Multicultural

[liv]

A few people have been passing round links to Searchlight's survey about attitudes to race and immigration. I'm finding it somewhat depressing; only 8% of the UK population are classed as Confident Multiculturalists, people like me who are enthusiastically pro-immigration and embrace diversity. I mean, I suppose that's about the same proportion of the population as people from BME groups, and if half the country worry that huge swarms of immigrants are going to take over British culture, then perhaps the Confident Multiculturalists are actually an incipient swarm headed for world domination.

No, sorry, that's a bit cynical; to be fair, Searchlight stuff does tend to paint a gloomy picture, perhaps not surprisingly because orgs dedicated to anti-racism tend to observe a lot more horrible stuff than positives. But I am worried by the implication of the survey that the only thing keeping the UK from spiralling into massive xenophobia is the fact that currently all the right-wing groups are a bunch of obviously incompetent thugs. UKIP looked some years ago as if it might develop into a plausible right-wing political force (if only because they included and appealed to polite, articulate, middle-class racists), but they've got so distracted from their cause by infighting that they're no longer a serious threat. That's a very thin comfort, if huge numbers of people would be willing to support groups like the EDL or the BNP if only they would abstain from actually beating people up on camera.

The glib comment is that mainstream politics has "failed", that people are driven to the extremes because there's no sensible choice among the major parties. That doesn't really make it less scary for me, because I still find it horrifying that anyone but a fringe minority would consider racism a sensible alternative to corruption, nepotism and bad economic policy.

Anyway, the discussion that has arisen from the publication of this report reminded me that a few weeks ago I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, which is in part a polemic against the kind of multicultural values I hold so dear. So that was a spur to getting round to writing and posting my review.

Comments

[ephemera]

that is indeed depressing, especially alongside the by-election results for UKIP and the BNP in Burnsley

[liv]

Yeah, there are still enough people who succumb to the temptation of "protesting" about the major parties by voting for extremism. I think France learned their lesson on that one pretty fast when they came close to electing Jean-Marie Le Pen as president a few years ago. It still happens here, and enough to swing a few by-elections and local councils and European elections (which unfortunately nobody cares about, so they tend to have low turnout).

[tig_b]

An interesting, but scary, report.

However, I am concerned that the 'methodology' section doesn't actually describe the methodology. No indication of who they surveyed or how, and no info on variability. The later is very important, as these results are being used as if they represent the whole community (and will influence people!).

[ptc24]

The methodology page spends eight bullet points describing their Latent Class Analysis. I find this frustrating - the level of difficulty is sufficiently low that someone who's actually familiar with this sort of analysis (I've implemented similar algorithms during my postdoc, and read about a whole lot more) can't really tell what's actually going on, and sufficiently high that it looks like it will blind anyone else with science. I'd like to see a link to a paper or some sort of technical specification for that.

It's odd, for instance, that the algorithm bothered to divide up Confident Multiculturalists and Mainstream Liberals (I guess I'd probably end up as one of the latter), when the latter basically seems to be merely a dilute version of the former. It's nowhere near as profound as the distinction between the two central groups, who seem very different indeed, and yet who are very similar on the "in general, is immigration a good thing" question.

[liv]

All very reasonable points. This is definitely as much a propaganda exercise as it is an objective survey of what people actually think, and I do think it would be a mistake to read too much into it.

[ptc24]

Basically, as far as I can tell, it's black-box research. If you trust the people behind it to have the right attitudes[1] and to be competent, especially with new data-analysis techniques[2], then maybe you can trust the results. But I think the black-box nature means that it has little persuasive value - if you don't absolutely trust the authors, the most you can take away is a collection of ideas maybe worthy of further investigation, if that.

[1] I'd say truth-seeking, self-questioning, honest, things like that.
[2] It's got a computer in it doing something complicated, it must be right/wrong.

[liv]

Yes, I very much agree. I have never fully trusted Searchlight, they do some good work but they can be quite monomaniac about it, and that can sometimes mean ignoring facts that they don't like, or putting a really negative spin on stuff. I also agree that it may well influence people; this survey has been surprisingly influential, with politicians referring to it directly. And I worry that people will look at the results and say, oh, lots of other people are xenophobic, so maybe it's ok for me to give credibility and even votes to far-right parties.

[aphenine]

I read a book called The Islamist (I forget who but I can have a look if you'd like) by someone who was in the Islamist movements in the UK that eventually gave birth to groups such as Al Quaida. (Islamists being political Islamic movements and not the religion).

It was really interesting and relevant to this topic, because much of the movements started out because the UK gave shelter to Nationalist Islamic movements which had been banned in their home countries (e.g. Pakistan, Jordan). These movements organised disaffected Islamic youth in the UK via mosques (the East London Mosque is a particular example) to transfer money and resources back home for terrorist activities. These movements became the seeds out of which pan-nationalist Islamist movements (e.g. Al Quaida) grew from once the nationalists had lost control. Even the author, once he'd gotten free of these nationalist ideologies, felt that it was bizarre that these groups were legalised in the UK. It was as if, on one hand, we were supporting democracy and progress in these countries and on the other hand we were directly providing shelter and material support to the enemies of tolerance and freedom.

