Race, Crime and Resistance

Tina G Patel, David Tyrer

In a post-Macpherson, post-9/11 world, criminal justice agencies are adapting their responses to criminal behaviour across diverse ethnic groups. Race, Crime and Resistance draws on contemporary theory and a range of case studies to consider racial inequalities within the criminal justice system and related organisations.

Exploring the mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, the book goes beyond superficial assumptions to examine the ensuing processes of mobilisation and resistance across disadvantaged groups. Empirically grounded and theoretically informed, the book critically unpicks the persisting concepts of race and ethnicity in the perceptions and representations of crime.

Articulate and sensitive, the book clarifies complex ideas through the use of chapter summaries, case studies, further reading and study questions. It is essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, race and ethnicity, and sociology.

1

Introduction: Constructing the Race–Crime Problem

This book is about the continued and subtle ways in which crime is constructed as racialised in post-Macpherson UK. Macpherson (1999) is a report on an inquiry following the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black African Caribbean youth in London. The report highlighted failures of the Metropolitan Police Service and problems of institutional racism, making a number of recommendations for criminal justice institutions. Consequently, there are seemingly more entrenched systems for reporting, monitoring and combating institutionalised racism, and yet the modalities of racism seem to have articulated with this, ostensibly hostile, institutional framework in order to persist in ever more ambiguous and nebulous forms. This book argues that notions of ‘black criminality’ are often reworked in new ways and have fed into the wider policy on community cohesion and citizenship (Khiabany and Williamson, 2008) that often directly takes black and minority ethnic people as objects of state intervention, while claiming not to be racialised. An important theme of the book is the ways in which ideologies of ‘scientific racism’ which were in the past woven into state policies on crime control in countries such as Britain, USA, South Africa and Germany have resurfaced, articulating in new ways with forms of cultural racism, and being expressed in new ways, for example through calculations of risk rather than strict biological hierarchies. The key issue being highlighted is that, in spite of claims that we are in a post-racial age, problematic construction of crimes as racialised persist, illustrated more recently, for example, by moves towards increased racial profiling, meaning that older notions of ‘black criminality’ and the dangerous ‘immigrant other’, undeserving of a right to a place in Britain, are once again appearing. The book will consider how and why certain racialised groups are vulnerable to the discriminatory practices of criminal justice agencies. In doing so, it will also highlight how their claims to knowledge and experience have been marginalised, presenting the argument that this urgently needs to be replaced by practices that are underpinned by an ethos of access, equality and empowerment. The aim therefore is not only to shed critical light on the continued utility of ‘race’ in what are sometimes described as ‘post-race’ times, but also to highlight how this thinking and its impact on crime has been, and continually needs to be, challenged.

Before we continue, some clarification is needed for the terms that are used in the text. Terms of reference are constantly changing, being negotiated and updated on a variety of local and global levels. It is acknowledged that ‘race’ talk is in itself a complex, political and contested process. The term in itself is problematic and contested, highlighted in some sources by the use of inverted commas (Mason, 2000: 8). Debates run about its continued use in social science disciplines, with valid arguments being presented about the responsibility of academics being to replace it with other preferable terms of reference, such as ‘ethnicity’. However, our studies tell us that ‘race’ is still treated by many in society as a real entity, by which lives are organised and behaviour is constructed (Mason, 2000). We therefore use the term ‘race’ here not descriptively to refer to a given attribute, but instead as an analytical term to describe a process of power which impacts upon all of us in different but significant ways, for example how Muslims as a seemingly religious community are still racialised as a group. So, even though ‘ethnicity’ is often preferred over ‘race’, the latter is still a term that is analytically relevant, especially in terms of the matters discussed in this text. Although we view the use of the term in inverted commas as relevant, the regular use of the term in this text means that encasing it in inverted commas would hinder readability flow. The reader should therefore take our use of the term (race) as representing our acknowledgement of its contested and problematic status.

