It’s racist, and you know it is
The title of this wee piece scans a little like a football chant. That might, at least at the start, make it easier reading for Ian O’Doherty of The Irish Independent. But it’s mainly a direct reply to his article today on asylum-seekers in Mosney, “It’s not racist to say sorry we’re full“.
There is a curious aspect to this kind of headline, and if we were feeling at all pretentious on a Friday afternoon, we might call it a trace. O’Doherty is a local variant on a international archetype that has thrived in journalism since someone figured out how to hitch populist, differentialist racism to the figure of the liberal contrarian. Widely read, often widely syndicated, they nevertheless live in fear of the shadowy forces of repressive political correctness.
Well-rewarded in major newspapers and subject, as far as I can see, to minimal editorial oversight, they nevertheless steel themselves because, at any moment, they could be silenced. Convinced that racism is so last century, that it is - and here the writing is handed over to my Myers/Phillips/Steyn/Liddle auto-generator - nothing more than the special pleading of pampered minorities, the trump card of identity politics, and the bleating of middle class do-gooders, they nevertheless feel its trace. They can’t stop drawing attention to what they say they are not. And that’s because, for all the reductive, instrumental and vicious intent of their analysis, they are clever enough to realise that the gap between the discredited racism of biology and individual ignorance, and the hegemonic racism of commonsense cultural incompatibility and reluctant resource competition, is not in the end that wide.
Empirical facts, or at least those that can’t be tucked snugly into unshakeable culturalist frameworks, are not the primary currency of these fearless tellers of subordinated truths. But for those of us who just can’t help being quaint, here are some of O’Doherty’s contentions:
- ‘refugees/asylum-seekers, or whatever you want to call them‘: what you call them does matter, as these are statuses under international law. The residents of Mosney are asylum-seekers. But O’Doherty’s throw-away clause draws attention the wider political shifts that have made his limited schtick possible: the political assault, since the mid 1990s, on both the practice of asylum-seeking, but also on the image of asylum-seekers, deliberately blurred with ‘illegal immigrants’ in what Etienne Balibar calls the ‘immigrant’ as a racial category, including ‘not all foreigners, and not only foreigners’. For more on this background, see Fekete, A Suitable Enemy.
- ‘When we emigrating Irish didn’t get visas to Australia, that was just the game, we didn’t complain of racism‘: well, different system. Ireland also operates a green card system and an increasingly stratified immigration system. For more on this, see Bryan Fanning here.
- ‘We simply cannot afford to accommodate any more people who, through free accommodation, free legal advice, food, clothing and so on, become a burden on the State from the moment they arrive on Irish soil‘: they have been politicized as a burden, sure, but both the reception of asylum-seekers and minimum standards of provision are obligations under international law.
- ‘At what point did Ireland suddenly have a moral obligation to look after people who had probably never even heard of this country until they got here?‘ Since 1956. It took me 4 long googly seconds to find this out.
- ‘Is it now racist to point out that the vast amounts of money spent on the asylum process and the seekers themselves would have been better spent maintaining and preventing the HSE cuts to the already lamentable support given to respite carers?‘ Who said journalism is just creative cannibalism these days? Perhaps the actual figures, and the source of funding, is involved in pointing this out? It’s all here. Do your own research, ‘swampdonkey.’ [*] It’s economically illiterate, but such whataboutery is mainly about establishing the firm but caring persona of the writer (all the more ironic in that it depends on ‘victim competition’, a pet hate of muscular liberals).
Anyway, enuf pedagogy. What is really relevant about this piece is what it is symptomatic of. In 2002, the Dutch sociologist Baukje Prins published an influential paper on what she called ‘the new realism’ in Dutch public discourse. Contrary to visions of a Dutch multicultural paradise challenged by the radical liberalism of Pim Fortuyn, and the transformative horror of the murder of Theo Van Gogh, both anti-immigrant sentiment and assimilative state policies increased throughout the 1990s. Prins examined this shifting political climate in relation to a discourse predicated on the ‘courage’ - or ‘stones’, in O’Doherty’s terms - of self-promoting authors to confront taboos that the dominant orthodoxies have covered up. The crusading author assumes a populist relation with commonsense and the ordinary people, disdvantaged by all this elite posturing, as they really know what’s going on. Just in case some people are not convinced by the threat of the bare lives of warehoused asylum-seekers, the new realists need a mediating folk devil; the’left’ and middle class multiculturalists, who stifle debate at every turn.
