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Blair, Race and the Blame Game

Glenn Close But No Cigar

13:17 / 13.04.07

From yesterday's Guardian

The British PM has said that he is 'lurching into total frankness' in the final weeks of his premiership, which includes his claim, detailed above, that, as the Guardian puts it 'the spate of knife and gun murders [of young black men, by young black men] in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture'. Blair has said that 'the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids'.

Thoughts on Blair's claim, and why he is making it at this point in his premiership?

All Acting Regiment

13:58 / 13.04.07

not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture

A "distinctive culture" which exists in "the black community" because that community is poverty-struck. Ergo: problems not caused by some strange thing called "blackness" but caused by poverty.

the black community ... need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids

Yes, because most black people don't care about murder at all, do they?% I mean WTF is the guy talking about? What about all those charity groups and church groups and community groups that exist solely to plug the gap left by a government that doesn't give a shit? Is the man blind as well as stupid?

Does he realize that what he's saying is far more serous than simply saying that there needs to be a strategy to target violence in the specific communities where it erupts - that he is saying that violence is somehow natural to black people (or as Blair would say, "black culture", because of course people who say that can't be racist)?

14:04 / 13.04.07

I suppose, at least in part, he's up to New Labour's old tricks with regard to chasing the BNP vote at next month's local council elections, which may well be seen as the UK's last word on his premiership.

However he tries to rationalise it, a heavy Labour defeat there's going to hurt him emotionally, seeing as he's likely to be dropped like a stone immediately afterwards, so I suppose at the moment he's prepared to say just about anything, however wrong-headed, that he feels might possibly claw back some votes for the party.

Although I don't doubt he's got an entirely different explicatory narrative 'in place', to do with speaking out heroically against the forces of political correctness that have so *choke* noticably dogged his government, or something.

Whatever he's planning on getting up to next, I do hope it's conducted on a far more international stage, ideally one a long way from Britain.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:32 / 13.04.07

Well, he has to counter the possibility that people might realise that poverty is the primary cause of these crimes. And he is genuinely racist - not, I think, in the totally conscious way that people tend to assume one means when the word 'racist' is used, but in a more active way than just the sort of innate unconscious racism most white people have embedded in them just through growing up benefitting from privilege etc. His obsession with "political correctness" comes up too often to just be a rhetorical stunt designed to make his policies seem like "common sense"...

All Acting Regiment

14:37 / 13.04.07

And he, of all people, really shouldn't be using the term - he occupies power, he decides what, in terms of politics, is correct...

15:04 / 13.04.07

Oh good, I came here to start a thread about this. I think this, from the end of the article linked to at the start of the thread, is quite revealing:

Answering questions later Mr Blair said: "Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.

"I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them."

Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in "real trouble" later, he said.

Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.

He said: "We need to stop thinking of this as a society that has gone wrong - it has not - but of specific groups that for specific reasons have gone outside of the proper lines of respect and good conduct towards others and need by specific measures to be brought back into the fold."

Which shows, I think, how this is connected to a much broader trend in New Labour policy (something we've discussed before). The last paragraph alone reflects how far New Labour have moved to the right.

jentacular dreams

15:07 / 13.04.07

I can see him giving a similar speeches over and over again in half a dozen war-torn African nations* AG....

he is saying that violence is somehow natural to black people (or as Blair would say, "black culture"[...])

As far as I recall similar statements had been made in the past about 'footballing culture', and Blair's referencing this possibly mitigates the racist implications (or maybe just intentionally appears to). I don't think the root causes of the two can really be compared though (similar symptoms, but very different conditions).

I'm not sure I like where all this is going. Tougher laws and new laws etc etc etc. As far as I remember, stabbing someone is already illegal, as is all other forms of assault. Threatening someone with a knife is similarly illegal Carrying a knife with a blade over 3 inches, also illegal. Making them more illegal, or outlawing 'gang membership' (sigh) won't solve the problem. If it has any effect it will simply transmute the 'knife crime' into another form (spoon-crime perhaps).

There's a review here which deconstructs the issues fairly well if anyone's interested.

* this is obviously satire, though it's interesting how Blair readily admits the problems Africa suffers are due to deprivation, not something inherent in 'black-culture'.

