trevor Phillips on race: an important argument, but nowhere near the full picture”
damon
The programme was a beginning of a debate, but one that can’t actually be had in Britain fully, because of the kind of people who chased Nigel Farage out of his pub on Sunday.
You have one of that type lurking here on this website who acuses everyone he disagrees with of being a ”UKIP Nazi”.
Why are so many young black boys stopped and searched by the police?
Ask the police. They are trying to stop young black youngsters who live in the ”hip hop street culture” from killing each other. They get called racist for not caring about black lives when another black teenager is killed, and get accused of racism when they stop and search young people who appear to fit that profile.
Dacus
Trevor Phillips statement that
Romanians are “most likely to be pickpockets” is a racist statement
because it associates a criminal behaviour
to the Romanian ethnicity and nationality.
And how can Trevor Phillips claim that discussing Romanians as likely to be
pickpockets is taboo when for nearly 3 years, criminal and theft were the most
associated words to Romanians? Even the Romanian Ambassador Ion Jinga has
complained against the “Romanian as thief” stereotype and there are
even academic studies:
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/reports/bulgarians-and-romanians-british-national-press
The facts don’t support Trevor Phillips racist claim that Romanians are more
likely to be pickpockets. Even Daily Mail says that there were only 760
Romanians out of 125000 arrested, of which 414 for theft. 414 out of 125000 make
0.3% of the total of Romanians living in the UK. In other words, only 3 out
1000 Romanians in the UK are thieves and pickpockets. The rest of 997 out of
1000 are decent, working people. Romania’s Ambassador said that the official
figures he received showed 0.6% Romanian criminals in the UK. Does a 0.3%
percentage of pickpockets make Romanians more likely to be pickpockets?????
What about the 997 Romanians out of 1000 who are law abiding? They do not
count? Or maybe innocent until proven otherwise applies to all but Romanians,
who are likely to be pickpockets because that the guru of race relations said
it?
Trevor
Phillips statement about Romanian is beyond abjection.
damon
I think you are getting what Trevor Phillips said totally wrong.
He wasn’t saying statistics show Romanians are most likely pickpockets, but they were more pickpockets from that nationality than would be the norm if all things were equal.
So maybe you’ve just willfully misunderstood what he was saying.
The same with saying that black people were more likely to be violent. Twice as likely than the population as a whole. The way you’re arguing here, you’d be saying that Phillips claims that most black people are violent.
Which he certainly wasn’t. But this is pretty typical of the way the left twist every discussion about these kind of issues.
Also there is the Roma issue. The Romanian Roma are the people most likely to be living the marginalised lives that can include some criminality. Certainly taking the mickey anyway. You only have to be in central London to see Roma people who have come to England to seek out opportunities that don’t require paying your way in legitimate tax paying jobs and paying your own rent etc.
Some do of course, and they are being tarred with the same brush as the chancers who are here to live lives that are not so different to what Charles Dickens wrote about.
Dacus
Trevor Phillips said that Romanians are “most likely to be pickpockets” and I stick to what he said, not to your translation/interpetation. A percentage 0.3% is not statisticaly significant to call Romanians
“most likely to be pickpockets”. I stand to every single wrote I wrote about Trevor Phillips.
Secondly, what have Roma to do with the topic?? Trevor Philips never mentioned them so the issue is a red herring. Roma are only 5% of Romania’s population, not to mention that Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia have even higher percentages.
Finally, Trevor Phillips has a selective memory. He mentions Indians as pharmacists but fails to mention that in terms of benefit recipients, they are in top three foreign nationals of the DWP benefit list, along to Pakistan and Somalia. In comparison, Romania ranks 38 with 2500 people in the DWP benefit tables.
Germany, France and PIGS countries have far more benefit seekers than Romania.
Or the fact that Vietnam with 1.36% of population in the UK, Albania 1.26% and Algeria 0.81% have a much higher percentage of convincted people that Romania. The criminality of these countries is higher yet only Romanians are singled out. Trevor Phillips was proven to hate Eastern Europeans. Singling out Romanians is NO suprise
Dacus
Trevor Phillips said that Romanians are “most likely to be pickpockets” and I stick to what he said, not to your translation/interpetation. A percentage 0.3% is not statistically significant to call Romanians “most likely to be pickpockets”.
Secondly, what have Roma to do with the topic?? Roma are only 5% of Romania’s population, not to mention that Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia have even higher percentages. Trevor Philips never mentioned them so the issue is a red herring.
Finally, Trevor Phillips has a selective memory. He mentions Indians as pharmacists but fails to mention that in terms of benefit recipients, they are in top three foreign nationals of the DWP benefit list, along to Pakistan and Somalia. In comparison, Romania ranks 38 with 2500 people in the DWP benefit tables.
Germany, France and PIGS countries have far more benefit seekers than Romania.
Or the fact that Vietnam with 1.36% of population in the UK, Albania 1.26% and Algeria 0.81% have a much higher percentage of convincted people that Romania. The criminality of these countries is higher yet only Romanians are singled out. Trevor Phillips was proven to hate Eastern Europeans. Singling out Romanians is NO suprise.
Fact based evidence on Romanians do not support any of Trevor Phillips’ statements about them. I stand to every single wrote I wrote about Trevor Phillips.