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"Political Correctness Gone Mad" A Tale of 3 Court Cases

28/10/2011

3 Comments

 
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Today guest writer Glen talks to us about privilege and political correctness:

NOTICE: This is about ‘privilege’; it is not a comprehensive discussion by any means and I apologise to readers who may think this presentation somewhat simplistic. It is, of necessity, something of a limited 101 in reference to a current news story.

Trigger Warning: discussions of racism and violence 

Once upon a time, back in 2009, there was a court case (the first in our story) which involved 5 white police officers accused of misfeasance in public office and racially abusing 2 teenagers. 

Details are sketchy but rests on a report produced by PC Amechi Onwugbonu, the 6th officer involved who is black and whose evidence was pivotal in bringing the case to court. I quote from a BBC article

‘PC Mark Jones, 42, was accused of subjecting the youths to a physical and verbal attack while on patrol in a police van in west London in June 2007... He allegedly accused a Kuwaiti youth of "robbing people while British soldiers are getting killed in Iraq"... the officer swore at one teenager, Omar Mohidin, who was aged 16 at the time, before kicking him... Mr Onwugbonu accused Mr Jones of walking over another youth, Ahmed Hegazy, when he lay handcuffed on the floor of the vehicle... a third teenager, Basil Khan, was brought onto the van before he was sworn at, punched, kneed and slapped in the face.’

Notice that all of this is being brought almost entirely upon evidence provided by the only black man with any power in the situation, with no mention of the testimony of the youths. The officers were found innocent of all charges. 

This leads us neatly to our second court case in which the 5 white officers (accused of either physical or verbal assault or in covering up those assaults) are involved. The men are bringing a suit to an employment tribunal alleging that they have been ‘unfairly treated’ by the MET during the course of this case and its development. Bill Wilsonone of the other officers involved, but now retired ) argued that "If it had been a white officer making that allegation, then the matter would have been dealt with in-house there and then. That would have been the end of it... they have gone in completely the opposite direction to the point where it is actually the white officers getting discriminated against”

“It’s political correctness gone mad”

There is a third court case in this story. Brought by the teenagers themselves against the white officers they accuse of physically and verbally assaulting them. Their evidence alone was not enough to bring these events to a criminal trial; they were assisted in that by the powerful evidence provided by PC Onwugbonu. They are proceeding with a civil suit themselves all the same and it is ongoing.

Here I want to step back from our story and talk about the idea of privilege and the role it plays in producing our lives. Privilege is the idea that some people have advantages that others do not, in the same way that some people have disadvantages that others do not and that these advantages and disadvantages are built into the structure of our society in ways that are not always easy to see. It’s the difference between having money and being overdrawn in your bank account – for some people even reaching zero is difficult; others never even drop that far down.

The problem is that those who spend their lives comfortably above zero, surrounded by other people who are comfortably above zero, start to believe that everyone is above zero, just like them. They  forget that other people have problems that they don’t even know exist let alone understand what it is like to live with. They cannot even imagine that other people might be overdrawn, below zero, let alone what it is like to struggle on a daily basis to try and make ends meet.

Sindeloke illustrates this idea with a story about a lizard and a St Bernard dog sharing a home; the dog doesn’t even know what cold is as it is protected by its warm coat. When the cold-blooded lizard tries to explain that she is cold the dog thinks the lizard is just making it up, or trying to get her own way all the time; because the discomfort is utterly foreign to him he brushes it off rather than trying to understand the lizard’s point of view.

To examine our story.
  • The white officers claim that their case should never have reached court in the first place, that it is only because a black officer made the allegations that they were tried.
  • They argue that had it been another white officer involved then the situation could have been resolved ‘in house’.
  •  They reason, therefore, that they have been treated unfairly, in being brought to a court case for reasons they cannot understand.
The question at stake is why these officers believe they have been treated unfairly. There have been allegations made about their conduct. Those allegations were brought to court and the officers were found innocent. Setting aside  the institutional racism of the courts which routinely find in favour of white defendants against black accusers (that’s a whole different article) the officers appear to have been treated fairly.

Accusation, trial, verdict, issue closed. This is the normal way of things, you might think. But here is where Mr Wilson’s statement becomes important.

He did not expect this to make it as far as a trial, because such things are not normal for him. He is used to living somewhere far above zero where accusations by black and other people of colour do not trouble him and where his abusive and aggressive behaviour remains unchallenged. With the changes to the force following the Macpherson Inquiry (1999) and its discussions of institutional racism following the murder of Stephen Lawrence he is brought just a tiny bit lower. Changes which he decries as a terrible imposition because they affect him in ways he is not used to. Being closer to zero is uncomfortable for those who are not used to it and this situation is intolerable for him. Despite the material fact that many others must do what they can with far less than he.

Privilege makes us blind to the ways in which others struggle. It makes us unable to comprehend that what we take to be the normal way of life is, in fact, only normal for us and that other people do not experience the world in the same ways as we do. In situations like this one, when that ‘normality’ is challenged we can sometimes not understand why our lives must change in order to develop a fairer world, we can sometimes be resentful and even lash out at those we see as forcing those changes.

We must resist those urges and listen to the voices of those who are disadvantaged in our society, in doing so we will have to give up some of our advantages.

It is not ‘political correctness gone mad’ it is equality and it’s still got a long way to go.

