Being accused of racism is mostly taken as one of the worst accusations known to man, only to be used in the face of the most extreme and explicit examples. Indeed if some had their way the bar would be raised so high that only members of the English Defence League might qualify. Which happily exempts 99.9% of the population from being racist. How this squares with all the evidence of unfair racial outcomes is left unexplained.
These days the word ‘racist’ is slowly being expunged from the lexicon. Race awareness training has become “unconscious bias” training. This follows the transformation of race equality, a state where all races are offered equal opportunities with no blockages or barriers, into “diversity” which merely describes a picture of different races and cultures living in the same area regardless of the inequalities between them.
Casual racism, the kind that those with power exercise both consciously and unconsciously, does not count it seems, despite the collective damage that decisions influence or infected by such prejudice has on society. Unless a written or verbal statement is so incontrovertibly dripping with racist bile it fails to count as racism. As a result the more sophisticated and hidden racism becomes the harder it is to detect unless we lower the bar.
Unlike sexism, which can be an uncomfortable accusation but still easily shrugged off, and anti-Semitism where the bar is set low enough to ring the alarm at the very possibility of prejudice against Jewish people, racism needs a standard of proof beyond all reasonable doubt. It is clear why many do not wish the racism bar to be lowered, for that might cause the finger to point to the attitudes and actions of a far greater proportion of the population.
I had cause to consider these issues again after the England manager, Roy Hodgson, was the subject of a Sun front-page story that he had effectively called player Andros Townsend “a monkey” by telling a ‘joke’ in the dressing room at half time whose punchline was about feeding the monkey. In this case the ‘feeding’ involved an instruction to pass the ball to the flying winger and let him do the rest. A Sun editorial, presumably written by a white journalist, helpfully clarified that the paper did not believe Hodgson was in any way a racist and was merely guilty of clumsy use of language. It was also suggested that the player being ordered to pass the ball to Townsend was Chris Smalling, also a mixed-race black player. So that’s all right then.
Scrolling through Twitter on the train back from Rugby, where I had been speaking at a National Black Police Association conference, I was confronted with a number of tweets from prominent white people, including Gary Lineker, pronouncing with absolute certainty that Hodgson was not being racist. I responded to Lineker asking him what specifically qualified him to be the arbiter of what is and is not racist. Not surprisingly there was no reply.
Townsend himself was quick to say that there was no offense given or taken. This statement was held up by the many defenders of Hodgson and given much prominence with no consideration whatsoever that Townsend was a young player just breaking into the England squad and even if he had objected would have almost certainly not said so. Tweeters gave next to no consideration to the fact that more than one Black player in the dressing room had taken offense and the organisation that campaigns against racism in football, Kick It Out, had demanded an inquiry. It was, without a doubt, a case of selective emphasis to support a pre-ordained view that Hodgson was innocent.
I do wonder if the reaction would have been the same had England just gone out of the World Cup following a string of dire results and he had been facing a barrage of calls to resign anyway. I suspect we would have seen people claiming this was the final straw. However Hodgson had just triumphed over Poland with a reasonable performance and booked a place for the national side in Brazil and absolutely nothing was going to spoil the party.
No thought was given to exactly how offensive and racist the term ‘monkey’ actually is, nor the history of dehumanisation that has given the term its’ potency. And even if one accepts that there was no racial intent to Hodgson’s remarks – which is entirely possible – I felt there needed to be stronger condemnation of the managers’ ignorance. But no, everyone was too busy rushing to save him of any criticism at all. And not once did I see anyone refer to Hodgson’s time coaching football teams in Apartheid South Africa when many in England were boycotting South African produce and demanding the release of Nelson Mandela. If his time in South Africa would have taught him anything it would have been that the term ‘monkey’ is commonly used by racist Boers and Afrikaners and that the majority black population take great offense to it, as the African Diaspora do across the world.
A few months ago I blogged that the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, had answered a question by a Black man on the subject of the failure of his project to pair at-risk Black youth with mentors with the words “I couldn’t give a monkeys.” I cannot say with any certainty that this was a racist statement but I found it offensive not least because it came from a man who had a history of referring to racial stereotypes steeped in colonial prejudice such as “piccanninies” and Africans with “watermelon smiles.” The feedback I received after writing the blog was that readers were glad I had flagged this up and they were upset by the statement as well. At the very least this was a Mayor oblivious to the racial implications of what he was saying, but he was also a Mayor who had axed Black History Month funding and scrapped the positive action policies of his predecessor Ken Livingstone.
Neither Hodgson’s nor Johnson’s statement were clear and indisputable examples of racism. Both remarks leave ample room for interpretation. It is possible that neither man meant any offense. But both were guilty of causing offense whether or not they intended it, and both are powerful men whose decisions affect the lives of others. By the same token it is also possible that both men harbor attitudes that need to be addressed, so rushing to absolve them of any blame – as many commentators did – is not helping matters at all.
As I said, I learnt of the news about Hodgson on my way back from a National Black Police Association conference. When I was there I had conversations with officers about race relations training in the force and how this had not changed the prejudices or outcomes of policing to any significant degree but had merely taught officers what not to say and how to become ‘clever’ about how they can exercise their attitudes without being caught. In the time since race relations training was introduced the numbers and proportion of Black youth stopped and searched has risen dramatically yet it is increasingly hard to substantiate complaints of racism. Quite simply the more knowledgeable people with power become about what to watch out for the more confident they become in getting away with what they can.
That is why I have long argued the key to changing police culture is to screen would-be applicants extremely thoroughly rather than simply attempt to train them once they are already through the doors, as it is very hard indeed to get them out the door again having sworn the oath. As for ‘unconscious bias’ training, as well as falsely assuming that all ‘bias’ is unconscious there is an in-built assumption that any bias is as a result of self-replicating tendencies of hiring people that look like them rather than unpicking deep-seated prejudices that are often transmitted from generation to generation.
I must admit when I learnt the news about Hodgson’s ‘joke’ I was so incensed I tweeted that he should go. This provoked a wave of condemnation from other twitter users, none of whom I follow or who follow me, all of which I faced down with my customary zeal! After contemplation perhaps it isn’t the England managers’ resignation that is required so much as a brave and honest statement from him about the journey he has personally made to combat racism and an acknowledgement that he is still on the journey. Perhaps even admitting that he could benefit from help of others to delve deep and assist him grow.
Of course this would be too much to expect but it would be the intellectually and morally right response from a man who many seem to regard as intellectual and upstanding, at least by football’s standards. But instead we witnessed a wave of denial and a stream of commentators who don’t know pronouncing they do and giving Hodgson a clean bill of health. It was dishonesty all round. But hey, we’re through to the World Cup!
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
