The great Diane Abbott tweetgate scandal of 2012

Here’s the exchange, as reproduced by the BBC:

Bim Adewunmi: I do wish everyone would stop saying 'the black community' though. WHICH ONE?
Bim Adewunmi: Clarifying my 'black community' tweet: I hate the generally lazy thinking behind the use of the term. Same for 'black community leaders'.
Diane Abbott: I understand the cultural point you are making. But you are playing into a "divide and rule" agenda.
Bim Adewunmi: Maybe. I find it frustrating that half the time, these leaders are out of touch with black people they purport to represent.
Diane Abbott: White people love playing "divide & rule" We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism
Bim Adewunmi: I don't advocate 'divide and rule'. But I wish we could deal more effectively with issues without resorting to monolithic view.
Diane Abbott: Ethnic communities that show more public solidarity & unity than black people do much better #dontwashdirtylineninpublic

I should start by declaring that my general opinion of Diane Abbott is pretty low, although my estimation of her importance is also pretty low. I find it hard to get worked up by this.

Still, on the offending phrase: I don’t quite grasp the mental process that starts with wanting a quick and clear way to describe people who seek to weaken black people by turning them against each other, and ends with choosing “white people” rather than “colonialists” or “imperialists” or “racists”.

Nonetheless, I’m sure she knows full well that there are loads of white people who don’t fit that description. My best guess is that she was aiming to be a little cheeky in the vague service of solidarity-building, in the way that Harriet Harman might make some semi-serious unflattering overgeneralisation about men to make the sisters nod along.

If so, it’s still unpleasant and it’s still untrue – I go along with Russell on “the superior virtue of the oppressed”. But the idea that any white person has in any way been harmed by this tweet is just ridiculous. At the very outside you could argue that impressionable young black people might read it and as a result take more of an ‘us vs them’ outlook towards all white people, but I think that’s stretching it well past breaking point.

My real beef with what Abbott said is precisely because of the “context” that she protests her tweet was taken out of. I don’t like the way she rejects Bim Adewunmi’s point.

Questioning the merits of a set of “community leaders” (black or otherwise) is not on any meaningful continuum with the tactics and values of 19th-century colonialism. And the suggestion that black people shouldn’t criticise their so-called “community leaders” for fear of being seen to “wash [their] dirty linen in public” is depressing.

But then, there are far more depressing things to do with race. And yet this is the issue we’re all yelling about this week. Well, it’s easy, isn’t it? We know how to do ‘somebody said something and people say they’re angry at her and other people say they’re angry at them and now I’m going to say something’. We don’t know how to make society more just and people less prejudiced. Well, I don’t, anyway.

Here comes the science bit – segregate!

Giles Wilkes muses on the libertarians and other assorted right-wingers who take climate change ‘scepticism’ to the point of ideological denial – and, by extension, the anti-consumerists who almost religiously grab the opportunity to argue that we need to replace the whole economic system:

For a great proportion of our scientific beliefs, we have to rely on a long-established consensus. … For views on evolution, the Holocaust, whether transfats cause cancer, or carbon dioxide causes global warming, no single person can themselves compile enough evidence. You need to rely on scientists who themselves rely on more scientists.
…
However, people often form opinions, or choose which ‘consensus’ to trust, on the basis of feelings. This particularly works in a negative way; if you really hate X and his/her group, then X believing something, and in particular X thinking it is important, then thinking and proclaiming it as untrue gives enormous pleasure. This happens whether X is some braying redfaced foxhunter or sanctimonious good for nothing leftie student. Most political extremes have convoluted theories for why their opponents think the rubbish that they do.

A very interesting paper in Nature last week supports this, explaining finding on the ways that “ordinary citizens react to scientific evidence”:

People endorse whichever position reinforces their connection to others with whom they share important commitments. As a result, public debate about science is strikingly polarized. The same groups who disagree on 'cultural issues' — abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer — also disagree on whether climate change is real and on whether underground disposal of nuclear waste is safe.
…
A process that does account for this distinctive form of polarization is 'cultural cognition'. Cultural cognition refers to the influence of group values — ones relating to equality and authority, individualism and community — on risk perceptions and related beliefs. …
For example, people find it disconcerting to believe that behaviour that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behaviour that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.
Our research suggests that this form of 'protective cognition' is a major cause of political conflict over the credibility of scientific data on climate change and other environmental risks. People with individualistic values, who prize personal initiative, and those with hierarchical values, who respect authority, tend to dismiss evidence of environmental risks, because the widespread acceptance of such evidence would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, activities they admire. By contrast, people who subscribe to more egalitarian and communitarian values are suspicious of commerce and industry, which they see as sources of unjust disparity. They are thus more inclined to believe that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted. Such differences, we have found, explain disagreements in environmental-risk perceptions more completely than differences in gender, race, income, education level, political ideology, personality type or any other individual characteristic.
Cultural cognition also causes people to interpret new evidence in a biased way that reinforces their predispositions. As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarized, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information.

It’s a fascinating piece.

(Update: Just remembered I came across this paper via Chris (I think), so consider my hat tipped.)

9/12ers: the morning-after pillocks

For some unknown reason, I’m on the email list for some right-wing anti-government US pressure group. Because, you know, I’m very right-wing and American.

From these emails, I’ve learned of something called the 9/12er movement.

9/12? Well, you’ve heard of 9/11, right?

The 9/12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.

I feel desperately sorry for these people. For them to think that the ideal condition for their country is the greatest shock, grief, horror, fear, anger and unthinking bloodthirst that it has seen in modern times is terribly sad. And, to be charitable to their intentions, it’s terribly stupid.

I suppose in British politics, the nearest equivalent would be just after the 7/7 bombings. And yes, I was glad and proud to live in the company of mostly good, decent and sensible people at that time. But I wouldn’t want us to perpetually live in a state of being artificially and superficially united by the emotions that surrounded that mass murder. A far better ideal would be the (also, admittedly, artificial and superficial) compassion shown around the Live8 concert for international development a few days before.

