When I look at current
leaders of the Tory Party, I don’t see a single white face. It’s a stupid,
racist comment to make, of course. But is it really more racist than Jenrick’s comment
that he didn’t see another white face on a visit to an area of Birmingham? How
many people did he see, and in how big an area, over that fateful 90 minutes?
Without such statistical context, it’s impossible to draw any meaningful
conclusions about what it means for integration. How much bigger was his sample than the sample of one in the first sentence above? It’s worse than that, though.
Suppose all the faces had been white, but they’d all been Poles or Romanians?
How would he have known? And why would that have been more acceptable to him?
Both Jenrick and his
party leader claim that his remarks weren’t racist, but leaping to a conclusion
about the extent to which people are, or can be, ‘integrated’ into UK society
(whatever that means – and other than dispersing them more widely
geographically, it’s not at all clear that Jenrick knows what it means either)
based purely on one visible characteristic, skin colour, is about as close to a
textbook definition of racism as one can get. Maybe he really, genuinely isn’t
a racist himself, but he knows that more than a few voters are, and he knows
how to appeal to their prejudices.
By a curious
coincidence (?), Handsworth, the part of Birmingham dishonoured by Jenrick’s
presence, just happens to be next door to Smethwick, scene of an infamous
electoral battle in 1964 which the Tories won on the basis of a campaign
based on the number of non-white faces in the area. The Tory candidate that
time round denied being racist too. It’s probably being excessively charitable
to suggest that Jenrick might simply be too young to remember how well that
worked for his party.
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2 comments:
Don't misunderestimate Jenrick, as Dubya would say. I think he has thought about race, culture and human rights more than most people. He's had to. He wasn't brought up in Wales, where these issues are less acute than in England.
Jenrick was born in Wolverhampton to parents like Starmer's. He went to one of the excellent grammar-type schools in Wolves. I worked there for some years. Chapel Ash was close by on a key road junction. When I was there in the 2000s I met a shrewd old solicitor from Chapel Ash who had been very close to the Enoch 'grinning' incident in Chapel Ash and brought it alive. Jenrick must have been imbued with the same history and thought about it more than most. He has married a Jewish wife. He has lived in England and seen first hand what is happening to the culture of his country. He has done what most English do: been tolerant of immigration for years, but always warning that its a question of numbers. Too much immigration means less integration. The English are now drawing lines because the numbers are wrong. This does not make them racist. I don't think Jenrick was seeking to make an accurate statement about statistics. He is not 'dog-whistling' he is trying to make a serious point which matters to his fellow English. 2 more good things about Jenrick (1) he worries about his legal system and he's not the only one (2) he is in favour of a UK Bill of Rights. This alone marks him out as a thinker, as it is rare. In reality, you can't do much about civil liberties in the UK unless you first get a Bill of Rights which is better and more modern than the ECHR, which is not protecting free speech, is it? If England doesn't get a Bill of Rights for the UK then Wales must get its own. As a Welsh Nat, I try to understand England and the English. I won't be voting Tory unless they go for Dominion Status for Wales, our obvious route to Indy. Doesn't do to demonise or underestimate the Sais.
"...and seen first hand what is happening to the culture of his country" And what, exactly, is happening to the culture of his country? Is there a threat to its language, its literature, its art? There may be a threat to its so-called values, but those values are not unique to England and seem more under threat from English people themselves - people like Jenrick even - than from immigration.
"The English are now drawing lines because the numbers are wrong. This does not make them racist" Not necessarily, no. But when the 'analysis' of the current state of numbers of immigrants is based on the very visible characteristic of skin colour (the point being made in the post), I don't see how you can argue that that is not a racist basis. His tolerance of immigration seems to be limited to those who 'look like us'.
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