Glen
3 Comments
Kraz
27/10/2011 07:35:48 pm

Hi,

mind if I play the sceptic? (In a really simplified and broad strokes manner). Your definition of 'privilege' would mean that I would accept changes to the way I live based on the fact that I am white.

I will not be able to understand these changes and I have no right to challenge them as I am 'privileged'. I can not speak of my own experiences or ask for an explanation. I have been placed in a category by other people, a category which I can not leave, or even challenge, without their permission. And because I am in this category my views will be counted as being less important.

I have in effect been found guilty of a crime, the crime of "privilege", every black person is my victim. And yet this is a crime in which my actions count for nothing and I am guilty just by being. All my protestations of innocence are useless because I was born guilty and will always be guilty. I can not even understand the crime that I have been accused of, I am just guilty.

I am not saying there is not inequality that we should address. I am saying that if someone wants to change our society or my lifestyle then I want a good reason to do so. Being told "you can't comprehend because you're privileged, so just do what we say or else we'll say you're anti-equality" doesn't cut it for me.

Reply
Glen link
27/10/2011 08:44:11 pm

Hi Kraz,

Not a problem playing sceptic at all, its a contested debate and one which should be discussed at length (although I would say that because its my field of study).

First off I want to emphasise again that this post was something of a simplification of the concept as it is presently understood and because of that there are very real theoretical and practical problems which you adroitly raise. My analogies with bank accounts and animals are problematic for a number of reasons but what they try to convey is the suggestion that the inequalities between persons are not always things which can easily be 'seen' and understood.

Here the ways in which our lives become routine, 'normalised' or banal is important because we fundamentally cease to question how it is that we become able to live in certain ways and to do certain things. We believe that these things are merely the 'normal' way of doing things rather than enabled through relations of inequality.

My example in the news story is a single example of how privilege might operate in practise. I am not trying to say that these men are 'always' bad merely because of their white skin; I am not trying to say that the darker skinned men have a 'better' understanding of what has happened. What the story tries to highlight is the way in which the 'white' officers believe that they have been treated unfairly by being brought to trial. That is a manifestation of the privileges which are extended to some people, some times and in some places because of the differential valuation of skin colouration and 'race'.

Now your comment highlights that attempting to say something like "all 'white' skinned people are bad because of their 'white' skin" is problematic and patently untrue, there are many people who try their utmost to act in anti-racist, egalitarian ways. However this does not mean that there are not ways in which they might benefit from the privileges which are extended to those with 'white' skin.

'White' skinned folk are less likely to be stopped by police, either while driving, at airports, walking on the street or in many other situations. They are less likely to be physically assaulted in a variety of situations. They are more likely to score highly on certain types of testing, particularly those featuring value judgements by superiors or teachers (I can reference studies on all of these if you like). There are many many ways in which 'white' skinned people are in effect *given* benefits which 'other' people are not in ways that they have no control over or often even awareness of.

You don't notice that you *haven't* been pulled over by a police officer for a 'random' stop and search.

Therefore when somebody, who has quite often spent a great deal of time engaging in scholarly study of the subject, suggests that there are ways in which ‘white’ skinned folks benefit from having ‘white’ skin in a society which privileges the possession of ‘white’ skin which they might be unaware of, protestations of innocence fall a little flat. The argument runs something like this:

White skinned folk are treated differently to black skinned folk.

Both white and black skinned folk (eventually, after a few centuries of the slave trade, lynchings, segregation, discrimination and much much more) agree on this.

Some (mostly black skinned) folk suggest that this is because people treat black skinned folk disproportionately *badly*

A lot of people agree with this (after a great deal of study, arguing and ongoing wrangling over the extent and nature of that mistreatment).

Some (mostly black skinned, but also lots of white skinned folk) suggest that white skinned folk are also treated disproportionately *well* but that people don’t tend to notice being treat *well*.

Some (mostly white skinned) folk disagree with this because they believe that their lives are *normal*.

Some (black and white skinned folk) spend a lot of time studying the situation and agree that white skinned folk are definitely treated disproportionately *well* and that this might be a productive analytical tool for the continuing study of inequalities of various kinds.

This situation leads us to where we are now.

But at no point did I suggest that ‘white’ skinned people couldn’t come to understand why changes are required if we are to follow any kind of commitment to alleviating inequalities. I also didn’t say that you could not speak for your own experience, that your experience was invalid or that you views were less important. Neither did I say that you, personally, are actively victimising all other folk around you.

What I did argue is that there is something at work which is different from discrimination, something which many people are in the process of trying to study and understand how it works. I am one of them. I’m also a white, cisgendered, able bodied, middle class, ‘average’ sized, gay man.

It&rsquo

Reply
Glen link
27/10/2011 08:45:23 pm

The end of my reply got truncated, I do apologise.
______________________________


It’s not that you can’t understand privilege and its effects in your (and others’) life, or that people won’t listen to you because of the colour of your skin. And I freely admit that my depiction of privilege was somewhat essentialising and simplistic and your comment highlights the logical problems with those over simplifications. But rather than prompting you to try and learn more, as I had hoped my article would do, you attempted to reject the entire premise instead. Hopefully this reply has provided a more nuanced understanding of the concept and its uses.

You suggest that you don’t want to ‘change your lifestyle without a good reason to do so’. In return I want to ask you a question.

What, for you, would constitute a ‘good reason’?

Reply



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