The New Conversation on Race 2 – Rakib Ehsan ‘Beyond Grievance'. # 126. 11/07/2023.
Out of Many, One People
Welcome.This blog carries on the theme of last week’s blog reviewing Tomiwa Owolade’s ‘This is not America’. I think together they do indicate a new turn in the discussion of and understanding of ‘race’ in Britain. Do tell us what you think.
The New Conversation on Race 2 – Rakib Ehsan ‘Beyond Grievance – What the Left gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities’.
Rakib Ehsan’s ‘Beyond Grievance’ has similarities and differences from Tomiwa Owolade’s ‘This is not America’ reviewed last week. Primarily, as Ehsan’s sub-title suggests, both are critical of the mainstream progressive understanding of race. Both come from core ethnic minority communities – Owolade from the West African belt across inner south-east London; Ehsan from the Bangladeshi Luton community. Whether it is significant, and perhaps distorting, that they both grew up and studied in the south-east is worth considering. Both are still fairly young.
But there are curious differences between the books. Owolade, the journalist, has written a more wide-ranging and information rich book. Ehsan, a researcher with a first class degree and PhD in the Social Sciences, has written the more polemical book – which uses the untethered word pseudo (-intellectual, -revolutionary) as a shallow insult. On the other hand, Ehsan’s book is rich in quotable and, I think, apposite quotes.
Ehsan’s emphasis is indicated by his several uses of the phrase ‘Family, Faith, Flag’. In the meat of the book, chapters 3, 4 and 5 cover ‘In Defence of the Family’, ‘The Power of Faith’, and ‘Britain’s Ethnic-Minority Patriots’. Perhaps using a phrase often adopted internationally by right-wing groups (including the slogan of Sarah Palin, the Tea-Party vice-presidential Republican candidate in 2010) Ehsan’s is deliberately squaring his chin against the takeover of the Labour Party by middle-class cultural progressives.
Family.
On page 1 Ehsan sets out his stall – what’s Britain doing ‘nation building’ elsewhere when ‘you’re one of the leading countries in the world for family breakdown and loneliness among the elderly’. Then in the final chapter looking ‘Towards a Relevant Traditional Left’ he laments ‘Britain still lacks a social policy agenda which has families at the heart of it’ (p 204). He emphasises the proven advantages and positive outcomes of being raised in a two-parent home (educational attainment, mental well-being, cognitive development) and castigates those who attempt to brush such issues under the carpet. ‘If young black lives truly mattered to social justice warriors and virtue signallers in Britain, they would explore the impact of relatively high rates of family breakdown and the ‘fatherless epidemic’ in London’s inner-city communities’ (pp 84-5). He notes that whilst only 6% of Indian children live in lone-parent households an ‘astonishing’ 63% of black Caribbean children do so.
Ehsan’s sturdy demand that ‘While it may not be politically correct, it is time that family structure was placed at the heart of our national child-poverty debate’ (p 51) contrasts shamefully with the weak equivocations of Church of England leaders in failing to advocate for traditional family structures and in turning genteel eyes away from the early damage to children’s life chances caused by family instability.
Faith.
Again, Ehsan is unapologetically up-front. ‘Belonging to the old-fashioned traditionalist left, I believe that faith can provide an individual with a positive sense of purpose and form the basis of healthy community interactions’ (p 108). He often celebrates the faith-based strength of the Luton Bangladeshi community he grew up in. His own research indicates that ‘strength of personal religious identity is significantly positively associated with self-reported life satisfaction’ (summarised pp 110-111). Accordingly, ‘What may also shore up the modern British left’s relationship with traditional ethnic minorities is showing a greater appreciation of faith and how one’s religious beliefs can be a source of resilience, self-discipline and optimism’ (p147). From his study of electoral returns, he warns of the ‘culture war’ facing the Labour Party since it ‘cannot be both the political arm of Stonewall and the natural party of British Muslim traditionalists’ (p 116). He notes too what has been called elsewhere the ‘reverse hypocrisy’ of Labour leaders being unwilling to preach the virtues of the family stability that they themselves practice.
