There were hicks trying to assassinate Obama a year ago because he was black, oh how far America has come….

I couldn’t care a less what colour our next PM is. I don’t care if he’s black/white or purple. I don’t care if we never have a black PM, nor if Gordon Brown was to be our last ever white PM. I plainly don’t care what colour our PM is! Why do others?

Could you explain what you meant by this? I am frankly lost.

our punitive asylum debates offer one case study

Separate point. Just out of curiosity, how come a largely white working class constituency elected an Asian? I am talking about Glasgow, Central.

Thanks for last comment. And the case you gave earlier – complex and different needs – was interesting. It reminded me of David Edgar’s play Playing With Fire a few years ago was also very much about the type of London-centric consultancy approach you describe.

I have just dug out this which I wrote about this a few years back – and which I think remains my broad answer to Unity’s overall framing of what should and should not be attempted or permitted …

—-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/dec/21/thinktanks.immigrationpolicy

“hard-edged tensions will remain. David Edgar’s Playing with Fire, which recently premiered at the National Theatre, captures how an equality agenda will fail if it does not address subjective perceptions of fairness.

In Edgar’s fictional Wyverdale, a traditionalist northern Labour council is largely blind to the needs of its Asian minority communities.

But a London-imposed agenda to deal with pressing social disadvantage exacerbates a politics of competitive grievance, as poor white and Asian communities compete to argue over which is worse off, with the tensions exploited by both the far right and extremist community activists and ending in riots like those in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001.

If a renewed focus on “majority reassurance” then comes at the cost of minority integration there is a clear loss for social justice (our punitive asylum debates offer one case study).

To escape this conundrum, a progressive integration agenda must build a sense that we are all in this together. That is why the common framing of this debate as a choice between prioritising social/economic or symbolic integration is mistaken.

Both matter. We need to recognise that integration is a two-way street. It does require allegiance and commitment from all citizens to shape and observe the values and rules of a shared society, as well as action on the social and economic agenda to ensure that the promise of integration is met and experienced as a social reality”.
—-

While recognising the dilemmas, what I don’t want to do is accept we must retreat from addressing pressing inequalities (class, race or whatever) because we can’t construct the political argument or coalition to make it possible … So how do we do that?

I feel it must be something around a simpler common frame of reference about the overarching ‘fairness’ goal which should help us to
(i) deal with complex inequality challenges – like the ones you give – more fairly & effectively.
(ii) not try to micromanage how that is done, having set the spirit which should define the local approaches (eg, a progressive universalism: that they should seek to be broadly inclusive, while focusing resources most on the most pressing needs in their own particular patch or area, and let those balances be struck by those who are hands-on)
(iii) explain how and why those choices are made, in a way that gets us out of the politics of grievance.

I thank you for your time and energy in replying to my post.

I write from the point of view of a white immigrant to Britain and I have not spent much time outside of London in the 7 years I have been here. I do however have other immigrant friends who have moved to live in smaller cities and rural areas in the UK and they have all, without exception said that they came back to London because it was difficult to make friends. Their are obviously fewer people there and they tend to stick to each other.. These are white people – I suppose it was a giant leap to think it would be more difficult for people of other races as they would be even more alone.

As for the Slavery, I’m not an expert but I just want to point out that the traders, farm owners, merchants, sailors and in fact the white population of America, Australia, New Zealand, South Arica (besides the few Dutch and French Hugenots) were all British people were they not? How much racism is there in the other colonies? – that’s my perception at least. Slavery has been around since forever, it has never been a colour based concept, but rather a financial one – but I’ll try and read up more about it.

About culture, if Britain has made up of a hodgpodge of cultures the what does being British culturally actually mean? Are you telling me that a Black British person who is first or second generation born in Britain whose mum cooks him traditional Nigerian food, they speak their language, keep their traditions in their house is not living his cultural heritage. There is no Kudos or perception about it – its reality, I’m not understanding what you don’t understand about this?

The cover-up begins…

You write that”it doesn’t matter how much evidence you can put up in support of the existence of an ‘ethnic penalty’, you still won’t make the argument for taking short-cuts on the road to a demographically representative parliament fly, not because there’s a lack of merit merely in your position but because you lack the narrative that would frame the debate in a manner that key into rather conflicts with the British civic identity, which is much more robust that some seem to think”.

There was nothing in the piece which proposed “taking short-cuts on the road to a demographically representative Parliament”, which suggests the debate here is somewhat taking place at cross-purposes. I am against all minority shortlists.