Britizenship

Huzzah! I’m FIT TO BE A BRIT! I’ve passed the British Citizenship Test! Or rather, I’ve passed the online mock questionnaire based on samples from it (hat tip to Don).


This means that:

• I am officially BETTER than JOHNNY FOREIGNER.


• I am officially BETTER than 86% of SO-CALLED BRITS, who FAILED, and who will surely soon be DEPORTED for TREASON.

While the actual test itself isn’t online, there is a guide to the topics. Flushed with success, I’ve had a stab at some of these too:

Q: Where have migrants come from in the past and why? What sort of work have they done?
A: Migrants have come from Overseas. They come here because Overseas is made of grease, disease and trickery, whereas Britain is made of beef, grit and pluck. They have taken our jobs.

Q: What is a CV?
A: A document whose contents purport to show your past successes but whose existence demonstrates your current failure.

Q: How is political debate reported? Are newspapers free to publish opinions or do they have to remain impartial?
A: Political debate is reported in the sports and showbiz pages. Newspapers are banned from printing facts but may publish as many opinions as they like, as long as those opinions are wrong.

Q: How many people in the UK own their own home?
A: It’s down to about 12 now. But those 12 are MPs, so they actually own 24 houses between them. Although some of those houses are for ducks.

Q: What do estate agents do? What do solicitors and surveyors do?
A: Nothing. Slowly.

Are YOU a good Britizen? Take the test. Or try Simon’s more practical alternative citizenship test.

People like us don’t have free will, not like those other malicious bastards

This post by Chris reminds me that an awful lot of politics can be explained by the following principle:

• When people I identify with do unpleasant things, it’s because circumstances have forced them to; when people I don’t identify with do unpleasant things, it’s because they’re bad people.

Living on benefits. Tax avoidance. Industrial action. Crime. War. Terrorism. Any foreign policy issue. My party’s policy. Their party’s policy. It explains all of these things and more – or rather, it explains the knee-jerk attitudes of lazy thinkers to all of these things and more. And lazy knee-jerking counts for a lot.

The BNP hates Britain

This little creep Nick Griffin, who makes Robert Kilroy-Silk look like a cross between Cicero and Mandela, cannot bear to accept the way British society has developed. He has nothing to offer our country but poison, lies, hate and fear. His party are no patriots. If being black is unBritish, then their own dark hearts should be first in line for deportation.

British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin has defended a party leaflet which says that black Britons and Asian Britons "do not exist".
The BNP's "Language and Concepts Discipline Manual" says the term used should be "racial foreigners".
In a BBC interview, Mr Griffin said to call such people British was a sort of "bloodless genocide" because it denied indigenous people their own identity.
…
The BNP manual, leaked to the anti-fascist group Searchlight and seen by the BBC, says that "BNP activists and writers should never refer to 'black Britons' or 'Asian Britons' etc, for the simple reason that such persons do not exist".
"These people are 'black residents' of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese.
"Collectively, foreign residents of other races should be referred to as 'racial foreigners', a non-pejorative term... The key in such matters is above all to maintain necessary distinctions while avoiding provocation and insult."

I was wrong: we do still have dragons left to slay.

Update: Safraz Manzoor tears this malignant nonsense apart:

Apparently, I do not exist. This naturally comes as something of a blow as I had a few plans for the weekend which will now need to be cancelled on account of my non-existence.

British births for British citizens

In an argument between Sunder Katwala, of the Fabian Society, and Paul Dacre, of the Daily Mail, I can generally expect to find myself much nearer Sunder’s side. So it is with this case.

Sunder’s written an open letter to Dacre:

I was disappointed to read reported in today’s Daily Mail that the newspaper regards it as a mistake to consider that the children or grandchildren of immigrants are British, but rather would classify us as “second or third generation immigrants”.
…
I hope that your proposed reclassification of Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry as not British, as second and third generation immigrants descended from the foreign-born Phillip, will not distress them too much.
But it does seem most ungrateful, when Winston Churchill was voted ‘greatest Briton’, to now strip him of that status because he had an American mother. …
Perhaps you could let us know who the Daily Mail thinks is truly British. I can see you probably think it is too late for my children - as “third generation immigrants”, currently aged under 3 - but perhaps there might be a tip or two they could pass on to their descendants.

Nice, but I think Dacre a fairly obvious comeback: that if you have one British parent you get to count yourself as British. Thus Winston and the princes are in the clear. Phew! Dacre could probably be really classy about it and work the word ‘interbreeding’ in there.

The answer, which I have no doubt Sunder would actually agree with, is ‘British births for British citizens’ (not necessarily as the only way of becoming British, but certainly as one infallible means).

But that hardly makes for a really witty blog post.

The Krusty the Clown theory of humanitarianism

Michael Williams takes up (verbal) arms against humanitarian organisations working in conflict-hit countries:

Once on the ground, humanitarian organisations are often there promoting western values, although they proclaim to be neutral. In realty, very few modern day humanitarian organisations are neutral. Instead, they are multimandate. This means in addition to providing humanitarian assistance (food, shelter, etc) they also work on programmes promoting the rights of women, literacy for children and sex education.

Horror of horrors.

Norm sighs at how Williams appears torn “between these concerns being a personal preference of his, and being the sort of thing you'd expect to find amongst upper-middle class white people, and being the product of 'western values'”.

Williams is clear that these concerns are, in one form or another, one that he holds dear, but hesitates to recognise their validity beyond ‘the West’: “I… believe in the rights of women, but one needs to keep in mind the cultural modernity of many of these countries where the west is involved.”

