Who Killed Lord Dangerfield? Or the Problem of Competing Explanations. # 158. 07/05/2024.
Out of Many, One People.
Welcome. I had not planned to send out a blog this week, but a gap between a week in New York with family and a few days in Derby with relatives has given the opportunity for a shorter, partly light-hearted, blog about an important issue, plus there are some important books coming out that I hope to review over the next few Tuesdays.
Who Killed Lord Dangerfield? Or the Problem of Competing Explanations.
Lord Dangerfield was found dead in his study. There was a knife in his back; a broken wine glass on the floor.
One of the gardeners reported seeing his son, Jasper, furtively burning what looked like a white dress shirt with red stains on it in a remote corner of the estate. Papers in Lord Dangerfield’s desk showed that he was about to disinherit Jasper because of his proposed marriage to a French can-can dancer.
‘We’ve got our man’ claimed the lumbering Scotland Yard detective. ‘Plain as the nose on your face’.
‘Not so fast, my friend’ said the crafty Belgian sleuth who just happened to be staying in Dangerfield Towers. He sent the wine glass for investigation. Traces of arsenic. Gaining access to the bank account of the second son, Tristan, revealed payments to a dubious supplier of chemicals. It was also discovered that because of his forthcoming marriage to a Spanish flamenco dancer he was to be disinherited.
So, who killed Lord Dangerfield? Jasper with a knife in the back? Tristan with a poisoned wine class. Both? Neither? A question to tax even the sharpest of the sleuth’s little grey cells.
Life is always much easier when issues have only one possible solution. Once there are alternatives then sorting them out, assessing their possible strengths, and seeking to balance out the importance of different factors becomes complex and controversial.
The study of history is full of such controversies. In his investigation of ‘The Secularisation of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century’ (1975) Owen Chadwick wrote:
‘Social history or intellectual history? Orthodox Christianity was proved untrue because miracles became improbable, and Genesis was proved to be myth by science, and philosophical axioms were transformed by intellectual processes derived from the Enlightenment, . . . are ideas what move the souls of men? Or did the working man, thrust by economic development into a new and more impersonal class structure, develop a consciousness of his class, and distrust or hatred of the middle class, and find the churches middle class institutions, and start to beat them with whatever sticks lay to hand . . . was the process the result of new knowledge, or the result of new developments of society?’ (pp 12/13).
In considering ‘What Causes of Ethnic Disparities in Britain?’, we might use Chadwick’s template.
External factors or Internal factors? Do ethnic minorities in Britain struggle because of how they are regarded and treated by an intrinsically racist society, moulded by its history of enslavement and imperialism to consider other races inferior, and with white English people rightly qualified to have authority over others?
Or are ethnic groups masters of their own destinies so that recognising their own agency within they are able to surmount difficulties, prosper and aspire to the very highest roles in the land?
In sum, are the prospects of ethnic minorities ineluctably compromised the external pressures of living within a racist context, or is their destiny shaped only by the resources they develop from within?
The question becomes fraught because it is heavily freighted with ideological, political, moral and personal commitments. To concede an iota of worth to the opposite view is to undermine the urgent need for your perspective to prevail as essential to the development of a racially just and balanced society.
If in Chadwick’s day if it was possible for commentators on secularisation to operate in closed thought worlds where only one of the alternative approaches had viable explanatory power, then how much greater the problem that through algorithm shaped social media today people can live in enclosed ideological silos where contradicting arguments and evidence never surface.
So for those who see Britain’s intrinsic racism as the sole issue, qualifiers betray your cause. When the Sowell Report suggested that a wider range of factors are in play attempts were made to suppress the report at birth. No concessions should be accepted, otherwise, as Baroness Doreen Lawrence lamented, racists were being given a green light. For the ‘Racism and Inequality in a Time of Crisis’ report allowance that ‘internal’ cultural factors could affect outcomes was ruled out of court simply by applying the offensive, say it who dares, label of ‘cultural deficits’. Meanwhile, Chinese educational success, South Asian political prominence, or black cultural or sporting success is either ignored or minimised. Evidence of racist suppression must dominate the story. It is the only explanation acceptable.
Correspondingly, for the opposite pole suggestions that British life has been seriously flawed by racism are unacceptable. Pleasant days out at National Trust properties ought not to be blemished by reminders that the property was built on the profits of slavery. A recent Psephizo blog critiquing Critical Race Theory was responded to with laudatory claims about our country’s freedom from racism. But black complaints about racism have an ominous tendency to be vindicated. The 1998 Macpherson Report into the death of Stephen Lawrence validated four decades of black allegations of police racism; whilst – even worse – the recent Baroness Casey Report into the Metropolitan Police suggested that the problem of racist attitudes and behaviour is still continuing. Similarly, long-standing black complaints about racist treatment by officialdom were given vindication when the ‘Windrush Scandal’ evidenced an appalling level of official unconcern in operating procedures that on a common-sense basis were manifestly unjust towards innocent black citizens.
Whereas with the murder of Lord Dangerfield murder it is likely that it one method of murder or the other was the whole story, in real life it is far more likely that a combination of explanations will get us nearer the truth. For that to happen simple openness to the evidence is a priority. There have been too many positive developments on our racial landscape over the past half century, and most notably in the last decade, to suggest that implacable racism is the determinative factor for everyone from an ethnic minority. Nonetheless alongside the big scandals, the experience of racial discrimination in a variety of situations and the persistence of micro-aggressions mean that we certainly can not happily declare we are in a ‘post-racial’ society. Too many people know that we are not. Ultimately with race there is no ‘Authorised Version’. We all have our experiences and our standpoints. But being open to evidence that makes us uncomfortable is a good vantage point for the uncertainty of living with complexity.
Related blogs:
# 4 Slavery History and the National Trust
# 121 Review of ‘Racism and Inequality in a Time of Crisis’
#. Microaggressions