The term black is often used in the English language as something crudely associated with negative connotations. During the USA Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and later activism in Britain, it became mobilised a political term, and came to be used with a capital letter as ‘Black’, to indicate the unified inclusion of all those people who suffered inequality, discrimination and racist violence because of their non-white skin colour, for instance largely those of African, Caribbean and South Asian origin. It also indicated political solidarity against such racial discrimination. However, we argue that the term can no longer be viewed as a singular political label which brings with it the same set of meanings. As such, the term is used in lower-case typology: black. In addition, our critique of essentialised identities means that the term is rarely used on its own. For example, black and minority ethnic is also used as a preferential term of reference, alongside more detailed terms of reference. This highlights labels that have been re-negotiated and moved away from an essentialised notion of a singular or universal black identity. For instance, South Asian is used to refer to those with recent origins in any of the Asian countries and, more specifically, British Asian is used to refer to those individuals with recent origins in South Asia, who were born, raised and now living in Britain. African Caribbean, African, or Caribbean is used to refer to those with recent origins in the Caribbean and/or Africa. More specifically, British African Caribbean is used to refer to those with recent origins in those countries, who were born, raised and now living in Britain.

The terms white and white European have often been presented in race talk as neutral, for instance in referring to all those who reside in a cultural space that is unquestioned and positioned as the ‘norm’. Furthermore, those who are included in this space enjoy a position of power and privilege. We recognise that the terms are also bound up by the similar implications that are associated with essentialised notions of blackness. We therefore use the terms reluctantly to refer to all those who are of non-black minority and ethnic status. In doing so, we recognise that it too is a problematic term that is in reality something of complex and multiple entities. It is thus not a singular racial entity, representative of whole nations, such as the UK and USA. We do, though, argue that in crime matters discussed within these contexts the term represents a majority view. We therefore use it to point to the ways in which it is considered the norm and so is rendered invisible, as well as being an entity that is able to reproduce its position of power and authority (Garner, 2010).

Racialised others and the roots of a racist rationale

The concept of the ‘other’ allows ‘us’ to create ‘ideals and typifications and the other present us with tests and measures for these ideals’ (Spencer, 2006: 8). This is a way of creating definitions, maintaining boundaries and constructing hierarchies based on difference. When race enters this othering process, particularly within the context of crime and deviancy, it is important to consider the roots of racially loaded concepts, common usage and persistence. Within the context of racial othering, a good starting point would be the European global expansion from the late fifteenth century onwards, which saw scientific explanations about race becoming popular (Mason, 2000). By the mid-nineteenth century, there was firm support of Enlightenment thinking and the discipline of race science. Its key contributors included Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), David Hume (1711–1776), Charles Linneaus (1707–1778), Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Francis Galton (1822–1911). Such thinking proposed hierarchical ideas about race, which were in themselves tied to mistaken ideas about the human biology.

These racist ideas gained widespread support, becoming linked to ‘a notion of hierarchy in which all differences, both of history and future potential, were seen as a product of biological variation’ (Mason, 2000: 6). Dominant in political discussions, such ideas also filtered through to lay understanding, meaning that they became normalised and unquestionably accepted. This led to the creating of boundaries between groups of peoples, who were distinguished on rather a crude biological basis of colour, whereby white equals being of a good and pure nature, and black is associated with evil (Mason, 2000; Tizard and Phoenix, 2002). This then became converted to the rationale that all those who were non-white were ‘degenerative, falling away from the true nature of the (human) race’ (Dyer, 1997: 22). Sociological understanding of the construction of race has found that over time the continued racial polarisation of blackness and whiteness in this way has not only been justified by making references to the supposed natural order of the human race, but has also been maintained via political and religious testimonials. For example, Johan Boemus in 1521 proposed that all humans ‘descended from the sons of Noah, these being Ham, Shem and Japeth, and argued that the descendents of Ham degenerated into “blackness”, whereas those civilised descended from Shem and Japeth, and so remained “white”’ (Fredrickson, 1981, cited in Dyer, 1997: 22).