Now, it’s a big ask, but read O’Doherty again through Prins’s schema. The joke about an auto-generator is only partially funny, as this is an easily learnt ABC of populism that transfers neatly from context to context. It provides the fairydust of contrarianism to commentators, and sometimes, if they have journeyed in life from left to right, allows the practised realism of discourse to be confused with a realism of maturity. This doesn’t always work, it should be said: the darlings of Danish new realism, Ralph Pittelkow and Karin Jespersen, often present their book Islamists and Naivists as valid because of their history on the left. This is somewhat undermined, perhaps, by the fact that Jespersen, as a government minister in the 1990s, wanted to corral asylum-seekers on an island off Copenhagen. Ah, the innocence of those pre-Muslim existential threat good old days. And this is why, from country to country, these commentators sound the same, repeating the same idioms of lego brick commonsense regardless of context or society. As Jenni Diski put it, in a brilliant review of Melanie Phillips’s new book The World Turned Upside Down, its repetition provide all the power of ‘Munch’s Scream in a singing birthday card’
But why is this racist? The genre of new realism translates the culturalist racism of the 1990s for a new era. Based on the false assumption that racism was always about biological difference, rather than a historically shifting form of thinking organised through the modern nation state that fuses biology and culture in systems of power and essential difference, new realism allows exclusion, inequality and hierarchy to be parsed through ideas of irreducible differences and exaggerated threats to our little land and its scarce resources. It frames racism as a moral criticism of ordinary people, rather than as a political critique of how power is distributed and inequality justified. It doesn’t matter if it is coded as ‘culture’, race-thinking remains constant. As Paul Gilroy puts it in After Empire
‘…the “race” idea is powerful precisely because it supplies a foundational understanding of natural hierarchy on which a host of other supplementary social and political conflicts have come to rely. Race remains the self-evident force of nature in society’ (2004: 9)
Currently there is some unrest about the take over of a nostalgic group about Mosney on Facebook by people posting racist comments. This should be countered. But let’s remember that these comments, by trolls, the angry, whomever, are the equivalent of the alibi caller that O’Doherty references in his article. The crudeness and violence of their language is what allows new realism to place itself as the common sense middle ground, speaking truth, but abhorring prejudice, and so very worried that the presence of those intolerable Others will inevitably stir up racism. It is no accident of unprecedented research that O’Doherty makes the argument that ‘stifling discussion’ allows space for the BNP. This is the move through which mainstream racism launders itself, through which Blunkett and Straw did their thing. The racialised stir up racism. And we are against that. So best not have them. And that’s not racist, at all.
Actually, he is right on one thing, it does need qualification. It’s neoliberal racism, but that’s another post.
Notes:
Photo of the chalets at Mosney courtesy of Paul Rowley’s blog.
[*] ’swampdonkey’: Ian O’Doherty finds this phrase hilarious when applied to working class women. So just piling on the hilarity by gender bending it right back! See how daring and funny it is?
Discussion
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Comment by: Hugh Green
Jul 9th 2010 at 15:07
Why can’t this country restore some sense of national pride by getting itself some intelligent racist newspaper commentators?
Seriously, though, well said. One of the things I saw on the Facebook thing was criticism of the people doing the posting about asylum seekers precisely in terms of the ‘racism as a moral criticism of ordinary people’ you cite above.
So racism is seen as morally objectionable, but primarily the activity of ‘knackers’ with poor spelling and a failure to use dental fricatives. And although the criticism may express sympathy and solidarity with asylum seekers, it’s largely indistinguishable in its class contempt from O’Doherty’s view of racism as the product of a ‘hate-spewing rabble’.
Comment by: Gavan
Jul 9th 2010 at 16:07
@Hugh: now that would have been another entry for Your Country Your Call, world class excellence and innovation in the racist commentariat..
