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Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Friday 29 December 2023

How to have a meaningful debate about racism?

The conversation is stuck: you’re either ‘playing the race card’ or ‘in denial’. But here’s a way to break through writes Nina Kelly in The Guardian
 

The national conversation on racism seems to be stuck in an endless loop. We all know the routine: a public debate is sparked by a news story that features a case of alleged bigotry. It might be reports that an Asian cricketer was nicknamed “Bomber”; or that a member of the royal family is said to have questioned a baby’s skin colour. Whatever it is, the inciting incident then sets the parameters of all the discussion to follow. An array of loud and angry voices appears on media panel shows or radio phone-ins, suggesting what might or might not have occurred (no one knows for certain), and whether or not any of it is racist (everyone is certain that it either is, or it isn’t).

And so, instead of the nuances of racial inequality being understood, the issue is portrayed as a simple matter of people saying or doing bad things to each other, and we get a tiresome to and fro between those “playing the race card” and others “in denial”. Many of us just tune out, while the overall issue of racism in society – a real problem in need of an urgent solution – remains unaddressed.

That is why, six years ago, the Reframing Race initiative was set up. It is an attempt to fix this broken debate. We have spoken to 20,000 people in England and Scotland, testing more than a dozen ways of talking about racism. With our unprecedented bank of data, we now dare to answer the question: what actually works to change the conversation?

We discovered – plainly – that words make a difference. New ways of talking about racism lead to new ways of listening.

The first problem we found was that people don’t agree on what the basic facts mean. For instance, “black people are stopped and searched at seven times the rate of white people”: some will believe this indicates a racist bias in policing; others will simply say it’s a sign of criminality in the black population. It is therefore important to tell the full story, which is that the over-representation of black people in the criminal justice system does not imply they are more inclined to commit crime. Instead, the data reveals a complex social structure – involving prejudice in the justice system, poverty, school exclusion and insecure housing – that stacks the odds against black people.


‘We found that people don’t agree on what the basic facts mean. For instance, ‘black people are stopped and searched at seven times the rate of white people’.’ Photograph: John Stillwell/PA


This explanation is not as eye-catching as the headline statistic, but we did find one particularly effective way to communicate the problem of racism: namely, a CV investigation that showed recruiters were biased in favour of white applicants. In telling the full story of this study, we were able to rule out any explanations other than race-based discrimination. Choosing to represent structural racism in this way allows a mainstream audience to see it for themselves, and leads the discussion away from the “Is it racist?” ping-pong game.

And where facts don’t work, sometimes metaphors do. We discovered that using the image of a birdcage to represent a racist system that traps some people inside was powerful. Everyone can understand the way in which each bar of a cage combines to deny freedom and opportunities. The birdcage metaphor also appeals to people’s values, rather than their logic. Unlike stop-and- search statistics, the concept of freedom is universally understood and agreed on.

Another thing we found is that showing some intention behind structural racism – even naming a “perpetrator”, such as a government department – leads to a more fluent discussion about how to address it. This approach is also more likely to inspire hope that things can be changed; if something was designed in a way that disadvantaged certain racial groups, it is reasonable to suppose we could redesign it. 

Surprisingly, our research also tells us that it is possible to be bold – even radical – in challenging racism, so long as your ideas are explained well enough. For instance, we found most people agreed with the idea of investing in mental health services so that police did not have to do the job of mental health professionals, and for teaching schoolchildren of all backgrounds their shared history. I doubt the phrases “defund the police” or “decolonise the curriculum” would have generated the same support.

Overall, we found it is not easy for people to feel confident about tackling racism when its finer details are constantly being argued over. But we do know we all have the potential to make a positive change. So if you find yourself trapped in an argument about what is or isn’t racist, consider how you could change that conversation. What could you say differently? None of us has the perfect answer, but we can all choose not to be part of the problem.

    Sunday 17 September 2023

    It’s a tragedy of modern plutocratic Britain: if you want to rise, follow the Piers Morgan playbook

    George Monbiot in The Guardian

    It was one of the abiding mysteries of public life. How did Piers Morgan rise so far? I see him as a buffoon, a bully, a windbag. Yet, despite scandals that would have killed most people’s careers, he rose like a methane bubble in a slurry lagoon, occupying some of the most prestigious and lucrative positions in the media. This week, reflecting on the life and abuses of the plutocrat Mohamed Al Fayed, Private Eye magazine produced an explanation. It came from Morgan himself, writing about Fayed in 1999. “I’ve always made it a strict rule in life to ingratiate myself with three categories of people: newspaper owners, potential newspaper owners and billionaires. And since Mohamed Al Fayed is a billionaire and would love to own a newspaper, sucking up to him seems an extremely sensible move.”

    The strategy is not unusual. But voicing it is. Morgan expressed the unspoken rule of public life out loud. If you want to get ahead, grovel to billionaires, especially those who own the media. The obvious coda to the rule is: “because they are the people with real power”.