The reason this is all relevant is that, Cameron's comments come after the official government report into such groups, which finally recognised the impact that sheltering these groups was having. It's useful that we realised that being so tolerant that we are tolerant about intolerance is a stupid strategy, or that we extend religious protection to political groups. In this sense, it's clear multiculturalism has failed. This is why I find it weird that you worry so much about the trends in this country away from this over tolerant form of multiculturalism. I can't imagine that you, as a multiculturalist, believe that multiculturalism implies the provision of safe harbour to the terrorist/political groups of other countries as part of itself?

[liv]

That's an incredibly loaded question! Obviously I don't support terrorism (and I'm also not against freedom and I never beat my wife). For me this is not an argument about whether terrorism is bad (duh!) but about how to deal with it. And I really don't think that the answer is repressive measures against Muslim communities, or massive scrutiny and over-reaction to politically incorrect statements if the speakers happen to be Muslim (and I'm particularly concerned about areas that normally place a high value on free speech, such as university campuses and internet discussion fora), or restrictions on immigration, or rhetoric by politicians and journalists which tacitly encourages mob violence against immigrants but stays deniable if racial violence does result.

I wasn't really talking about Cameron's speech as such. FWIW I think he's being very political in his rhetoric. A liberal-leaning person can read it and be reassured that he carefully distinguishes between Islam the religion and the political extremism that he calls "Islamism", while a right-leaning person can read it and take away the impression that he's basically blaming Muslims for all the problems in the UK. He doesn't even attack multiculturalism directly, but doctrine of state multiculturalism; obviously everybody, of any political persuasion, is going to be against being indoctrinated by the state!

There seems to be a tendency, which Cameron's speech is part of, to define multiculturalism as the theory that immigrant groups should live in completely separate enclaves with hardly any interaction with mainstream society or anyone from a different ethnic background. Also that you should never criticize anything said or done by anyone who isn't white. Given that nobody anywhere thinks this kind of thing is a good idea, many people are manipulated into saying that they're against "multiculturalism" when actually they're perfectly in favour of actual neutral relations between different cultures and allowing people to get on with their lives in peace without forcing everybody to be like their ideal of middle-class, white, anglo-saxon English people. I think it's Trevor Phillips who started this meme of defining multiculturalism as segregation.

Yes, I absolutely agree that just because a political group meets in a Mosque, that doesn't magically make it a religious group which must be protected at all costs. I'm cautiously in favour of Cameron's proposal to put some serious thought and scrutiny into deciding which organizations charged with outreach to Muslim communities should actually continue to receive government funding. Cautiously because I don't completely trust his stated good intentions towards mainstream, non-terrorist Muslims.

Terrorism is already illegal. Planning terrorism, inciting terrorism, funding terrorism likewise. We don't need any special legal powers to combat Islamist terrorism. And we don't need to declare multiculturalism a failure just because some terrorists and extremists and enemies of tolerance happen to come from a different cultural background from most of our senior politicians!

[aphenine]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ask you a horrendously loaded question, but I genuinely wasn't aware if you understood the definitions and the weights that the politicians were putting on the words they were using, and if you weren't then I thought you should be.

I don't like the use of the word multiculturalism in that context either, but it's clear what Cameron was talking about from the context and supporting remarks, and if the media want to sensationalise it, that's their problem. Besides, it was a Lib Dem who wrote the report, and we all know how right wing and anti-foreigner the Lib Dems are. So the report is deeply suspect already, and I'm sure in condoning its recommendations, Cameron will unleash the kind of evil right wing anti-muslim crackdown that the Lib Dems have been secretly itching to do for so many years... So obviously you're right to fear.

As for the laws and special powers bit, the anti-terror laws weren't meant to deal with these kinds of groups. Our laws are aimed at stopping them doing terrorism to us, rather than to stop them doing (planning, inciting, financing) terrorism to the countries they came from (so Jordan, Pakistan, ...). These are nationalist Islamist groups, with agendas outside of the UK, that then gave rise to global terrorism (who were the ones who wanted to attack us here in this country). They are not directly behind our terrorism although they cause it, and the crimes they've done in this country are hard to define. You're of a different cultural background to the Islamists, arguing for multiculturalism, yet you've just lumped in the global jihadists with the nationalists, which is epic fail in understanding the Islamic World's political make-up. I'd like you to think about that for a moment before you continue getting annoyed at the government, and maybe spare some sympathy for the lawmakers who'll have to clear this mess up somehow.

[liv]

Ah, now I understand what you're saying, I should distinguish between groups that are supporting extremist actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and groups that attack civilians in this country. That's a very good point, and you're quite justified in implying that I don't know as much as I should about the different political factions of the Muslim world. I have a bad habit of ignoring subtle nuances of extremism, and just lumping together everybody who commits violence and terrorism in the name of completely unrealistic aims. (This isn't just an Islamic thing, I don't really pay enough attention to the differences between the IRA, the Provisional IRA, the Real IRA and so forth either.)