15:22 / 13.04.07

Also, 'community leaders' and Christian groups are getting a lot of mileage out of this, insofar as Blair clearly wants to promote and encourage them (the Metro article about this had more quotes to that effect), but they're also garnering a lot of media attention and bolstering their position as 'leaders' by lining up to denounce him. It seems that, as well as moving to an increasingly right-wing welfare model, the government are going to promote traditionally conservative and reactionary elements of these communities (more than they have already via multiculturalism and the like) to deal with these problems. Am I alone in finding this worrying?

lord henry strikes back

15:34 / 13.04.07

OK, I'm not a Labour supporter and no lover of Blair, but I think he is being judged a bit harshly here. I think he genuinely believes that elements of what he views as 'black culture' - the glamourisation of crime and violence in rap for example (in his head, and a lot of other people's, these two things are interchangeable) are major contributers to violence. He also believes that if the black 'leaders' (whoever they may be) were to tackle this head on then they could make a big change.

None of this stops him from being totally wrong. The root of the problem is poverty and shockingly low rates of social mobility, which has gotten worse under his premiership (now I'm almost being nice to the Tories, I think I must be unwell).

Personally, I don't think the 'black culture' that he envisages actually exists, and there are hints of racism in suggesting that it does, but I know that a lot of people would disagree with me.

In summation: Yes he's wrong, yes he's a soft-end racist (not that that's any better than any other kind), and yes his decade in power has been a litany of missed opportunities, but I don't think this is a cynical election ploy. I think this is deluded individual pouring out his heart before the spotlight fades and everyone stops listening.

Phex: Dorset Doom

15:37 / 13.04.07

It seems that, as well as moving to an increasingly right-wing welfare model, the government are going to promote traditionally conservative and reactionary elements of these communities (more than they have already via multiculturalism and the like) to deal with these problems. Am I alone in finding this worrying?

Hells no. And, though it's been said before, what the bloody hell is a 'community leader'? Do I have one? How do you become one? Why should potential or actual violent criminals listen to a neighborhood busybody? Where has community leadership proved effective in curbing crime?

And he, of all people, really shouldn't be using the term - he occupies power, he decides what, in terms of politics, is correct...

He's an asshole, sure, but he's not Mao or Stalin and I don't think it's as simple as saying that he, the Imperious Leader, decides what is and isn't P.C.
Political Correctness in modern Britain doesn't work as it did in the various Communist regimes (the term itself has origins in Maoist China- political correctness meant subserviance to Part ideology, it had nothing to do with identity politics as it does today), it is, as has often been said on this site, a straw-man used by those who wish to preserve their reactionary values in the face of the factual correctness of others.
Let's say that there is another universe much like our except for one difference: in this universe the spate of knife and gun crimes is caused by 'a distinctive black culture'. Let's say that the Blair of Earth-2 said this and, predictably, caused offence. In this alternate world Blair would be justified in saying what he said, since it would be true despite the offense it caused. Earth-2 Blair would be doing his job better than his Earth-1 counterpart in tackling the problem head-on, without mincing words. However, here in Earth-1, he is not only causing offense but he is factually incorrect, whether he knows this or not I can't tell, though I doubt anyone in his position would be unable to get some basic information on the links between crime and poverty. Bringing 'political correctness' into this takes the argument outside of 'mere' facts, so we aren't talking about reality, but taste; whether it would be nice for us if knife and gun crime were caused by 'black culture' or poverty.

16:49 / 13.04.07

I don't think this is a cynical election ploy.

That may not be all it as, admittedly; to paraphrase then man himself, it's worse than that, he probably does believe it. But by singling out 'black culture' in the way he just has, Blair is clearly making the kind of noises that right wing elements in Britain traditionally like to hear, and I'm unconvinced that the forthcoming elections have got nothing at all to do with that. Let's face it, he has acted with breathtaking cynicism on a number of occasions in the past; The Observer last Sunday seemed content to portray him as a flawed man of principle, or related, when assessing his legacy, but I'm really not sure if that's the whole story. To be charitable, he seems to have some fairly large blind spots when it comes to his own character, to say the least.

17:26 / 13.04.07

OK, I'm not a Labour supporter and no lover of Blair, but I think he is being judged a bit harshly here. I think he genuinely believes that elements of what he views as 'black culture' - the glamourisation of crime and violence in rap for example (in his head, and a lot of other people's, these two things are interchangeable) are major contributers to violence. He also believes that if the black 'leaders' (whoever they may be) were to tackle this head on then they could make a big change.

I couldn't care less what Blair 'genuinely believes', the fact is that he's overseen a steady and consistent shift to the right on the part of New Labour. Blair's personal pathology or ambition are only marginally relevant to announcements like this, as I think I said in the old thread linked to above. They are entirely consistent with past government policy, and I think linking them to Blair alone obfuscates this broader trend.

*

06:15 / 14.04.07

I think he genuinely believes that elements of what he views as 'black culture' - the glamourisation of crime and violence in rap for example (in his head, and a lot of other people's, these two things are interchangeable) are major contributers to violence.