I agree, and noticed the same in the comment thread about FB over on the Anti-Room, where for some posters it’s all about the ignorance of scangers, and the state racism of the system vanishes from view.
It’s because of this inability to hold race and class together that a fair bit of the recycled criticism of middle class multiculturalism is so true. Tut tutting about the intolerance of the ‘hate spewing rabble’ does nothing to alter the power involved in dispensing tolerance.
Comment by: sheesh
Jul 9th 2010 at 18:07
are you genuninely saying anybody who says the country a country is full and should accept no more immigrants is racist.
Thats very silly.
Do you believe that the newly elected Australian leader is a racist?
Are Tibetans racist for being concerned about the influx of chinese in to Tibet?
Do you believe that Mrs Duffy was rightfully called a bigot by Gordon Brown?
The main flaw in this strategy of always calling everyone else racists is that eventually voters think well okay feck it then we must be racist. We have what we feel are valid concerns but got insulted for it so okay if we are racists then lets vote for the racists.
Is o’Doherty an eejit. Dear god yes but this constant calling of everyone who has concerns about immigration as racist is wrong, counter-productive and will back fire on the left.
Comment by: Gavan
Jul 9th 2010 at 19:07
@Sheesh,
where do I call anyone a racist, either Ian O’Doherty, or ‘voters with valid concerns’?
Comment by: sheesh
Jul 9th 2010 at 21:07
Title of piece: It’s racist, and you know it is
Oaf Doherty’s point is “It’s not racist to say sorry we’re full“.
Someone saying the country is full is not necessarily racist. It could well be but then its equally likely as not to be racist.
The title reads as if on the contrary it is indeed racist to say the country is full.
Comment by: Wednesday
Jul 10th 2010 at 17:07
Whatever about it being racist (and of course it usually is), it’s patently wrong. Ireland is nowhere near full - certainly not in comparison to the rest of the EU, as this map shows. We would need to increase our population significantly just to be average.
This is why I found it amusing, in last year’s local elections, to see a certain known xenophobe running in a particular constituency on a “Save ____ Hospital” platform. The justification we’re being given for the downgrading of local hospitals is, of course, precisely that we don’t have the population density to support regionalised services. Similarly for rural transport. Oddly such things don’t seem to enter the minds of those who complain about the number of people here.
Comment by: sheesh
Jul 11th 2010 at 09:07
Wednesday,
I for one would be quite satisfied if there was a debate to determine what the maximum capacity of the country to absorb immigrants would be. IF the resulting number was set quite high then grand at least its based on a debate, and planned.
A reasoned debate would have two great benefits:
(1) It would pull the rug from the nuts who say 1 immigrant is too many, and
(2) It would pull the rug from nuts who say that any immigration control is racist and any dicussion on immigration is racist.
We get that far then we are growing as a society and both sets of nuts are pushed to the margins.
Comment by: Niall
Jul 11th 2010 at 09:07
In regards population, was our historical high not 8 million? And that was in a time where we did not have the medical and technological advantages we have today. Let’s just take in 2 million people and then close the door.
All joking aside, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. The asylum application system is widely abuse, but having said that, it is better that we take in 10 undeserving applicants than to refuse even one who requires our aid.
On the other hand, Europe needs to start getting realistic about managing economic migration. We need immigrants to support our aging population but so many are unwilling to admit this. In some senses, there is an odd acceptance of the abuse of the asylum system by economic migrants because while we need them, we don’t want to offer them a legitimate means of entering our countries.
I support proposals that would allow these asylum seekers to work but only because of the length of time our system takes to process applications. There’s something wrong when a child can go from neonate to first class in the time it takes to process an application.
Comment by: Wednesday
Jul 12th 2010 at 11:07
The whole “we need to have a debate” argument is suspect. We don’t have government by debate in this country. We certainly don’t have it to any lesser extent on immigration than on any other subject.
