December 2010

The extraordinary Sunday Times article that led to an effigy of its author publicly burned at the Lewes town bonfire festivities, made a comeback over recent weeks.   The Guardian's Hugh Muir reported from a packed meeting where David James Smith explained himself to the townsfolk (see the text of Smith's speech here).

See my response to 'England's Green and Prejudiced Land' here - and a very good blog response 'Is it cos I is Lewesian?' here.

'Englands Green and Prejudiced Land' was The Sunday Times Magazine cover story on August 8th 2010 ("Our writer David James Smith, part of a mixed-race family, reveals how racism is still rife in provincial England').  To read this 4000 (plus) word article you have to utilise the Times's new pay-wall, but I notice the text is printed here.

David James Smith now claims that his article merely intended to stir debate about racism, to make people more ‘aware’. Hmm, perhaps.

Let’s back off from Lewes for a moment and consider Britain as a whole, right now in 2010. One of the most impressive features of British society compared to 20 or 30 years ago is its diversity. Because my work takes me into dozens of schools I often ponder on the most vivid manifestation of the new diversity. Today, almost 20% of children under the age of 16 are from an ethnic minority. Nestled inside that amazing fact is Britain’s fastest growing ethnic minority – the category formally known as “mixed-race”. This group is growing at an exponential rate. But as I tour primary schools I notice something else. In the playground, at break-times, white, black and minority ethnic kids are inventing a model of colour-blind, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic harmony that could teach the adult world a thing or two.

So what we have is a generation bubbling up that has the potential to transcend and make nonsense of the divisive concept of ‘race’. In the past, the world outside the school-gate would put an end to any chance of a generational change. But the landscape has improved compared to the days when racism was a virulent social force (driven along by politicians, magistrates and the police). Today, it’s the rarity of racial tension and violence that makes it so shocking to us. And I’m glad we’re shocked. When I was at school in the 70s no-one seemed shocked that my PE teacher routinely called me ‘Paki’ because my skin is dark. Racism was endemic, something to laugh about on TV sitcoms while racist murders barely made headlines.

So I don’t think we need to let those who think ‘post-racial’ society is already upon us stop us from recognising how much has changed. We’re still on the wrong side of town, but we’re heading in the right direction now.

Social change doesn’t turn on a sixpence. The danger is that modern-day anti-racism squanders the opportunity to move forward and, therefore, holds progress back. On the subject of ‘racist Britain’, we too often apply every adverse experience BME people have with the default explanation of ‘racism’ – or ‘institutional racism’. We seldom stop to consider that BME citizen’s are disproportionately working class and that they are disadvantaged by poverty as much as any other factor. Today’s anti-racist mindset fails to consider how a culture of victimhood reinforces low expectations. I see this in the South London schools I work in. For example, African Caribbean boys have opportunities that wouldn’t have existed in the past. They frequently admit that they encounter little racism in their daily lives – unlike many of their parent’s experience of their own childhood. And yet they’ve internalised anti-racist messages about how their life chances are somehow permanently limited by a racism ‘out there’ in the world. Some of these boys just pull up their hoods and withdraw into a version of ‘blackness’ based on a debilitating victim-mentality. However, we’ve proven that when these boys have high expectations placed on them, a new message emerges – there is a way through – and they begin to excel.

David James Smith concedes, “racism is not what it used to be, not about open hostility”, but then declares it alive and well in all the “small, subtle incidents that many would not think racist at all but could be highly damaging to those affected, especially if they were children”. Apparently BME children lack any kind of resilience and are ‘damaged’ by “racist language in the playground”. Are they?
In British primary schools kids are always picking up on differences. Children can be flippantly nasty and when they fall-out they hurl whatever insult works best. BME kids do it too! And low and behold ‘Equalities’ officials are now highlighting the problem of ‘homophobia’ amongst African Caribbean and Muslim children.

So – a newsflash from one who works in many, many schools: children of any ethnicity can be nasty little sods. The playground is a messy place – of course they insult each other, they’re kids!

But no – this is all out of sight and out of mind once we’ve put on our race-tinted spectacles. David James Smith loves his wife and children and his concerns are entirely understandable in this sense. But he’s also on a mission. He gave the game away when he mentioned his visit to Professor Gillborn, a recent convert to American Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is a set of conclusions painstakingly searching for ‘smoking-gun’ evidence to back them up. It holds that racism is ever-present and betrayed by the ‘hidden operations of power’ central to ‘white dominated’ society. CRT holds that all ‘white identified’ people are implicated in maintaining a culture of white-privilege. “Depressingly, Gillborn told me that our son was walking around with a bull’s eye on his chest”, says Smith. Depressing indeed! Smith seems then to have walked away from this encounter with all the certainty of one who has seen the light. No wonder that he then compiles all ‘the small and subtle instances’ (which he can now call ‘micro-aggressions”) and invites us to view these as the tip of the iceberg, the unveiling of ‘England’s Green and Prejudiced Land’. If we disagree – well, I guess we just haven’t seen the light yet. Sorry David, you’re going have to admit a few pre-judgments of your own.