Riots
October 24th, 2005Not much in the blogosphere about the Birmingham riots (apart from the odd “let’s blame multiculturalism“), so why don’t I dip my toe in the water?
The “it’s multiculturalism gone wrong” argument is bollocks, plain and simple. It does not simply follow that putting two communities of different ethnicity and culture side by side leads to rioting and murder. To believe it would mean we would have to declare all migration as a foolish idea, and we might as well repatriate everyone and stick walls around them.
Why did the riots occur, according to the newspapers? Because members of the black community believed rumours that Asian men had gang raped a black teenage girl, and it may not have been the first time it happened. Has this been reported to the police? No, as the girl was an illegal immigrant.
That’s still not good enough. We need to break that down a bit more. There are three assumptions within that chain of events. First of all, the rape rumour is believable. Organised gang rape is a horrific crime which is quite rare in the UK; if it is happening on a regular basis then it suggests a total breakdown of normal societal behaviour, and an associated level of deprivation. If it didn’t happen, it’s still chilling to think that people believed such a thing was happening on a regular basis.
Secondly, the gang rape is aligned on racial grounds - the alleged perpetrators were Asian and the victims black. Asians are stereotyped as predatory rapists, and after the riots, blacks stereotyped as looting thieves looking for any excuse. This is where the anti-multicultural lot come in with their argument, except that multiculturalism doesn’t imply balkanisation. It does not mean throwing up barriers between different groups and forbidding any sort of interactions between them, but rather the opposite - while cultural identities are allowed to remain intact, civic society should enable free association and exchanges between different groups at a level above knives and guns. It’s been fashionable to posit multiculturalism opposite social cohesion, when in fact social cohesion is needed for multiculturalism to succeed in the first place.
Thirdly, it is believed that the normal means of justice are not sufficient for this alleged crime. Rather than rely on the police and the courts to investigate the alleged crime, apprehend the offenders and try them, the aggrieved party decided instead to attack whom they saw as perpetrators. The police were seen as incompetent, uninterested, or simply racist, or there was a fear the victim might be deported - I’m not sure, but any of those reasons is good enough to show that the criminal justice system isn’t working.
So what to do? These problems are nothing new, they have been around for decades and it’s taken a riot and several stabbings and shootings for it to be brought to public view. I’m not going to now pontificate and say I have the solution to all the problems at a stroke, and what I have got to say has been repeated before by many others, but hopefully it’s a little more introspective than “it’s inevitably multiculturalism’s fault”. For starters, the appalling social deprivation in Lozells and neighbouring Handsworth still isn’t being properly addressed. The justice system needs to be reformed so that crimes like gang rape will be dealt with, regardless of the racial aspects of those involved. Finally, and most importantly, multiculturalism should not be an excuse to throw one’s hands up, do nothing, and abandon any community to its fate. Without equal opportunities to participate, and constructive places to form ongoing dialogue (which the painfully stilted shared press conferences between community leaders over the weekend highlighted), a tolerant and cohesive multicultural society is impossible.
October 24th, 2005 at 16:26:23
It’s too easy to suggest that this is a black/asian issue. There are groups of people who monitor unrest in all areas within the UK and they will always capitalise on any potential racist issue and make a meal of it to advance their cause. Doing some research on editors of press in this country might disclose some unpleasant truths.
October 24th, 2005 at 16:42:16
You are being too mechanistic about this. The rape is only a trigger for the underlying problems in the area. There is some appalling racism in these communities, predicated on the fact that one group thinks they are superior to the others. You can guess which.
Your comment:
“It does not simply follow that putting two communities of different ethnicity and culture side by side leads to rioting and murder.”
is perfectly correct. However, the problem is by underlining the separateness of each community the people have not been allowed to naturally develop relations, but instead have become entrenched in their own cultures.
October 24th, 2005 at 23:54:57
There’s something weird about it all. I certainly agree that the “it’s multiculturalism turned nightmare!” analysis is misleading - in fact, I’m not even convinced that it would be entirely accurate to categorise this with other sectarian or racial riots that have occurred in recent times. The reports I’ve read seem to be striving to uncover some simmering racial tension or overt pre-existing issues that boiled over, but without much success. It’s not just that a lot of elements - familiar from N. Ireland, or Bradford, or wherever - are missing, but that the whole shebang seems far more similar to a much wider category of daft human behaviour.
The first two of your three necessary assumptions - that a rare and frightening event is actually commonplace and close to home, and that the perpetrators of such an event are some clearly definable “other” - are familiar to anybody who’s spent too much time going through the archives at Snopes. They’re classic criteria of the viral urban myth; the sort of thing that normally exists perfectly quietly in the background, an outlet for our irrational fears and political and social dissatisfaction. Sometimes, they can be strong enough to have an affect on how the populace percieves events - the fictitious spate of rapes and carjackings that has followed the Katrina evacuees around America, for example.
And, once in a while, they’re powerful enough to make people take action, often extreme action. So a witch gets drowned; a monkey gets hung in Hartlepool; a paediatrician gets the word nonce written on her door; and there’s “race riots” in Birmingham. It’s that whole Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds thing. I’m sure that all kinds of social divisions do play an important part in how many such events develop, but to just look at it simply as a race riot and nothing else seems to be missing a fairly huge chunk of what actually went on. And to decry multiculturalism on the back of it would be as absurd as decrying the notion of trade just because there was a run on the stock market - which is just another expression of the same human tendency towards sudden catastrophic wankerdom episodes.