Just contributed to a debate with Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation on whether race is relevant in the discussion of the recent sex gang cases in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on the BBC World Service.
My points:
- Isolating race as an explanatory variable ignores all other factors and essentialises the identity of the culprits – it ignores why Asian men are over-represented in socio-economically poorer areas where street-grooming occurs and why white girls are over-represented among vulnerable groups in such areas.
- Plenty of sex-gangs are not Asian – the sex slave trade in this country is sadly alive and well and is not primarily Asian driven. In addition, pedophiles are not overwhelmingly of Asian ethnic backgrounds, suggesting any abhorrent link some may seek to make between race and inherent sexually predatory behavior is not born out by the facts. It is also reminiscent of racist terminology used to refer to black gangs in the 1980s, particularly Jack Straw’s comment in January last year relating to a separate case in Derby: “These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they’re fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that…”
- Finally, how can accusations be leveled at something inherent within ‘Asian’ culture (not cultures?!) when the Chief prosecutor who re-opened the case is himself an Asian Muslim, Nazir Afzal.
This is not about political correctness, it is about not stigmatising an entire community based on a mis-identification of the explanatory variable in the crimes of this group of men, who happen to be Asian. Both the police and the judge appear to believe the race of the victims and abusers was ‘coincidental’, so the real question is why as a society, we are seeking to attribute a racial dimension to it and what that says about our unspoken racist assumptions concerning Asian men. Vron Ware recounts that the Black male has been historically constructed as the antithesis of white femininity; as sexually predatory upon white innocence and beauty – we’d be naive not to notice the same rhetoric being played out now with Asian/Muslim males…