    Plenty of rules are broken without consequence. You can appear on the BBC while hiding your financial interests, breaking its editorial guidelines, as long as you are channelling the demands of the very rich. You can breach parliamentary rules without punishment – by lying, or by failing to update your register of interests, or by taking a second job without clearance when your ministerial career ends – as long as you remain a loyal servant of big money. But Morgan’s Rule is the one that must not be broken. If you are a political party and you want a sniff at power, if you are a commentator who wants to appear on the BBC, you must observe it. Otherwise you will be vilified or excluded.


    ‘Since Mohamed Al Fayed is a billionaire and would love to own a newspaper, sucking up to him seems an extremely sensible move,’ wrote Piers Morgan in 1999. Photograph: Reuters

    Morgan and journalists like him are members of the concierge class, which provides a wide range of services to economic power. Some of them, such as editors of the billionaire media and the junktanks of Tufton Street, specialise in translating the outrageous demands of oligarchs and corporations into what looks like political common sense, or in attacking plutocrats’ critics or transferring blame for their impacts on to immigrants, the Labour party and other customary scapegoats.

    Some of them, such as lobbyists, specialise in reputation-laundering: brokering deals between grim plutocrats and cultural institutions – universities, museums, opera houses, charities – which, in return for lavish donations, will name faculties, professorships, galleries, funds and prizes after their sponsors, transforming violent kleptocrats into pillars of society.

    Others, including lawyers, accountants, bankers and wealth managers, specialise in hiding and washing their money, buying them special visas, or suing and hounding their critics. This is why organised crime loves London. It takes advantage of both England’s ultra-permissive financial laws and its ultra-repressive libel laws.


    The government is always ready to help. In 2021, while Rishi Sunak was chancellor of the exchequer, lawyers acting for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late brutal chief of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, applied to the Treasury for permission to override the sanctions against him, so that he could sue the investigative journalist Eliot Higgins. Sunak’s Treasury granted the special licences they requested and even approved sanctions-busting flights to St Petersburg so they could plan their legal attack.

    In this way a few dozen people, assisted by thousands of concierges, can dominate our lives. The system we call democracy is a mere patina, sticky and dimpled, on the surface of oligarchic power.

    There are many ways in which economic power translates into political power, and none of them are good for us. The most obvious is campaign finance: the sponsorship not only of political parties but of entire systems of political thought and action. These transactions muscle the interests of society out of politicians’ minds. Some of them are enormous. Last year, the US website the Lever exposed a $1.3bn (£1bn) transfer of money from a little-known billionaire, Barre Seid, to a new political advocacy group run by an ultraconservative. How can mere citizens compete?

    ‘Rishi Sunak’s administration, run by an oligarch for oligarchs, produces assurances that it will close economic crime loopholes, then subtly tweaks the legislation to keep them open.’ Photograph: Dan Kitwood/PA

    Financial power also ensures that the rules supposed to stop economic crime and the laundering of its proceeds contain loopholes wide enough for a superyacht to sail through. For the past few months, members of the House of Lords have been battling to remove the obvious get-out clauses from the economic crime bill passing through parliament. The government has thwarted it at every turn. In the debate on Monday, the Conservative peer Lord Agnew – the very opposite of a radical firebrand – complained that “the government continue to say one thing and then do something different”. Sunak’s administration, run by an oligarch for oligarchs, produces heart-thumping assurances that it will close the loopholes, then subtly tweaks the legislation to keep them open.

    Money’s might ensures that its environmental impacts are unrestrained. Recently, I was told about a multimillionaire who had intended to fly in his private jet to a luxury resort, only to change his mind at the last minute and decide to go to a different place, with a shorter landing strip. The plane was too heavy to land there, so it sat on the tarmac and burnt off $15,000 of fuel before setting out. Sunak treats the UK as a flyover state, travelling by helicopter and private jet to places he could easily reach by train. Kylie Jenner and Floyd Mayweather zip about on private flights of less than 20 minutes. Each of them negates the efforts of thousands of ordinary mortals to live within the limits of a habitable planet.

    But these specific impacts fail to capture the aggregate effect: the remarkable way in which society comes to reflect the demands of the ultra-rich. Almost everyone in public life accepts the same set of preposterous beliefs. That economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite planet; that the unhindered acquisition of enormous fortunes by a few is acceptable, even commendable; that they should be allowed to own as much natural wealth as their money permits; that there’s nothing objectionable about a few offshore billionaires owning the media and setting the political agenda; that anyone who disputes such notions has no place in civil society. We are free to speak, up to but not beyond this point: the point on which everything hangs.

    Morgan’s maxim is not just the unspoken rule. It is also the unspeakable truth. Everyone knows it, hardly any will mention it. It underpins our august institutions, our legal codes, our manners and mores. It is the great silence we need to break.

    Sunday 10 September 2023

    A level Economics: Top UK Universities by The Guardian 10 Sep 2023