Who You Callin' A Nigger?
Writer: Maurice McCleod
Who Are You Callin' a Nigger? presents a worrying picture of intra-racial relations in today's Britain and the issues raised by Darcus Howe cannot be ignored either by the country's minority ethnic communities or by society as a whole.
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The programme showed Britain as divided as ever, with young Black and Asian youths expressing views that would seem more suited to a far-right organisation than urban ethnic minority young people. While the examples that are highlighted in the programme must be taken seriously, the true picture of today's Britain is very different.
British youth culture is dominated by Jamaican and American influences and is truly multi-cultural. Britain's youngsters, whether Black, white or Asian listen to the same music, wear the same clothes and even go to the same nightclubs. Tim Burnett, Director of top London club promotion Milk'n'2 Sugars, said: "A decade or so ago white and black people would party together but you would rarely see an Asian face in a nightclub, now Asian ravers make up a good chunk of the mix. Anyone who doubts that Britain is a multi-cultural nation should spend an hour in one of our clubs!!"
Darcus speaks nostalgically of a time when Caribbean young people and Asians teamed up to fight white racists, but maybe he is looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. Having the common enemy of the jack-booted skinhead to fight may have formed alliances but these quickly broke down once the racists had been marginalized. If black people and Asians were truly united in the sixties and seventies why are there just a handful of Black and Asian interracial marriages from that generation?
It is 21st Century Britain that is integrating and although statistical evidence on inter-racial marriages is sketchy, a growing number of households now consider themselves to be of mixed racial origin. People in Harmony, an organisation, which promotes the positive experience of interracial life in Britain, applauded the inclusion of the 'mixed' category in the census but believe the term does not show the growing number of inter-minority households.
The racial divides that Darcus points to are nothing new and merely echo historical divides that were present in the Caribbean and Africa. In the Caribbean, Indian workers were bought in to work as indentured labourers replacing freed black slaves after emancipation in 1838. There were black riots against the new arrivals because the freed slaves believed that the Indians were receiving preferential treatment Instead of seeing the new arrivals as allies against the colonial powers many black people saw the Asians as a threat. In much of the Caribbean there remains animosity between black populations and so-called 'coolies' to this day.
These differences in the former British Empire did not come about by accident. The colonial powers actively pursued a divide and conquer strategy, which magnified differences between Asians and blacks. It is not surprising that when the British left the hostilities they had nurtured remained.
The problems that exist between some minority communities in today's Britain are also exacerbated by economics. Poor communities have always felt threatened by newcomers and forming territorial groups or gangs is an age-old strategy for coping with this threat. Working class white youths in the fifties and sixties feared the influx of black people into their communities and so formed gangs to terrorise them or to 'defend their turf'. Caribbean youths then formed into gangs to protect themselves against attack from these same white gangs.
We hear the Asian youths from Walsall interviewed in programme voicing some of the same fears. They believe that if they do not join together against the common enemy, whether that be black or white men, they will be the victims of oppression. Mainstream society often sees all young men from ethnic minority communities as indistinguishable but there are massive differences between the races. Black Caribbean children are three times more likely to be expelled from school as their white classmates. However Indian or Chinese children are four times less likely to suffer the same fate as white youngsters, according to the Department for Education and Skills figures for 2001/2002. Despite today's current low unemployment rates, with just 5 percent of white people being out of work, the latest Labour Force survey, for summer 2002, shows a large disparity between different racial groups.
Among minorities, 15 percent of black people and 11 percent of Asians were unemployed but among the Asian group there were huge differences with just 7 percent of Indians but 22 percent of Bangladeshis claiming unemployment benefits. These differences help to polarise groups and encourage the prospect of violence but it would be wrong to assume that the problems are just intra-racial.
If the programme showed white youths from Burnley and their hostility to their white neighbours from Blackburn the feelings would have been just as strong but it would not have been racialised. The sad fact is that working class, disenfranchised young men, irrespective of their racial background, often feel that their only purpose is to defend their particular area from outsiders. They have limited career prospects and few role models but can sometimes earn a misguided sense of worth as the guardians of their societies.
All groups shown in Darcus's programme talk about protecting themselves and their communities rather than simply hating other races. Inter-racial and gang violence will continue to be a blight on Britain's inner cities for as long as young men see others in the same boat as the enemy rather than blaming poverty for their condition.