If he genuinely believes this, lord henry, he's racist.
If he doesn't genuinely believe this, but is willing to say it to score political points with racists, he's racist.
The most charitable I can possibly be is to say that yes, he probably genuinely believes it, and he's probably not that different from a lot of folks in that respect. It would be more surprising if he had never absorbed such a prevalent racist notion. But there are a great many white people who figure out that blaming rap for what appears in their "common sense" view of the world as a proliferation of black perpetrated violence, and not blaming (for instance) rock music for a proliferation of white-perpetrated rape, is racist. For many of these white people, it's not their job to sort out their racist beliefs and try to change them, it's just part of being human.
Well, it is Tony Blair's job. It's his job to represent and protect the rights of all Britons, like it's GWB's job to represent and protect the rights of all Americans. That means it's their job to NOT BE FUCKING RACISTS.

13:37 / 14.04.07

I suppose, at least in part, he's up to New Labour's old tricks with regard to chasing the BNP vote at next month's local council elections

Does this actually work? Do such opportunistic soundbites actually swing people and lead to the acquisition of a few extra thousand votes?

lord henry strikes back

15:34 / 14.04.07

many ravishing idperfections, I'm not trying to argue for one second that if Blair believes as I have suggested (and I really think he does) that he isn't a racist. He is, as is anyone who holds the same view point. The point that I was making is that he does think like this and so his statements weren't an election ploy but a snapshot of his worrying and racist psyche.

Just to pick up on one of your other points, I understand the 'misogyny in rock'/white rape point that you are making and no I haven't heard this particular line of argument from Blair, but I think he was very much on the band wagon after the Columbine shootings that said 'they did it because they listen to Marilyn Manson'. The nanny state that Blair and New Labour have done so much to create suggests to me that they believe that people go 'bad' because they are helpless in the face of 'bad influences' and that the right thinking Tony Bs of this world are here to save them from themselves. It's a nasty and patronising mindset, but one that I think is deeply and genuinely held.

nighthawk, I think when looking at statements like this it is vital to consider what the speaker genuinely believes. If he believes it then he's a racist and we need to bear that in mind when we consider everything else that he does/may do. If he doesn't believe it then he's a cynical opportunist and we need to bear that in mind. I'm not saying that either of them are good, just that you need to 'know your enemy'.

Alex's Grandma, wise words. I do think he was speaking from (what passes for) his heart, but your right that he probably was fully aware that this would play very nicely with the Daily Mail crowd. Fair point.

09:57 / 18.04.07

Does anyone know the ethnic breakdown of these crimes? poverty is usually a factor in crime, but not in isolation. I heard about this story two weeks ago and am still trying to get my head around it.

All Acting Regiment

13:35 / 18.04.07

I can't provide actual figures, D, but I think you'll find that any 'ethnic' breakdown will tend to correlate exactly with economic deprivation. That is to say - it might well turn out that a lot of the people involved in knife crime in London are black. The thing is, it would be ridiculous to blame their race for this, because they are also very poor - something very obvious to anyone trying to appreciate/understand the real material, economic basis of things instead of living in the bubble of make beleive fun and plenty we inhabit in late capitalism - and if you look at somewhere where there are not very many black people, there will still be plenty of knife crime.

I'd like to clarify my thoughts about this. I think that what this is all about is the difference between "black people, because poorer, because of x, y and z complicated economic reasons, are more likely to fall into knife crime and similar", and "black people are more into stabbing" before society has acted, i.e. by nature. The latter answer is wrong, always wrong, and it doesn't matter what good intentions the person saying it might have. As was said above, it simply isn't factually correct.

One of the most persistent and damaging mistakes that cultures make worldwide is to place blame for bad behaviour of individuals on some easily identifiable othering factor - not on the real systems outside of the individuals which have an effect on them and to a large extent "create" them.

So, European Jews get labelled as being money-grabbing, because everyone conveniently forgets that for a good thousand years the only work they were allowed to do (by law, on pain of ruin/exile/death) was money-lending and banking. Or, the people of colonised countries get accused of being violent, and the colonisers preach and prate about how it is the empire's "duty" to "civilize them" - conveniently forgetting that one reason why a native population mioght become violent is trauma caused by sudden invasion of their country by people with insanely powerful killing machines and a lust for gold.

And this is the backdrop that Blair's adding to...

14:33 / 19.04.07

Thanks Allecto. I think that point can't be stressed enough and the treatment of Jews is as good an example of it as any.

The Commission for Racial Equality was really stumped by Blair's remarks. It just didn't know what to do with them. No prizes for guessing what they would have said had the remarks been made instead by a senior Tory...