However, it is argued here that race is socially constructed via a power relationship in society, where being white equals privilege and superiority, and being black equals disadvantage and discrimination. These terms can therefore be seen as socio-politically loaded concepts. Their meanings and usage are based on ideas that are developed and maintained in social human interaction. This is supported, not least by the vast amount of sociological work which also disproves the dated ideas from the Enlightenment period around the so-called problematic nature of black and minority ethnic people, for example as having poor IQ levels, a proneness to violent behaviour, untrustworthiness, sexual promiscuity, and so on. However, these crude, offensive and outdated ideas continue to dominate and show themselves in a variety of discriminatory practices and attitudes. In suggesting reasons for this, many have pointed to the deeply embedded racism and discriminatory practices of wider society and institutions within that society, practices that are both intentional and unintentional. Thus a combination of the persistence of inaccurate stereotypes and a power in-balance means that racism continues to exist and perpetuate itself.

The result is the unequal treatment of certain groups at the hands of another, for instance global slavery, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow and segregation in the USA; apartheid in South Africa; and institutional racism, racist violence and the war on terror (Islam). We can see that, for some, race is in fact a matter of life and death, for example the treatment of Jews in Hitler’s Final Solution. In more recent years, the killings of Stephen Lawrence and Anthony Walker suggest that even within modern society and a post-Macpherson criminal justice system, one’s race (or perceived race) acts as a precursor to abuse and death, sometimes even at the hands of the state, as we saw with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. The terror emerging from such a form of white domination is seen to set the norm; it is accepted and largely goes unchallenged by white-majority mainstream society, who maintain and perpetuate it for social, political and economic reasons of self-interest. They hold, in their white terror (hooks, 1992), the position of power in processes ‘of naming, defining, decision making and the use of symbolic and physical violence’ to exercise control (Garner, 2007: 15).

In contemporary society, this racialised unequal treatment continues, albeit in more masked and reworked forms. This means that black and minority ethnic people continue to be seen as ‘flawed psychologically, morally and socially’ (Owusu-Bempah and Howitt, 2000: 95), not only as individuals, but also in terms of their cultures and family life, and indeed every aspect of their lives. For example, consider the focus in more recent times of media images, lay stereotypes and even political commentary on ‘baby-fathers’:

David Cameron has urged absent black fathers not to neglect their responsibilities, in an interview addressing the issues of family and social breakdown … The issue has previously been identified by political figures as a source of society’s ills. Last year, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the ‘continuing problem’ of gang violence was due to the absence of fathers in black communities. (BBC News, 16 July 2008)

Also consider the recent flurry of news stories around strict Asian parents who force their young daughters into arranged marriages and abuse them when they fail to agree, followed by the eagerness with which the Forced Marriage Unit was set up in 2009, as a joint initiative between the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office. It is not disputed that such cases exist, or that victims of such arrangements require assistance, but the close links made in the media between these cases and Islam as a faith sends out a problematic message about all Muslim and Asian communities.

These presentations would certainly have us believe that black and minority ethnic people, their families, communities and entire culture, are feckless and problematic. This leads to the problem of white being accepted as the norm against which everything is then measured against, although nothing is able to be superior to it. As Dyer argues, ‘in other words, whites are not of a race, they’re just the human race’ (Dyer, 1997: 3). The imaginary of the black and minority ethnic dangerous ‘other’ also serves to create a white victimhood rationale, which is then used to justify further discriminatory attitudes and behaviour. Indeed, it is used as a form of public support for increased measures of protection, via control, surveillance and removal, of ‘them’ for the safety of ‘us’ and ‘our’ identity, culture, health, space and land. This was most evidently seen during the 2005 general election and the local elections of 2006 (Sinha, 2008), where political campaigns focused on the ‘immigration problem’, and in doing so made direct links between the country’s decline and the ‘influx of migrants’ whose supposed predisposition to have lots of babies caused overpopulation and ‘welfare scrounging’, which then led to a drain on an already strained NHS, housing and schools. These migrants were also seen to import diseases, for example, HIV/AIDS and TB, and, more dangerously, were seen as posing a security threat to Western ideals, through terrorist activity and religious extremism (Sinha, 2008). It is not surprising, then, that a new dangerous ‘other’ became the focus of racialised panics amongst some white populations (Gilroy, 2004), as was seen with the rise in support for groups located on the far-right political spectrum, such as the British National Party.