Comment by: Michael Burke
Jul 12th 2010 at 11:07
In what sense could a country such as this one be ‘full’? The population density in this state is 63 people per square kilometre. Lower than Kenya, with the rolling and sparsely populated areas such as the Rift Valley, although a higher than the UAE, which is mainly desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Perhaps what is meant is the country is too poor to accept asylum-sekers? On whatever measure, this economy has a per capita GDP in the top 10 in the world.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
By definition, the attempt to prevent the seeking of asylum would force people to live in poorer countries, sometimes vastly so.
But what if there’s just no money to spare in the economy which is what we hear every day? Last year this economy’s value added was €129bn, but the wages and salaries of those who created it were just €63bn, with another €5bn in employer’s social insurance contributions. You could increase everyone’s pay and contributions by 10% and still have €53bn left over. A few thousand asylum seekers are hardly unaffordable.
Whatever the ignorance of geography and economics displayed by O’Doherty and others, the lack of knowledge of the history of the Christianity is a hat-trick. The right, and it is a right, to asylum derives from Church law, where the fugitive could demand refuge and sustenenance from the Church. Sometimes it was necesary only to touch the Church door before the right had to be granted.
They are modern bigots and racists who wish to return to a pre-medieval social policy.
Comment by: William Wall
Jul 13th 2010 at 07:07
Michael Burke’s contribution is the rational one here. I also agree that the call for a ‘debate’ would, no matter what the intentions of the caller, boil down to a shouting match in which the xenophobes would shout loudest and most dangerously.
What about open borders? What if there was no distinction made between ‘them’ and ‘us’, ‘here’ and ‘there’? What if the population of the world was allowed to move as freely as water in a field? Why should one piece of land have its own privileged population? The answer to this latter question is a ‘have and hold’ one, and by nature it’s xenophobic. This is OUR patch of land, we’re the kings of the castle and you, trying to get in here, are the dirty rascal.
And if capital can move freely around the world, isn’t the corollary that labour should have equal right of movement?
Comment by: LeftAtTheCross
Jul 13th 2010 at 07:07
“And if capital can move freely around the world, isn’t the corollary that labour should have equal right of movement?”
I agree. It would be the nail in the coffin of the era of empire and of the nation state. It would lead to global wealth redistribution from the minority to the majority world. I find it difficult to see any moral argument against it. And more so as global population increases place more pressure on resources, land, water, food, energy.
However, free movement of populations will turn the current global power structure on its head. From where would government draw legitimacy? What would constiture a state? A citizenry? Rights and responsibilities of what state and to whom? Taxation, of whom? Social welfare and state provision of services, to whom? One would fear that the power gap would be exploited by the structure which is already transnational, capital.
Despite these difficulties, yes, it is the future and it is to be welcomed. The alternative will be barbarism.
Comment by: Colin Quirke
Jul 13th 2010 at 09:07
“Is it now racist to point out that the vast amounts of money spent on the asylum process and the seekers themselves would have been better spent maintaining and preventing the HSE cuts to the already lamentable support given to respite carers?”
I think this is one of the more interesting lines in the original article.
“It’s economically illiterate, but such whataboutery is mainly about establishing the firm but caring persona of the writer (all the more ironic in that it depends on ‘victim competition’, a pet hate of muscular liberals).” is Gavan Titley’s response.
I think the motive ascribed to Ian O’Doherty is too generous. Irish people are angry right now, and our anger moves from person to person, institution to institution, scandal to scandal. There is so much wrong it is difficult to focus that anger and sense of injustice anywhere, but this week we are angry about the treatment of respite carers. Now we know who to blame! Ian O’Doherty has identified the other that is threatening our idyll. We now know where to direct our anger. And those who would accuse us of racism are even worse! Traitors all!
Comment by: Colin Quirke
Jul 13th 2010 at 10:07
The Department of Justice explained in 1948 that:
“It has always been the policy of the Minister for Justice to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in our Jewish population might give rise to an anti-Semitic problem.”
In an effort to prove our maturity as a nation we are going to invite one woman and her husband, symbols of birthright, privilege, and empire, to come and stay for the weekend. By this act we will demonstarte just how far we have come.