I’m not entirely sure what a ‘cultural modernity’ is, but I daresay that Afghanistan’s, for instance, would involve the fact that there are plenty of armed men there who oppose women’s rights. Whether this fact makes defending these rights more or less urgent will depend on whether keeping in mind the place’s cultural modernity is your top priority.

It seems that the ethos being proposed here is that we should (as upper-middle-class white Westerners) feel strongly and care deeply about women’s rights and the rest, but that this should not influence our actual behaviour in the countries where women find their rights the most sorely limited by a repressive (and often anything but modern) cultural modernity.

It reminds me of Krusty the Clown (from The Simpsons), who told his daughter, on declining to play with her:

I’m not really the kind of dad that does stuff, or says things, or looks at you – but the love is there.

Another oddity of Williams’s piece comes when he says:

these [humanitarian] organisations line up for government cash that further legitimises the conflicts especially in places like Iraq, even if they disagree with the focus or rationale for the intervention. Instead of challenging government about the legitimacy of their actions, they are complicit in the crime.

But hold on! I thought humanitarian organisations were supposed to stick to the food-and-shelter basics and not get involved in politics, picking sides and promoting values. Yet here Williams urges them to do just that. The difference, I suppose, is that it’s OK for them to do this when the baddies are the monstrous US and UK governments, but not when it’s just the Taliban or Saddam Hussein whose behaviour is less than ideal.

Nation states: fellowship, not size

Chris Dillow asks: “What use are nation states?” He thinks that “nation states are just too small to solve some important problems”, but that “in other senses they are too big”.

Matthew Sinclair takes this up, arguing that “nation states are the best ultimate guarantor of individual rights”. Local communities are rich in direct personal connections, which “make them too easy to bias and sway unfairly”, whereas nation states are big enough to resist any one social network becoming too powerful.

This makes sense – but I think that ‘size’ is probably the wrong thing to ask about. There are two countries with populations over a billion, nine in about the 100-300m range and 12 in the 50-100m range, then 50-odd in the 10-50m range, 70 or so in the 1-10m range, and another 70-something below 1m.

These are not all states as such; there are 221 in this list against only 192 UN members – but even if we discount all the sub-1m territories, there’s still a staggering range of sizes.

Another way of looking at it: the Gini coefficient is often used to measure economic inequalities within a country: if one person has all the money, the Gini is 1; if everyone has the same amount, the Gini is 0. But you can use the measure to look at the population inequality of the world’s countries: using this calculator, I get a figure of 0.84 for all the 221; taking out the sub-1m territories, it’s still 0.76; taking out the two giants, India and China, it’s 0.64.

(For comparison, the country with the highest known income-inequality Gini is Namibia, with 0.74, followed by Lesotho’s 0.63; the USA is 0.41, the UK 0.36, France 0.33 and Denmark 0.25.)

So state size is incredibly varied, and it’s hard to see what policy issues a unit of 5m population and ones five, ten and twenty times that size would all be well-sized to deal with.

What matters in assessing a ‘nation state’ is fellow-feeling: do the people living under the state feel that they constitute a nation? The UK (pop. 60m) works passably well as a nation; Scotland (5m) would also work pretty well. The Republic of Ireland (4m) works well, but a united Ireland (6m) significantly less well. The British Isles together (65m) would fail, as it did in the past, when its population was much smaller.

One approach it is that a nation state is the largest political unit that would work as a legitimate democracy – in other words, the nationhood of a state could be measured by the extent to which any given minority would accept being (freely and fairly) outvoted by a majority. Of course, in countries with no tradition of genuine democracy, this approach breaks down.

So a nation state allows (at least in theory) for the government to be held accountable to the whole population: the electorate accept the government’s legitimacy because they accept each other’s legitimacy.

Diversity is more diverse than that

Stephen Cave reviews Kenan Malik’s book on race and culture. Malik is scathing about “the cult of multiculturalism”. In Cave’s summary:

Whereas once progressive thinkers advocated treating everybody equally despite their differences, they now focus on treating people differently because of their differences. This misplaced respect for diversity leads us to brand complex communities with one mark, such as colour or creed. The consequence is not only to carve up society along ethnic lines, but also to strengthen the conservative forces within communities. Thus we have made the mullahs the mouthpiece of people who might previously have seen their Islamic heritage as only a part of their identity.

The community model of multiculturalism takes something of tremendous importance – the understanding that ethnic or religious differences do not mean differences of human worth, and that disadvantaging people on grounds of these is wrong – and distorts it terribly.

It does this by focusing on the ‘different’ part of ‘the freedom to be different’ rather than the ‘freedom’ part, and then by refusing to count more than one difference at a time, even where there is socially tricky diversity within a handily labelled ‘community’.

Deafness and the availability of options

I’ve been thinking more during the week about the deaf couple who want to use IVF to select a deaf baby (they have already had one naturally). The father, Tomato Lichy, was interviewed by John Humphrys on Monday. Here’s a chunk of it:

JH: I don't think anybody would say - no sensible person would say - that deaf people are inferior to hearing people, but the fact is that they have a disability: a pretty serious disability. They cannot hear. Surely you have no right to effectively impose that disability on another child? The child doesn't belong to you; the child is a person in its own right.
TL: You say it's a serious disability. I disagree with that. We have an interpreter here for you to be able to understand me. If I go to a deaf club or a deaf academic conference with thousands of deaf people, you would be lost. You're the one with the disability, because you can't use sign language.
JH: Isn't that a slightly perverse point? I, after all, don't need, somebody to sign for me. I can hear the music of Beethoven or listen to a play by Shakespeare or pop music or whatever it happens to be - you can't. So therefore you have a disability. Surely that's simply a fact?
TL: Well, I feel sorry for you, because you haven't acquired sign language, you can't appreciate deaf plays, you can't appreciate deaf poetry, you can't appreciate the joy of being part of the deaf community, the jokes that go on. I feel sorry for you.
JH: But I could learn sign language if I set myself to it - at least I assume that I could. You can't learn to hear.
TL: Yes, but now it's recognised that deaf people do have a culture, a community of their own. You know, in the old days people used to say that deaf people were certainly inferior to hearing people, but recently Baroness Deech said in Parliament: "I hope that your Lordships will be pleased that the deliberate choice of an embryo that is, for example, likely to be deaf, will be prevented by Clause 14". So in saying that, the government is saying quite clearly that deaf people are inferior to hearing people, and it should be that deaf people should never have been born. She's basically saying that she wants deaf people to be stopped from existing.
JH: Well, no, she isn't saying that, is she? What she's saying is that deaf people have the right to exist because they have been born. It would be utterly absurd to suggest otherwise. But there is a great difference between that and making a positive selection so that somebody is born who is not able to hear, as opposed to somebody who is able to hear.
TL: Again, we're talking about different perspectives about what disability means. I don't see myself as disabled. You're not deaf, but you're labelling me as disabled. I could say "Oh, well, black people are disabled. Deaf people have to struggle to achieve equal rights, and gay people could be regarded as being disabled - let's put them into hospitals and make sure that they're cured, make sure they're not born". That's not the case - we do accept that black people and gay people are equal. Why can't you do the same with deaf people?
JH: But we do. I accept entirely that you are equal to me, but I would not presume - and many people I think listening to this programme would not presume - to make a decision on behalf of somebody else. That's the crucial aspect here, isn't it? On behalf of somebody else, an unborn child, that they should have what I said was a disability, and I repeat that.
TL: But that seems to be somewhat contradictory, because you say that deaf people are equal, but then you say, well, it's better not to be born deaf. That seems a contradictory statement. Really, it's up to us as deaf people to decide whether we're disabled or not.

Two things strike me from this: first, the words ‘disabled’ and ‘disability’ are of absolutely no use here; they are loaded and contentious, generating more heat than light. Second, Mr Lichy has some fair points but his argument evaporates round about the words “yes, but” in his third reply here. Pretty much everything that follows is irrelevant to his case.

His remark that “you say that deaf people are equal, but then you say, well, it's better not to be born deaf” is contradictory illustrates the key failure of logic.

It seems that in fighting the prejudice ‘deaf people cannot do certain things, so they are inferior human beings’, there’s been more focus on rejecting the premise than on rejecting the implication. The premise has certainly been exaggerated, but the implication is the really nasty bit: ability does not determine personal worth. Nor does misfortune.

It’s better not to be born with sickle-cell anaemia. It’s better not to lose your leg in an accident. It’s better not to develop arthritis. But being in these situations – or being born deaf – does not mean that you have less than equal worth as a human being.

It does, though, restrict your options.

It’s useful to be able to speak Spanish. This is a skill that will reduce your chances of finding yourself in a situation where you can’t communicate. But if you can’t speak Spanish, that needn’t reflect badly on you: maybe you’ve not had the chance to learn. Or maybe you think the benefits aren’t worth the effort and expense; fair enough, that’s your call.

If you can’t speak Spanish, it’s still useful to be able to learn – even if you currently don’t want to. Facing a closed door is better than facing a locked door. But if you can’t learn Spanish, that needn’t reflect badly on you either: maybe you’re just no good at languages. That’s unfortunate, but you shouldn’t be blamed nor sneered at for that.

So, by analogy: it’s useful to be able to use sign language. This is a skill that will reduce your chances of finding yourself in a situation whereyou can’t communicate. And if you don’t know sign language, it’s useful to be able to learn it – although if you can’t get you head round it, that’s unfortunate – but you shouldn’t be blamed nor sneered at for it.

It’s also useful to be able to hear. This is a skill that will reduce your chances of finding yourself in a situation where you can’t communicate (among other things). And if you can’t hear… well, the category of people who can’t hear but can develop the ability to is limited to cases of temporary deafness (a far more trivial issue) and deaf people who may choose to have cochlear implants – although these are of variable efficacy and not risk-free. So if you permanently can’t hear, that doesn’t reflect badly on you: you shouldn’t be blamed nor sneered at for it.

Being able to hear doesn’t render you unable to use or learn sign language; but being permanently deaf does of necessity restrict your options for communicating. The asymmetry is undeniable. No amount of well-designed infrastructure or accommodating social attitudes will eliminate situations in which being able to hear would be useful.

Deliberately intending that your child should lack certain communicative options can’t be a good idea. Acknowledging that should pose no threat to your cultural identity and self-confidence.

Talking about group rights

Norm argues that groups may have rights, and that they may do so in a way that isn’t a mere aggregation of individual members’ rights:

The right of nations to self-determination is a case in point. The right of the Palestinians to a state of their own and the right of the Jews to a state of their own includes an entitlement to some territory; but this is, irreducibly, a group right. Individual Israelis and Palestinians don't each have a right to a 'bit of a state' that then gets aggregated with all the other rights to other 'bits of a state' into one overall right to a whole state (and territory).

This I find a bit unsatisfactory, not just because of the vagueness of “the Jews” and “the Palestinians”. Are, for instance, Palestinians living as Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv entitled to a Palestinian state? Are Jewish settlers in the West Bank entitled to the ‘Greater Israel’ they claim? What about Jews or Palestinians who’d prefer a one-state solution? To which state does which group have a right?

(I’m talking, as I presume Norm is, of moral rather than legal rights; of the way things should be rather than the way things are.)

The question of definition has to come down, at least in large part, to one of territorial boundaries, as indeed Norm nods at parenthetically: states are, for very good practical reasons, based on physical spaces (even if they might define themselves in terms of religion, ethnicity, ideology, etc.).

So, who has the right to what?

If states are territorial, then the people of that territory have the right to citizenship; that, certainly, is individual. Those of us who believe in democracy will add that citizens have the right to shape the nature of their state and its government; democracy is inherently collective, but participation is individual – and hence the right to participate is too.