The problem with racialised constructions of crime

Crime is racialised when individual criminal behaviour is viewed as being indicative of the racial traits of the wider black and minority ethnic community, meaning that ‘whole categories of phenotypically similar individuals are rendered pre-criminal and morally suspect’ (Covington, 1995: 547). Gilroy argues that the view of black and minority ethnic groups as ‘innately criminal’ became ‘common sense’ in the 1970s and 1980s with the muggings moral panic, and is crucial to the development the ‘black problem’ (Gilroy, 1987: 109). Here, such crimes were identified as expressions of a black and ethnic minority culture (Gilroy, 2002), and played a significant role in shaping public fear and anxiety about crime in general and, in terms of fears of the British national decline, via the creation of crisis and chaos, which then fuels hostility about their presence and supposed criminal tendencies.

Black and minority ethnic people are easily accepted as a reference point for crimes, though crimes may be blamed on completely fictitious black and minority ethnic characters. For example, Garner asks us to consider the case of Charles Stuart in October 1989, Boston, USA, who along with his brother murdered his pregnant wife, and identified a black African American man as being guilty of the attack. Although Stuart’s brother finally confessed to the crime, admitting that it was a murder driven by a life-insurance claim, what is of interest is the response of the local community and criminal justice system, which carried out an intense police operation, and saw media and political talk of restoring the death penalty (Garner, 2007: 20). One wonders whether such a response would have been made if the victim had been of black and minority ethnic background and the suspect white. Certainly in the UK, the initial absence of media, public and political attention to the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence suggests not. The idea that Stuart was treated as an individual, and the supposed black African American perpetrator as a representative of the black community, and part of a pathologised black collective at that, illustrates the common thinking: that any one of these black men could have killed the white woman because it is in the nature of black men to do things like this. The rationale was that black men are innately savage, animalistic, destructive and criminal. They are fiends or sociopaths, a social menace who prey on helpless white bodies.

This imagery is also supported by ‘factual’ representations in the news, which presents Britain as a society where the black and minority ethnic population poses a problem. Indeed, Pilkington’s (2003) analysis of the British press in the 1980s found that black and minority ethnic groups are portrayed as a ‘foreign other’, who pose a problem in their immigration to this country and then, when here, pose a law and order problem. For example, consider the negative representations of black and minority ethnic people in the press, which is ill-informed, stereotypical and presented as comical at best, and full of blame, hate and suspicion at its worst (see Malik, 2002 for an in-depth discussion on this). In recent times this has taken a more sinister turn as black and minority ethnic people, especially those of Asian Pakistani and Islamic background, are now seen as being of a particular ‘terror’ threat; for example, ‘the enemy within’ and self-segregation claims, underlined by views of white victimhood and the idea that the British people have done all they can to support these people, but they have actively rejected and attacked British society. For example, in an article headed ‘The enemy within’, the story reads:

… home-grown terrorists … The danger seems ever present … there is an enemy within Britain who wants to destroy our way of life. Most of this relatively small group of fanatics are British-born Muslims who have been educated here and brought up within our tolerant democracy … The great challenge for Britain is how to stop this and minimise the future risks. Nobody should underestimate ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Constructing the Race–Crime Problem
• 2 Crime Science?
• 3 The Politics of Hate
• 4 Policing Racism or Policing Race?
• 5 Courtin’ Justice
• 6 Proportionate Punishment?
• 7 Victims’ Rights and the Challenge of Discrimination
• 8 Forms of Resistance
• 9 Researching the Agenda
• 10 Conclusion: Re-constructing Race and Crime
• Revision Question Answers
• References
• Index