Comment by: William Wall
Jul 18th 2010 at 08:07
I’ve been thinking about the burka ban in France and I’d like to confess to a personal conflict. On the one hand I recognise the populist and racist motives of many who support the ban. I also realise that the debate itself is likely to create racial tension and inflame anti-Islamic passion. On the other hand, being an atheist and believing (in essence) that all religions are cracked, I don’t feel well-disposed towards these arbitrary clothing and dietary restrictions that religious people feel are necessary to honour their gods.
So I find the idea that cultural pressure/family pressure/male domination forces women to remain covered from head to toe completely unacceptable. I have no problem with people voluntarily covering themselves in this way - though if the ‘religious’ (read sexual) motivation were removed it might be regarded as an indicator of psychological problems, but I simply do not accept that the power relations that exist in Islamic society permit such a choice.
Before the whataboutists jump on me, let me say that I don’t think any other religion is all that much better on the subject of women, nor indeed is society at large. But that doesn’t mean I have to accept the imposition of the burka on women, anymore than say, the idea that women lawyers should not wear trousers in court - though there is a significant matter of degree. I also accept the point which has been made to me by Muslims, that westernised women are themselves victims of their culture (aren’t we all!) in particular ways, not the least of which is sexual exploitation. The thing is, I’m against that too.
So, while detesting the racist motivation behind anti-burka movements like the one that seems to be getting under way in Britain now, I also find myself wishing the damn thing away. The latter feeling is compounded by the knowledge that the Quran itself never prescribed it.
So, to sum up, I suppose I could characterise my conflict thus: I’m opposed to the burka in the same way that I’m opposed to the exploitation of women in advertising or the construction of the world of work so as to exclude as many women as possible. Equally, I feel no hostility towards the women themselves, nor have I any objection whatsoever to the presence of muslims - except my general opposition in principle to all religions which I consider foolish and occasionally dangerous. However, I recognise that uttering this anti-burka position is likely to add fuel to the fire of the worst kind of racism.
Anyway, I’d be interested to hear everyone’s point of view on the subject.
Comment by: Small Girl
Jul 23rd 2010 at 10:07
Hi William,
Bit of a tricky one - the burka. I think it’s best to tolerate it, many women want to wear it and of course they want to because they’re conforming within their sets of beliefs. Conforming won’t produce a sea-change towards women’s freedom of choice however the arguments for hold as much weight as the arguments against. So here’s where I come down on it. In the gamut of religious and cultural practices it doesn’t do any longterm physical damage to women not like genital cutting and stitching which is much more extreme. So I find myself neither pro nor anti burka, more neutral to it. Of course tolerance is a good way to maintain yourself as an anti-racist person but it’s not a progressive change stance on sexism - it’s one of those trade-offs you have to make I think.
Fair play to you for being interested in it. Most of the men I know could care less about it, as much about the burka as fake tan.
Comment by: William Wall
Jul 24th 2010 at 13:07
Actually, when you think about it, at an essential level, fake tan serves much the same function as the burka - except in reverse. (Must give up smoking this stuff)
But I’ve adopted much the same stance as you, Small Gir, and it serves me well enough except when I get in discussion (mostly with Americans for some reason) about the French ban. Then I find myself explaining the secular state idea (which I’m in favour of) and my conflicts begin to surface.
Finally, though, I think the consequences of throwing your weight behind the anti-burka crowd, the majority of whom are racist, right wing bastards, are much worse than toleration.
Comment by: Colin Quirke
Jul 25th 2010 at 12:07
It is a difficult area, but if wearing the burka is purely a personal choice, than wearing it can have consequences. It may limit a persons ability to access or provide certain services, and we need not bend over backwards to accommodate it into daily life. Furthermore, if it is a personal choice, it does tell us something about the attitudes of the person wearing it, and to me, it is not a positive message.
If, as many of us suspect, wearing the burka is not a personal choice, but a misogynistic and sexually disordered symbol of imprisonment, then I believe the correct response is closer to treating it as a disability, and there is a burden on both the state and the individual to recognize and accommodate the burka sufferer as far as is reasonable. A ban, in this case, is misdirected and serves only to separate and victimize the innocent party, without addressing the real problem.
In either case, a state ban seems to me to be the wrong response.