(1) I have written pretty polemically against all minority shortlists, because it would work against the type of shift in race and identity politics. This was my piece last March. And yes it is through the ‘Obama’ lens because that is bound to be the symbolic entry point to these debates
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2008/03/minority-shortlists-british

(2) I have since gone and looked into the evidence for and against “fair chances and unfair barriers”. It struck me that the debate was being framed around a couple of high-profile soundbites – “if we don’t do this, there won’t be fair representation for 75 years” which don’t stand up at all. You seem to want to deny the validity to this frame. But I wanted to interrogate the evidence.

This November I produced some analysis of recent parliamentary cohorts.
http://fabians.org.uk/general-news/general-news/obama-uk-politics-ethnic-penalty

I was going to, for balance, link to the case for all minority shortlists, which I take to represent much of the ‘conventional wisdom’ when the issue has been, for example, debated in parliament or discussed in the media in the past. (But it seems to have disappeared from the Government Equalities Office website, where it was published, and I can’t find where/whether Operation Black Vote have it on their site either). this was The Observer’s news report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/10/harrietharman.labour

There is a limited evidence base on race, and so everybody has assumed it would be similar to gender, where there is a very well established comparative evidence base. (Much longer time-frame; much more comparable across countries). The claim ‘no country has got close to equal representation for women without some form of special measures’ seems mostly valid. The assumption that carries through to race has been made. In the British case, it turns out that the dynamics around race and gender are very different. (We don’t know why, but I have some hypotheses about it).

As a result of this, Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote has even suggested when taking part in debates on this that “there was a conspiracy, organised by Sunder” to derail the idea. What he means is that I wrote a piece in the New Statesman (though I get the impression that he somehow thinks I was put up to it by some higher powers, when in fact i was capable of thinking of my position for myself), and that the current black and asian Mps were fairly evenly divided on the idea His further point is that “women were united and we were not”. This was challenged by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Sunny among others, as well as me, as an appeal to “false unity”. I can’t see how or why all non-white people are going to agree on everything. In any event, were we to try to achieve this unlikely task, it would need to begin with a discussion of what we might all want to agree on!

This suggests to me that, if we can not get more clarity about the evidence, we were heading into a very unproductive debate( and one largely framed around the assumptions of 20 years ago),

care about black representation = for all minority shortlists on a ’something must be done’ basis
versus
against the proposal = don’t care about minority representation/chances at all, sell-out, sweep race and racism under the carpet.

So the evidence is essential to ground a case for shifting the debate. And it turned out (against much of the conventional wisdom on this) that the evidence on fair chances shows that (i) we are reaching ‘fair chances and no unfair barriers’ for candidates of all races (and more quickly than for women); going on as we are – using several softer measures to promote supply and demand, but not mechanisms like minority lists – black and Asian candidates will start to get 8% of new selections and seats within parliamentary cohorts, but women look set to remain a good way short of 50% of new selections.
(ii) if we reframed the debate, to bring in class , it might be useful for those people who want to open up the political class.

I can not see the value in a position which doesn’t want to be driven by the evidence. The debate should be a different one if the evidence was different.

The issue of how or whether to frame ‘fairness’ claims follows from that. It shouldn’t limit what we can find out in the first place (which I think genuinely is the French position, even if I am putting that in a knockabout way).

Couldn’t a version of your position be used to suggest, for example, that there should not have been an inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case? I am not saying that is your position (I don’t know) but it seems to me to be a broadly analogous argument with a similar shape.

While there was controversy about some of the outcomes, a great many people felt that produced evidence which was new to the broader public, and framed a need for change to chime in with notions of equal citizenship and fair play (even if some aspects of that were controversial and contested).

The comment by soru was caught by the spam filter and I had to release it – hence the confusion.

First has the best sound quality, the second has the most energy and the third is easiest on the eye.

“So I’m reading up on the Leeds Tory Press in the late 19th century to cheer myself up.”

Heh, it’s been a reliable friend to many of us over the years.

;o)

I was really excited because there was this metal night on, but it turned out it was yesterday! ;_;

And it’s not on again for two weeks, and it being on Tuesday means that it clashes with the lbgt (lgbt? Oh yeah, sorry, lbgtqiietc) night Thrust, and…

Yeah, in short, things are terrible. So I’m reading up on the Leeds Tory Press in the late 19th century to cheer myself up.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/01/21/why-ditching-john-pilger-is-bad-for-the-left/#comment-31785

((Oh, I’m such a bad mod…))

“None for Bensix, he has school tomorrow.”

The university night-life seems fun, James

;o)

*Takes bottle, and carefully pours out a glass. Pushes glass to one side and begins to drink from bottle.*

*Realises the need to be dour, and leftie*

So…a British Obama, eh? Well, we’ll see.

Anyone want some of this port? It’s really rather good

Indeed, it’s essential in order to keep yourself sharp.

(Or reduce yourself to an MPD afflicted mess, whichever.)

Yes you can.

Can you?

Well, I think so…

Fair enough.