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"Nice
racism?" How a British mag struck a vein with an
immigration essay
By
James Clasper
RAW STORY COLUMNIST
In any given month, the opinion and punditry of the
liberal British magazine Prospect rarely piques the
interest of anyone beyond its several thousand readers,
consisting of tweedy professors and Hampstead literary
agents. But all that changed this February, when a provocative
essay written by the magazine’s editor, David
Goodhart, was republished in The Guardian.
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The essay, which explored what Goodhart calls the “progressive
dilemma” — the potential conflict between
social cohesion and the multicultural diversity that
has flourished in recent decades — challenged
liberals to reconsider their attitudes toward diversity
and the welfare state.
Goodhart’s core argument was a salient one: Britain
now is faced with a growing tension between the solidarity
that sustains its welfare state and the increasing diversity
in the values, race and ethnicity that characterize
its liberal society. “Those who value solidarity,”
he concluded, “should take care that it is not
eroded by a refusal to acknowledge the constraints upon
it.”
Plausible stuff, you might think. Soon enough, though,
The Guardian’s letters page was filled with missives
of all tones and temperaments, and Prospect itself went
on to publish the responses of at least a dozen prominent
writers, historians and intellectuals. Yet, Goodhart
also found his essay denounced as an insensitive attack
on Britain’s ethnic minorities: “Reactionary
neo-con,” bawled The Independent’s Yasmin
Alibhai-Brown, who added — inaccurately —
that “not one non-white Briton has defended the
Goodhart thesis.”
Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for
Racial Equality, called it “nice racism,”
claiming that Goodhart’s worries were anything
but liberal. “The xenophobes should come clean,”
he wrote. “Their argument is not about immigration
at all. … What really bothers them is race and
culture.” And then, perhaps in spite, perhaps
in sympathy, the BBC’s “Newsnight”
treated Goodhart to a televised dinner debate with several
other eminent British liberals, including singer Billy
Bragg.
How on earth, then, did David Goodhart make it all
the way from the hallowed editorial pages of a small,
progressive monthly magazine to a taxpayer-funded chow
down with radical pop stars? To be sure, Goodhart touched
upon one of the most sensitive issues in contemporary
British life. A combination of race riots in northern
English cities in 2001; the fear of Islamic terrorism
after Sept. 11; and concern that the rise in asylum
seekers entering Britain since the mid-1990s has seen
anxiety about race and immigration become the most trenchant
political issue in Britain today, besides the occupation
of Iraq.
Indeed, current opinion polls paint a picture of a
country deeply uncomfortable with ethnic diversity.
One poll this month found that 56 percent of the population
thinks there are too many immigrants in Britain, while
another reported that a quarter of the public wants
to “close the doors” to further immigration
and that 16 percent would consider voting for the far-right
British National Party.
The stage would appear to be set for a reasoned debate
about immigration, diversity and the welfare state.
Regrettably, though, many of the responses to Goodhart’s
essay were indulgent, vituperative and bedeviled by
the kind of dismal sophistry that impedes sensible dialogue.
Indeed, Trevor Phillips’ lazy ellipsis of “race
and culture” is arrant nonsense. Race and culture
are not inseparable: Our culture informs our customs
and our beliefs and, in turn, means that we are responsible
for what we do and believe. Our race burdens us with
no such responsibility.
And surely we are not so intellectually petrified
that anybody who raises so much as an eyebrow at some
of the costs of mass immigration automatically is seen
as questioning the status of existing ethnic minorities.
As Goodhart argued in a subsequent issue of Prospect,
“It is possible to be a committed anti-racist
and yet favor a hard-headed debate about the pros and
cons of large-scale immigration.” But in place
of the adult debate that intellectuals such as Goodhart
favor, we get mud-slinging casuistry and the dubious
pleasure of seeing aging musicians mumble their way
through dinner with academic heavyweights on national
television.
Make no mistake, though: This debate matters. As Goodhart
suggests, there might be a “tipping point”
somewhere between Britain’s 9 percent ethnic minority
population and America’s 30 percent, which results
in a society of sharp ethnic divisions, low political
participation and a weak welfare state. “For that
tipping point to be avoided and for feelings of solidarity
toward incomers not to be overstretched,” he argues,
“it is important to reassure the majority that
the system of entering the country and becoming a citizen
is under control and that there is an honest debate
about the scale, speed and kind of immigration.”
Consider, too, what would happen if nobody were to
engage in this debate and if nothing were done to allay
the fears of Little England: One shivers at the thought
of the British National Party increasing in popularity
until it has a significant political impact. For now,
at least, the Blair government appears to understand
that the single most important domestic policy is to
reassure people that we can control our borders and
decide who becomes a British citizen.
The truth is, these troubling issues could yet usher
in an era of clear-headed discourse. As writer Kenan
Malik argued in Prospect, “The real problem is
not a surfeit of strangers in our midst but the abandonment
in the past two decades of ideologically based politics
for a politics of identity. … Shared values and
common identities only can emerge through a process
of political dialogue and struggle, a process whereby
different values are put to the test, and a collective
language of citizenship emerges.”
Simply put, the recent elevation of the themes explored
in Goodhart’s cogent analysis to the forefront
of contemporary political debate in Britain is long
overdue. We ought to take comfort, then, in the new
life that his article has breathed into an old debate,
and commit ourselves to a sensible discussion about
the compatibility of mass immigration, cultural diversity
and solidarity.
