Getting real about race
'Identity and belonging are not things that we are born with." This is Trevor Phillips. Provocative, persuasive and determined to enter no-go areas if necessary in the attempt to fight racism and foster tolerance in British society.
Phillips is a politician by inclination; he was President of the NUS in 1978, he headed the Current Affairs team at LWT before moving to the BBC and he was Chair of the London Assembly from May 2000 to February 2003. He's also a man who has the ear of New Labour - Peter Mandelson was best man at his wedding.
He jokes about being mistaken for Trevor McDonald and even Radio One DJ Trevor Nelson and Howard from the Halifax adverts. Phillips was appointed to head the Commission for Racial Equality in March 2003 and famously declared that multiculturalism as a term is dead.
He talks of the world changing faster than it ever has before and the sense of dislocation this is causing. Western Europe's population deficit means that, for economic reasons, millions of immigrants will need to be incorporated over the next 25 years. The question of how minorities fit into a national identity is only set to become more pressing.
Phillips takes individual cases to talk about the broader issues. Statistics flow fast when he speaks: on average Indian schoolchildren do 25 per cent better than white schoolchildren, but Pakistani children do 50 per cent worse. Phillips uses this to talk about 'Bad-Guy Theory', the idea that 'the racist' is a catchall explanation for racial inequalities. While 'Bad-Guy Theory' would blame teachers for the poor performance of Pakistani schoolchildren, Phillips' refutes this: "Is it really credible that the average British teacher would be able to distinguish between a Pakistani and an Indian child, let alone disadvantage the Pakistani student?" Instead of blaming teachers he emphasizes the role of government in changing the disparity in performances. He advocates extra resources, tighter legislation and more people working on race relations on the ground. But doesn't this contradict the example's unspoken emphasis on the role of individual families and communities? If you say that on average Indian school children do better academically than their Pakistani counterparts then isn't the underlying assumption that, educationally, Indian families are doing better for their children than Pakistani families? Phillips' response is direct, "Well it may not be an assumption, it may just be the truth."
Phillips touches upon a host of grey areas that have yet to be debated and defined in British society. Take insurance for example. Insurance works by assessing individuals on the basis of a risk calculation compiled through differentiating factors: geography, age, gender. There are now car insurance policies exclusively for women who have statistically fewer accidents. But if our society allows women-only policies then how can we resist insurance policies with different premiums for different ethnic groups? Perhaps statistically British Afro-Caribbeans have more accidents per head than British Caucasians, but would we feel happy if Cornhill Direct charged a higher premium for being black?
Phillips believes that we still don't know how to deal with difference. He argues that we have created a false incompatibility in the West between the two fundamental ideas of equality and diversity. Equality, he argues, is about equal opportunities and equal human rights; it is not about uniformity. Phillips is provocative because he refuses to dodge the question of racial differences: why is it that most Olympic sprint races in the last fifty years have been won by Afro-Caribbeans? Why do Caucasians tend to win the High Jump? There are much higher rates of lactose intolerance in Afro-Caribbeans than there are among Caucasians. Thus the introduction of free school milk in Britain was unsuitable for all children. Is it a manifestation of inequality for black children to be given soya milk instead? Where does a pragmatic decision become preferment or discrimination?
Philips believes that we have to accept that our society is multi-tiered and disparate. Everyone has a particular identity and the question of how to reconcile particular identities with a national identity is a constant of race relations. Phillips talks of, "detaching people's destinies from their origins". I asked him whether his argument was built on the premise that the national, ie. British, identity had to take precedence over particular religious or ethnic identities. "The clever answer is that we need a national identity to embrace all our differences; basically you need to be able to be Black and British." Yet his argument belies his initial point: "What the Americans have done which is quite clever is to hyphenate, so they can be Afro-American, Arab-American but actually what you know is that they are more American than they are Arab." Phillips' goes on: "What I'm really interested in is the creation of, for example, an authentic British Muslim community." This is the crux of Phillips' thought: that a national identity should act as the great leveller and unifier and that it should therefore take precedence.
But how should Britain's commitment to free speech sit with a commitment to fighting racism? Should we defend the right of people like Nick Griffin to make racist statements in the public domain? "I don't think we should protect anyone's rights to be racist. I think we can protect people's rights to have a view about a religion or about a culture. The shorthand for this is that incitement and harassment and race law are to protect the believer but not the belief. I think that anyone should be allowed to say whatever they want about Islam but that doesn't mean they can say anything they like about Muslims."
This focus on the man not the belief brings Phillips back to the difficult questions he started with, "Why", he asks, "are hourly rates for Pakistani men, doing the same job as Caucasian men on average much lower?" Part of the answer may be an acceptance of a lower wage, especially amongst first generation British-Pakistanis, "But that doesn't make it any better". Thus his emphasis on Government action is grounded in a belief that it is the only agency with the resources to change such deep social and economic trends. On the ground, Phillips talks about the need to facilitate engagement between different sections of communities. He talks about Oldham where he found communities living side by side with almost no interaction. This separation generates momentum by its very existence: an Asian secondary school student in Oldham told him it would seem strange for him to go and talk to a group of his white classmates now. Phillips' believes the fate of race relations will be determined on this level. It is here that government action needs to make an impact. Asked what he thought the greatest obstacle to race relations would be in our generation Phillips paused: "Fear".
Trevor Phillips spoke at European Affairs Society. For more information see www.oueas.org.
18th Nov 2004