Posted: September 28th 2011
It seemed to me (although I wasnt quite sure) that a conversation on yesterday’s Today programme between geneticist Steve Jones and teacher/author Katherine Birbalsingh demonstrated how even these two eminently sensible commentators find the topic of ‘race’ awkward. In the latters case, it was as if her answers were being uncharacteristically cautious - like they were being selected for the benefit of that ever listening ear scanning our anti-racist etiquette. Maybe I'm wrong - make youre own mind up.
Discussing the core theme of BBC 2s new Mixed-Race season James Naughtie asked Jones ...
“it is inevitable isn’t it – statistically – that we’re going to have many more people in the next few generations who are mixed-race?” “Highly likely” answered Jones. More accurately, Jones might have said ‘yes James, inevitable and bloody fantastic!’. . His comment “I’m a great believer in the healing power of lust” alluded to inter-ethnic mixing acting as powerful palliative to racism and racial thinking. So fair enough – in the few short minutes Today allocates to what was essentially a plug for the BBC 2 season Jones had explained that differences like skin-colour are, biologically speaking, no more ‘racial’ than a multiplicity of other genetic differences. Genetically we can only really speak of two branches of human, said Jones, the “African branch” and “diminished Africans” (ie the rest of us).
When Naughtie suggested that our growing awareness of what genetics says about race (and the rising tide of biological mixing) must surely mean barriers come crashing down, Jones pointed out, not unreasonably, that ‘race’ is a profoundly social and political issue: “people with political opinions don’t let facts get in their way”. I just wished he could have said ‘yes James the old racial categories will become completely and utterly irrelevant and racists/anti-racists who keep banging on about race will sound increasingly dumb'. (Well, I can wish can't I?!)
Still – Jones’s comments should have neatly passed Katherine Birbalsingh the ball to hammer into the net – along the lines of ‘socially constructed racial identities used to be a practical necessity because racism used to be an endemic social force and therefore a daily experience for black and Asian citizens’. She might have said ‘ethnic mixing is snowballing right now – racial identity is very rapidly starting to make no sense’. Instead she said “identity is complex. I do believe in people being able to self-identify”. On the myth of ‘race’ she said “race is obviously a social construct but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important; given [ ] the present day experience of racism [race] is clearly very much a reality for people…”.
Shame (odd too because Birbalsingh has been right on many other issues). There was a good opportunity here to be very clear on how, today, we don’t need ‘race’ to fight racism. As for the right to ‘self-identify’ Naughtie seemed the only one on the right track. In a generation, as a vast category of citizens with one white/one black parent themselves inter-marry, what possible ‘racial identity’ could their off-spring select as their ‘self identity’? ‘Diminished African’? Ethnic identity is complex … but we ain’t seen nothing yet!!! The collapse of old fashioned race-thinking, the advent of a new superdiversity, the sheer fact that today it’s the rarity of racial discrimination, ethnic tensions and racist violence that makes any occurrence so shocking to us – all this adds up to a clarion call to tell it like it is: race is NOT important, it’s divisive – it’s a lie and we don’t need to pander to it any more. I’d go further – today, its very often this outmoded anti-racist mindset (too nervous to acknowledge that things are currently much, much better) which keeps ‘race’ alive.