Here’s how I’d cast the Israel/Palestine situation: every person of this region has the right to influence the way they are governed, and to form groupings with others in order to do so. The question of what state boundaries should exist here is part – a fundamental part – of this. If the majority of people living in a geographically well-defined area favour separate statehood for that area, then denial of such statehood is an infringement of their democratic rights. These rights, though, are individual: if enough individuals changed their minds, then the moral case for statehood would fade.

‘The people who want to belong to a Palestinian state within such-and-such borders’ is an operative category here, rather than ‘the Palestinians’. The existence of an ethnic group doesn’t create any irreducible collective rights, but voluntary membership of a political group (defined essentially by opinion, even if the focus is on ethnicity) means that rights can be exercised collectively – any talk of a group right here is, I suggest, derivative from the individual rights of the members.

(A complicating factor, of course, is that some people have been unjustly displaced from their land to make way for others. This is, among other things, gerrymandering. It’s hard to say how long it takes for such a state of affairs to turn from an injustice that should be undone to one that cannot reasonably be undone but whose victims should be compensated, and then to a historically uncomfortable status quo. There’s a distinction well worth making between the people of a territory and the people in it.)

I think that everything one might want to say about ‘group rights’ can be said more compellingly and accurately (albeit at greater length; such is life) in terms of the rights of individuals choosing to join together; otherwise there are problems to do with dissenting weaker members.

Norm’s other example doesn’t convince me either:

Equally, an organization can have certain rights - property rights, for example - which the members of the organization only benefit from while, and in so far as, they remain members of it.

I’m not going to get into this in any depth, because it would become too legalistic quite quickly, but I think the rights of an organisation are wholly parasitic on those of its members. If you look at where ultimate power in an organisation formally lies, be it with the director, the shareholders, the trustees or all the members, there you will find individuals. To the extent that these individuals have to defer to the structures of the organisation, this is a matter of legal agreements that they have chosen to enter into.

But whatever the reducibility or otherwise of group rights, I agree wholly with Norm that these “cannot cancel or override fundamental human rights, which are, these, for individuals”. That’s the key point, and it’s another way of bearing in mind my concern about dissenting weaker members.

The need for opinion-based politics

I’ve never liked communalist politics, whether based on class, race, sexuality or any other demographic category.

Where there are injustices against members of a certain minority, it’s the business of all decent people. If only that minority is expected to fight the injustice, then success will be harder and society will polarise. Conversely, if there is broader concern for a minority injustice, but it takes the form of an uncritical political privileging of the affected group – and its ‘leaders’ – then the whole point is lost.

As Marko Attila Hoare (via HP) says:

All social classes and ethnic groups should be judged by the same standard; none has any inherent nobility greater than the others; all should be subject to criticism but defended when necessary. So long as one places the support of groups above the support of principles, then principles will inevitably degenerate. It is principles, not groups, that should be supported: support social justice and trade-union rights, rather than the ‘working class’ as such; national self-determination, not Croats or Palestinians as such; religious tolerance, not Muslims as such; anti-racism, not Jews or black people as such.
It is humanity as a whole that should be supported; the only principles worth supporting are those that apply to the whole of humanity.

Exactly. I wouldn’t want to be part of any political movement based on ‘people like me’. The exception, of course, is that I’ll join up with people whose opinions are like mine.

Deafness, IVF and cultural freedom

I don’t really write about either disability or human fertilisation much at all, so I’m very alert to the possibility of putting my foot in it here. Informed criticism will be even more welcome than usual.

The Observer carries a story today about two deaf parents with a deaf child. The mother is in her early 40s now, and so they may well need IVF to have another child.

Now the couple are hoping to have a second child, one they also wish to be deaf - and that desire has brought them into a sharp confrontation with Parliament. The government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) bill, scheduled to go through the Commons this spring, will block any attempt by couples… to use modern medical techniques to ensure their children are deaf.

There is nothing even remotely wrong, or diminishing of personal worth, with being deaf. Infinitely better to live in a society in which deaf people love the way they are rather than being made to feel sub-standard (alas, there’s still far too much of the latter). As the father says:

Being deaf is not about being disabled, or medically incomplete - it's about being part of a linguistic minority. We're proud, not of the medical aspect of deafness, but of the language we use and the community we live in.

I agree that it makes no sense to be proud of “medical aspects” of one’s life: the hand you’re dealt counts far less than how you play it. I also don’t like the lazy, dismissive way that ‘disability’ is often understood – as mere bodily defect. A fully fleshed-out concept of disability has to be defined relative to a given aim, a method, a physical situation and a social context.

The question that brings this couple into conflict with the HFE bill is whether they should be allowed to stack the deck in favour of a new child’s deafness.

The father says:

It is a cornerstone of modern society and law that deaf and hearing people have equal rights. If hearing people were to have the right to throw away a deaf embryo, then we as deaf people should also have the right to throw away a hearing embryo.

I don’t think this contrast is properly set up, though. Hearing and deaf people, under this bill, would equally have the right to prefer hearing embryos to deaf ones; neither hearing nor deaf people would have the right to prefer deaf embryos to hearing ones. The people here have the same rights – unless, of course, you take the view that all embryos are people with human rights. But such a view would play havoc with most existing and proposed law in this area, and I presume it’s not being advanced here.

But there is a double standard in what any parents – hearing or deaf – can favour in IVF. Why? Once we accept that deafness doesn’t impair worth, why not allow parents to pick either way? (There’s another argument that parents shouldn’t be allowed to pick at all; I won’t address that here.)

Think back to the comment – which I think is representative of many deaf people’s opinion – about taking pride in “the language we use and the community we live in”. But why can a hearing child not grow up to become part of that linguistic community? Surely BSL-spoken English bilinguals don’t get cast out by their own parents?