All Acting Regiment

14:52 / 20.04.07

The Commission for Racial Equality was really stumped by Blair's remarks. It just didn't know what to do with them. No prizes for guessing what they would have said had the remarks been made instead by a senior Tory...

Why do you say that? Because you think the CRE tow the Labour party line? I'd like to see proof of that, to be honest. The website is here, and I can't find anything there to support what you seem to be saying.

11:35 / 21.04.07

So, European Jews get labelled as being money-grabbing, because everyone conveniently forgets that for a good thousand years the only work they were allowed to do (by law, on pain of ruin/exile/death) was money-lending and banking.

Interesting; I have not heard this before. Would you be kind enough to point me in the direction of where I might learn more about this? Did the Church pass such a decree? Is there a specific ruler or order which demonstrates this?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:38 / 21.04.07

Jews were barred from all guilds and were only allowed two positions, that of money lending and the selling of used clothing. It is notable that they were allowed to be moneylenders. At the time, the church had forbidden all Christians from money lending and this would not be repealed until the 15th century.

A quick Google will turn up plenty on this. I think the Church's (obviously anti-Semitic) reasoning was that to lend money was to imperil one's soul, and the Jews were damned anyway.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:35 / 21.04.07

That's not quite how I understand it. In the middle ages, the lending of money at interest was an offence punishable by excommunication - usury. Since there was no real point in lending money _without_ interest, nobody did it, except the Jews, who were the only people in Europe who _could_. As such, faced with religious persecution and discrimination that excluded them from working in Christian industries - generally to practice a trade one usually had to belong to a guild, and to belong to a guild one had to be a Christian - the Jews in Europe had little choice but to manage money - often as brokers, rather than as for want of a better word venture capitalists.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:35 / 21.04.07

Ah - crosspost.

14:50 / 21.04.07

Because you think the CRE tow the Labour party line? I'd like to see proof of that, to be honest.

well generally, no they don't, but i think they might have been more condemnatory had the tories made the same remark.

16:38 / 21.04.07

Stoat, Tann- thank you both for the information.

I find it very interesting and sadly ironic that what would seem to be the mere circumstance of Jews entering into moneylending later undoubtedly contributed to the notion that they ruled the world via the "Jewish international worldwide communist banking cartel Bolshevik conspiracy". This might explain the reasonably decent relationship between Jews and Muslims in those days (another sad irony).

What's the position today? I sometimes get the impression that many fundamentalist Christians are very pro-Israel, but sometimes get the exact opposite impression- that many right-wing fundamentalist Christians are still quite anti-Jewish/Israeli. Anyone know of a dividing line that helps one understand these shifts and positions?

Phex: Dorset Doom

19:00 / 21.04.07

Not to rot the thread further, but as I understand it the seeming paradox of fundamentalist Christians being rabidly pro-Israel (and the ideological trickle-down into America's Middle-East policy) is largely to do with the End of the World.
You see (and to simplify Juedo-Christian millenialism greatly), both Jews and Christians believe that the rebuilding of the Temple on what is now the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in Islam, will usher in the Apocalypse. This is a good thing: it means the end of all suffering, justice being done etc. Because Jerusalem was in Muslim hands for the last 1400 years or so there was no real chance of anybody, Jewish or Christian, rebuilding the Temple (though the site was occupied by Christian Crusaders for much of the 12th century) so, basically, Jews and Christians didn't have a common goal or a common enemy and, as is typical in human affairs, the dominant group oppressed the smaller group.
Fast forward to 1947 and Jerusalem is once again in more-or-less Jewish hands and the rebuilding of the Temple is once again a possibility. Kind of. What with The Dome of the Rock being the spot where Muhammad ascended to Heaven and received from Moses the Islamic prayers, and with Israel surrounded on all sides by Islamic countries, bulldozing the Dome and building a Temple in order to destroy the universe may be frowned upon so Israel's largely secular government wouldn't even think about it. However, there are extremist groups in Israel who have tried on numerous occasions to occupy or destroy the Dome of the Rock, and Christian extremist groups in America and elsewhere who support them. For more moderate Christians, as long as Israel remains in control of Jerusalem there is a chance that the Temple will be rebuilt (or some other version of Apocalyptic events). They're willing to put a lot of money into Israel, so both parties benefit.
There's a lot, a lot, more to this and many good books written on the subject- and one hilariously bad multi-million selling series, Left Behind, which I seriously recommend to anyone interested in the Christian Evangelical mindset.
If anybody has further questions then start a new topic (probably in Temple) and somebody smarter and less pressed for time than I should be able to sort things out.