You're also right that there are lots of conflicting definitions of multiculturalism, and it may not be pragmatically effective to use the word when I can't be sure if everybody will hear the same thing that I intend. I don't hold Cameron entirely blameless, though; I think he has enough experience to know that his words had the potential to be twisted into anti-Muslim hostility, and he can't just blame media sensationalism for that.

I am very well aware that the ugly tendency to fall back on xenophobic populism can show up in any party. It's generally a terrible idea to assume that "my tribe" politically speaking would never do anything like that! I'm not worried because I think Tory = evil racist; I've voted Conservative in the past and I'm quite likely to do so again. I'm also not sanguine because Cameron has the backing of the Lib Dems, because I have no reason to believe that the Lib Dems are by nature totally free of xenophobia. Mind you I did definitely approve of Clegg's response to Cameron's speech, because he left much less room for potentially dangerous ambiguity than his coalition partner.

I don't think the point of my post was getting annoyed at the government, though. I'm annoyed at, or rather scared of, the voters who are inclined towards punishing Muslims and immigrants when anything goes wrong. In an ideal world I would rather have politicians who never tried to appeal to people like that, but it's a natural feature of democracy that politicians have to make some attempt to do what their constituents want.

[aphenine]

I think you have a really good point about the way Cameron chose his words, and about how they could be really interpreted any which way. I think that's what bothered me most about his speech, that on an emotive level he sounded like he was bashing Muslims while his speech was very carefully cleansed of anything that could be taken as criticism so that there is nothing to point at.

I know that every party has it's crazy people, but I like to think that, given how long they've been the political wilderness, they'll remain the naively idealistic party I know and love. For all of the first year, at least, maybe, hopefully :) As part of that idealism, they're committed to liberalism. Liberalism doesn't let you go around massacring groups of people and it's ideologically opposed to xenophobia, whereas the Conservatives range across ideological reasons, some of which do actually support and condone xenophobia. The Lib Dems can't do xenophobia without losing their identity, but the Conservatives have no such problem. And that's the point I was trying to make.

I phrased that last bit clumsily (or maybe I was suffering from sarcasm overload, in which case I apologise). I meant to just point out that the government might not be able to avoid making a big deal of the whole thing because of the nature of what they're trying to do.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a middle ground between 'enthusiastically pro-immigration and embrace diversity' and 'racism'? Or, if you're not one, are you automatically the other?

S.

[liv]

Sure; the major conclusion of the Searchlight report is that they divided the population into 6 tribes, three of which, representing just under 70% of the respondents, are arguably in the middle ground between racists and multiculturalists.

[shreena]

I don't really see that views on immigration necessarily have anything to do with views on multiculturalism. It seems perfectly possible to me to feel that restrictions on immigration are a good thing while being positive about multiculturalism and it also seems perfectly possible to me that someone could be racist and pro immigration because then the immigrants could do all the dirty jobs. I also think that UKIP are completely different again - the arguments about whether or not further integration across the EU would be a good thing seems to me to have nothing to do with whether or not someone's racist.

[shreena]

(also, as I'm sure you're aware, plenty of BME people are not enthusiastically pro-immigration. I know almost no-one in my ethnic community who is pro-immigration. Some of them are anti-immigration for racist reasons but plenty of them are not.)

[liv]

Agreed. My reasons for being pro-immigration are partly connected to my own immigrant background, but I do recognize that many people in that situation don't come to the same conclusion. Well, it's foolish to assume that everybody who has immigrant ancestors in recent memory is in "the same" situation as me anyway. I think some of the reasons for being anti-immigrant are more classist than racist, as recently arrived immigrants (obviously) tend to be poor and have few relevant skills, whereas after a couple of generations you get people living very middle-class lives and opposed to an(other) influx of poor unskilled people into the country. Or there may be a judgement about whether people have valid reasons for leaving their original country to come here, for example.

That's on an individual level, though. Anti-immigration politics almost always seems to attract racist fellow-travellers, and I'm not completely sure this is a coincidence.

[liv]

I think you're right in a way that racism and xenophobia are not necessarily the same thing. They do often go together, though, because people who hate immigrants tend to assume that anyone with a different appearance must be an immigrant. People who think white people are superior are likely to be against immigration since the vast majority of people in the world (and particularly from former British colonies) are not white. But it's definitely true that the issues faced by, say, Eastern European migrant workers are very different from those faced by English people with south Asian grandparents. And there are definitely non-racist reasons to restrict immigration.

Re UKIP: I don't think being anti-Europe is inherently racist, it's just UKIP specifically who have racist policies covered by a respectable figleaf of Euroskepticism. I want people not to vote for parties with racist policies just because they agree with them on one issue! I do accept that everybody has to make some compromises in a representative democracy though, and I'm sure that many UKIP voters do not in fact share my view of the party.

[shreena]

I'm not arguing that racism and xenophobia are not the same things - I'm arguing that being in favour of more (or different) restrictions on immigration does not necessarily mean that you are xenophobic.

[(Anonymous)]

(although, actually, I think I agree with you that racism and xenophobia are not the same things. That just wasn't my main point.)