That last remark is somewhat flippant and rhetorical, I confess. It is a very obvious practical fact that being hearing reduces one’s motive to learn sign language. If one has deaf parents, it can also introduce a tension to do with the forms of language available to learn, and how they might be taught. There’s significant scope for difficulty in communication within the family, which is no small concern.

So, while being born deaf presents a certain set of challenges, being born hearing to deaf parents presents another set: we shouldn’t presume the benefits are all on one side and the costs all on the other.

But. I still can’t conceive that the difficulties of growing up hearing with deaf parents match those of growing up deaf. However we shape society so that deaf people are empowered – which we must – there is a real disparity in the opportunities lost in these two situations. As I type, I’m listening to Renée Fleming sing Verdi. I’m certainly not proud that I can do so, but I am glad of it. Other people can’t do this, and that’s nothing to be held against them, but I don’t believe such a condition should be positively sought on someone else’s behalf.

Deaf culture is far richer than most hearing people appreciate, but surely its survival does not depend on the deliberate antenatal recruitment of members via selective IVF? And surely membership is not exclusive – being hearing doesn’t prevent you from enjoying, say, a play in BSL – nor even from writing or acting in one. As Amartya Sen puts it, none of us is ‘monocultural’; and:

The importance of cultural freedom, central to the dignity of all people, must be distinguished from the celebration and championing of every form of cultural inheritance, irrespective of whether the people involved would choose those particular practices given the opportunity of critical scrutiny, and given an adequate knowledge of other options and of the choices that actually exist in the society in which they live.

I’m very suspicious of a cultural group that maintains itself by conscription or by blocking the exit. I hope that such an attitude is in the minority among deaf people.

The Observer piece opens by noting that the deaf couple, of course, love their deaf daughter. Would they have loved her any less had she been hearing? I like to believe that they would not.

Cohesion and diversity

Last week, Chris Dillow mentioned a research paper suggesting that diversity within a community could theoretically improve social cohesion.

I’ve just discover a more concrete study to back that up, analysing data from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s biannual Citizenship Surveys.

It’s often been suggested that ethnically diverse areas are less cohesive, but one response to this has been that such areas tend to be poorer, and that it may be poverty that erodes cohesion.

The research directly addresses this, using as its measure of community cohesion people’s answers to the question “to what extent do you agree or disagree that this local area (within 15/20 minutes walking distance) is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together?” Here are a few findings:

• Once other factors are accounted for ethnic diversity is, in most cases, positively associated with community cohesion.
• However, the relationship between diversity and cohesion is complicated and the nature of this relationship is dependent on the type of ethnic mix in an area.
• Living in an area which has a broad mix of residents from different ethnic groups was consistently shown to be a positive predictor of cohesion. However, having an increasing percentage of in-migrants born outside of the UK, is a negative predictor.
• Irrespective of the level of ethnic diversity in a community, disadvantage consistently undermines perceptions of cohesion and operates in a similar fashion for all communities.
• However, not all deprived areas have low cohesion.
• Deprived, diverse areas have higher average cohesion scores than deprived, homogeneous White areas. It is thus deprivation that undermines cohesion, not diversity.

So: deprivation is bad for cohesion; ethnic diversity is not bad nor even neutral, but positively good; but increasing local immigration is not good.

This fits quite well with Chris’s take:

the existence of immigration throws the very question of social cohesion and social norms into open discussion. The questions "what does it mean to be British?" and "how can we increase social cohesion?" are responses to mass migration. And the effect of discussing these questions might be to increase trust among people by making hitherto implicit, tacit social norms more explicit.
It's possible, therefore, that immigration might actually be a force for social cohesion, at least in the long-run. Could it be then that the lack of social cohesion as a result of immigration is (just?) a temporary disequilibrium?

I agree that the visible fact of immigration serves to raise the questions about identity and cohesion. But these were questions that would have needed asking anyway, even if there’d be no postwar immigration and increase in ethnic diversity.

Following the rise of social liberalism since the 1960s and the economic liberalisation from the 1980s, British society has, very simply, become more diverse. People’s lifestyles have diverged, and there are fewer shared assumptions. White Britons have become, if you like, more multicultural. There’s been comparatively little discussion of this in itself, so the advent of new racial and religious minorities may have been very helpful indeed in getting us thinking about what can bind us all together.

Rights are for individuals

Ophelia is giving it with both barrels to those who trumpet ‘group rights’. Specifically, she deals with those who support ‘religious rights’ as giving ‘specificity’ to the usual notion of human rights, and those who (typically with religious motivation) support ‘the rights of the family’.

The thing about rights, you see, is that you choose how and whether you exercise them. How does a group make that choice? Where does the power in that group lie? What happens to the weaker members who may disagree?

That we form and maintain groups is one of the most essential and wonderful things about human nature; but groups are good precisely insofar as they are good for all their members. Unequal, exploitative and coercive groupings – be they familial or religious or whatever – serve to stifle what’s best in humanity.

Rights are for individuals – including the right to form a group with others, the right to exercise other rights in partnership with fellow members of a group, and the right to leave a group.

Relatively speaking

Nicholas Blincoe writes about attacks on moral relativism. He argues:

Our fear and dislike of relativism is surprising when one considers science and economics. Modern physics is all about forces and vectors, which can only be expressed in terms of relative measurements (whether "miles per hour" or E=MC squared).
…demographics, of course, is a maths question: it is the science of comparing population levels relative to one another. Far from placing demographics beyond debate, it is only relativism that puts it up for debate in the first place.

And he asks:

Why are we happy to contemplate a logic of relations in every field aside from ethics?

I can’t think of an occasion when I’ve seen such a spectacular misrepresentation of a word. It’s hard to know whether this is a joke. I’ll assume that it isn’t.

Relativism is not to do with whether things are related or comparable to one another. Yes, a population of 1 million is smaller than a population of 2 million, so the former is small ‘relative’ to the latter. But the numbers involved, and the nature of the comparison, are absolute and not dependent on context or attitude. The standards by which both populations are measured are the same.

A relativistic approach judges different groups by different standards. Imagine someone who suggested that a population of 1 million Jews was a larger group than a population of 2 million Arabs, as Arabic culture treats life cheaply.

It would be laughable, were it not so atrocious.

Imagine someone – a white, Western liberal, say – who would have nothing but contempt for a white, Western man who advocated violence (lightly and occasionally) against white, Western women. Then imagine this individual straining to paint a reporebate such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in a good light:

Within the context of Arabic Islam, he has been remarkable in arguing in favour of female education and employment; he has even declared they can be judges and has called for more women to become Islamic jurists. But of the notorious verse in the Qur'an which allows for the "beating" of wives by their husband, Qaradawi says he accepts it as a method of last resort - though only "lightly".

That’s moral relativism. And it’s absolutely awful.

Sloganising

Danny Finkelstein, on his Times blog, recently invited readers to take part (tongue preferably in cheek) in the Government’s vague quest for a national motto.

Many, many suggestions were made, and a selection appears in today’s paper – including my own: “Promoting ahistorical unity myths since 1066”.

Others I like include: “Less stuffy than we sound”, “Once mighty empire, slightly used”, “We strive for valiant defeat”, “Sorry, is this the queue?” and “Americans who missed the boat”.

I’m pretty sure that every single person in the country knows that this national motto idea is ridiculous anyway (Gordon Brown and Jack Straw included). Invented traditions can work, but I think you need a reasonably deferential, homogenous culture for them to work. We don’t have one of those. So the only way any motto could get any popular traction is if it were already familiar to a lot of us. We’re looking at something in the territory of “A green and pleasant land”, “It’s a free country” or “This precious stone set in the silver sea”.

Actually, I really do like this from Churchill, although it’s not one of his better-known quotes: “The further back I look, the further forward I can see.”

Relatedly, I’m thinking about replacing the strapline at the top of this blog. The current one’s getting a bit tired, I think, and arguably it was never that awake to start with. I’m toying with “Positive, constructive, and focusing on the issues – not like those other bastards”… but any suggestions welcome.

Brands and cultural redistribution

Richard Chappell notes: “Advertising makes us want stuff.” He’s right. So what?

The most obvious thought is to see it as a bad thing: marketing manipulates our preferences, effectively brainwashing us into wanting things that don't necessarily cohere with our most deeply-held values. On the other hand, it might be argued that advertising "creates value" by increasing the satisfaction we get from advertised products. …
Marketing aims to shape the cultural meaning of a brand. If someone wants to associate themselves with a particular lifestyle, buying an appropriately advertised label may be an easy way for them to send the desired signal. Advertised consumer goods thus serve people who want to brand themselves, perhaps to affirm their cultural identity or to gain status. Does this make advertising worthwhile after all?

But no. Richard thinks that even if we grant that branding helps to create the kind of cultural meaning that people value, “there's no reason to think that this meaning is best shaped by advertisers. A far more attractive alternative would be for such meanings to emerge from the distributed contributions of cultural citizens… We don't need advertisers to impose cultural meanings from On High.”

I agree, but there’s more to say. Let’s accept that advertising (of the cultural/lifestyle aspiration branding type rather than the ‘Smith’s Sprockets are guaranteed to last ten years’ type) does generate more opportunities for consumers to acquire cultural meaning along with their sprockets.

You still have to buy the damned stuff to get the real cultural value out of it. And you need money for that. So the lifestyle branding of products and services redistributes cultural value from poor to rich. It takes people’s material poverty (or wealth) and connects it more strongly to social poverty (or wealth).

You doubt me? Then ask yourself this: if someone uses supermarket own-brand shampoo, are they really ‘worth it’? Would you trust someone wearing unbranded trainers to ‘just do’ anything?

(But don’t worry. Eventually consumer capitalism will overreach itself and make resistance culturally attractive. Then the system will collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions and ultimate victory will go to the downtrodden workers, or at least to the advertisers who are best at branding their tat as anti-consumerist. Ah… Oh well. All together now: The people’s flag is a lifestyle choice/ Buying it means I don’t need a voice…)

Great Britishness

A recent Government green paper [PDF] says:

A clearer understanding of the common core of rights and responsibilities that go with British citizenship will help build our sense of shared identity and social cohesion. …
There is room to celebrate multiple and different identities, but none of these identities should take precedence over the core democratic values that define what it means to be British.

This is one of the more fraught areas of politics. Trying to define Britishness can lead to all sorts of pitfalls – but that tells us something. We’re uncertain (but not necessarily anxious) about what it means to be British these days, and we’re sceptical of official attempts to write in stone our ‘national character’.

Looking for a thorough and rigorous definition is obviously futile owing to the dynamic complexity of the country, but maybe there are aspects that do allow reasonably crisp statement, and other parts where broad-brush sketching and constructive ambiguity will suffice for a working description.

Two related questions: what sort of thing is Britishness? And what do we want it to do?

The point of all this recent debate is that people worry about how united the country feels, and that it would be good to have some common understanding of ourselves that brings us together. So how do we couch Britishness in a way that could do that?

The green paper talks a lot about “British values” and “British citizenship”, but “British identity” and “British nationality” are barely mentioned; “British culture” appears not once. This is wise.

To explain Britishness in terms of a particular way of life is to risk pushing cultural conformity. This is not only factually wrong in light of the country’s diversity, but also betrays the liberty we so insist on. Differences in lifestyle and outlook are an inescapable consequence of social and political freedom. In fact, even in the absence of immigration, ‘British culture’ would change and grow more variegated with time, especially given technological change and the globalisation of media and communications.

Obviously, an ethnically or religiously based understanding won’t do either. ‘Nationality’ is tricky as so many associate that with being English, Scottish, and so on. ‘Identity’ can mean pretty much any aspect of how one understands and presents oneself, so naturally it applies here, but in what way?

People viscerally cherish the strands of their identities relating to religion and nationality (whether from the UK’s four constituents or family ties abroad). For people to feel comfortable and secure enough to value identifying as British too, there has to be space for these to flourish (not the same as letting enclaves stagnate or superiority complexes grow). Britishness must supplement, not try to supplant, these identities, or else difference will turn into division.

In this respect we should aim to be nearer the Canadian ‘salad bowl’ than the American ‘melting pot’. You can be yourself, and be part of society by contributing to it in good faith.

Civic virtues

‘Citizenship’ construed merely as legal status is clearly relevant too, but may not carry much psychological weight in itself. ‘Values’ are often cited, but usually in the abstract. These last two, though, are where the potential lies. Notions of citizenship and values can work to create a civic/political/moral sketch of what it means to be British, in a way that’s neither too dry and abstract nor too prescriptive and contentious.

The relevant values fall into two rough categories. First, those associated with liberal democracy, which is the cornerstone of the British polity: legal equality; holding power to account; guaranteed rights and expected duties; rule of law; freedom of thought, speech and action (consistent with the freedom of others); and the willingness to hear dissent and concede defeat without forming enmities.

Second, a set of values more in the realm of down-to-earth manners than overarching ideology. Words such as respect, tolerance, acceptance, courtesy, and civility are all in this area. It boils down to acting on the assumption that your fellow citizens have just as much worth as you, however different they might be – unless they positively cause harm to others. (This is why we queue.)

This is less about obeying the letter of the law than accepting the spirit of it. People should see that these premises are vital for Britain’s health as a country, and accept that Britain is legitimately theirs and that their fellow citizens are legitimately British. This “essential minimum”, as Ian Kearns and Richard Muir put it, still leaves vast room for differences of politics, religion, lifestyle and personality:

It encourages solidarity between citizens and a belief in a shared set of citizenship values on the one hand but its liberal nature defends and maintains respect for diverse beliefs and practices on the other.

There are two more key ingredients: language and history. The importance of speaking a common language is evident from the fact that a shared civic/political identity depends on communication. So Ted Cantle argues that:

much greater emphasis should be placed on how we actually relate to each other, allowing relationships to grow. … Society also grows from political interaction, between the state and individuals and between individuals themselves. … Social and political capital, and the sense of trust upon which they depend, can only be built by dialogue and exchange.

To understand each other as fellow citizens, we need to, well, understand each other.

Coming together

On British history, Roger Scruton and Billy Bragg (perhaps uncharacteristically) agree that having a common narrative matters for a country’s sense of unity. Scruton says that what’s needed “is not necessarily the truth – it is a bit of the truth with a lot of embellishment – but it is a loyalty-creating story that gives people a way of attaching their emotions to each other, and in particular to strangers”.

And Bragg thinks that there’s now a problem here, partly because “the classic British identity is based on the Whig interpretation of history: the idea that we were chosen, and that the empire was an expression of that. But what that history can't do is deal with decline, because it is all about greatness.”

So we need a story to tell ourselves (and our children) that renders the ‘values’ we wish to promote intelligibly British, that narrates progress and demands more, that isn’t too ethnically or culturally exclusive or politically biased, and that has enough grains of historical accuracy. Bragg suggests:

Less than a century ago, most British citizens were excluded from fully realising their individual potential by class barriers; excluded from expressing their democratic will by gender; excluded from good health by poverty. All the way back to the Magna Carta, our history has examples of people standing up for their right to be treated fairly. It is this struggle for belonging that connects the majority of English people with the minority of recently arrived immigrants - a struggle to be accepted as part of society, as respected, responsible citizens.

(He also reminds us that, as the majority of postwar immigration has been from Commonwealth countries, most ethnic minority citizens can say as surely as the BNP’s target voters that they are descended from subjects of the British Empire. Vast numbers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent fought and died in World War II. So when anyone sneers that being British is about the blood that pulses under white skin, we must recall that Britain’s freedom and survival owes much to that transfusion of spilt blood from its dark-skinned subjects.)

This feels workable: a shift from Britain as ‘a free country’ to a country whose people progressively seek and earn more freedom; from a world power (now enfeebled) to a land where power flows increasingly to the people.

We do have a story now about “greatness”. Having been an engine of empire, projecting power across the globe, the only future for Britain is as a network that smoothes and manages the relationships among the people that live here. Today, the ‘common purpose’ is to hold the people of this land together, allowing them to make it theirs and to constantly remake the many strands of Britishness.

And this is supremely worthwhile: it’s better that the state exists for the benefit of the citizens than the citizens for the glory of the state. We do, though, still make Britain what it is – and it’s a better society now then 50 or 100 years ago. Greatness, in the only sense really worth aspiring to, isn’t a measure of might but a quality of the heart. And together, we can make the British character great.

Of course, this is pretty simplified and idealised, powered by emotion as much as fact. But a country’s story about itself must be a blend of the descriptive and the normative. We all sometimes fall short of our own standards; the same is true of governments and also of majority public opinion. The point is that those standards make some sense in light of our history and that they can be rallied around to judge the present and shape the future.

As Bhiku Parekh puts it: “To love [one’s country] is… to want it to be the best it is capable of, and to be proud or ashamed of it when it respectively meets or fails to meet one’s moral expectations of it.”

There’s a lot more that could be said: about housing, education, welfare, policing, terrorism, voluntary groups and their funding, prejudice, areas where deprivation and exclusion can feed defensive insularity… but I’m not trying to write a book here. Public policies matter hugely, but that’s a different level of debate, taking us beyond the core of Britishness.

Liberal democracy, mutual acceptance, a common language, a story of moral progress: these are the fundamentals. The rest is up to us.