Flag.
Reviewing the Evidence for Equality National Survey’s report ‘Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis’ (Blog 121) I noted that its negative and ideologically shaped conclusion that ‘ethnic minority people experience strikingly high levels of exposure to racist assault and racial discrimination’ (p 200) was at odds with ethnic minority respondents expressing a high level of satisfaction about living in Britain. For Ehsan this is not an enigma. ‘In truth, the country is awash with thriving ethnic-minority communities who are appreciative of the opportunities, protections and freedoms which are provided in one of the most tolerant, anti-discrimination, pro-equality democracies on earth’. Further, and polemically, ‘traditional ethnic minorities are exploited by the identitarian left in the name of race-baiting opportunism and their pseudo-revolutionary games’ (p 131). He notes that three in four British Muslims think that Britain is a good place to live as a Muslim, whereas only just over half non-Muslims think this; suggesting that belief in Islamophobia is more common amongst non-Muslims! Similarly, ethnic minority Britons are more likely to be satisfied with democratic politics than the white British mainstream (69% to 62%). If younger minority people are less satisfied than the migrant generation then simply this suggests ‘they are more integrated into the relatively cynical white-British majority’ (pp 156-7).
Underlying themes.
Woven into Ehsan’s arguments are several significant themes:
We need to talk about the white British.
Ehsan is not that impressed with us. ‘Many in those [minority ethnic] communities are fully aware that all is not well in the British social mainstream’ (p 98), for example white men have one of the lowest rates of life expectancy in the country. So his opening chapter is headed ‘Why the Left Should Drop ‘White Privilege’ theories’, spurred by indignation that it patronises the achievements of minority groups. ‘Notions of ‘white privilege’ and ‘racial oppression’ look beyond farcical when one considers how young British people belonging to our Indian-, Chinese-, and Nigerian-heritage communities are steaming ahead of their white-British peers in multiple spheres of life’ (p 213), or when surveys indicate that ’non-white people tend to be more satisfied with their life in the UK than their white peers’ (p 135).
Disparities ≠ Discrimination.
Ehsan is not ashamed to express his support for the Sewell Report (whose reciprocal commendation for Ehsan is printed on the back cover). Put simply, ‘The ‘disparities=discrimination’ paradigm is a ‘crudely reductive framework for understanding racial and ethnic differences in areas such as education and employment’ (p 27). He warns the Labour Party of obsessives ‘presenting a variety of racial inequalities in a reckless and divisive manner – ignoring influential determinants such as family structure, community norms, social class and geography’ (p 151). This does not mean all is well, but ‘While there is work to do in Britain to strengthen equality of opportunity and repair institutional trust, socio-economic disparities are all too often simplistically framed as direct products of ‘systemic racism’ ‘(p 75). That work to be done requires, for example ‘a truly ‘fair work’ society . . . through improvements in recruitment procedures, workplace participation and existing anti-discrimination regulation’ (p 203).
The seduction of identitarianism.
As a Labour traditionalist, Ehsan has no time for the fashionable ‘rainbow coalition’ strategy of gathering various aggrieved gender and ethnic identities under one flag, with a chapter lamenting ‘Labour’s Identity-Politics Problem’. He notes ‘a deep-rooted cultural obsession with racial and ethnic representation which has given rise to sheer mediocrity within its [Labour] internal party structures’ (p 78). (One might ask why the greater proportion of minority ethnic MPs in the Labour Party have had far less heft set against the remarkable impact of the smaller proportion of minority ethnic Conservative MPs). Leaving aggrieved identity labels behind, Ehsan simply argues ‘that British democracy is crying out for a sensible left-of-centre party that blends social-justice commitments with a family-oriented traditionalism’ (p 80).
Owolade, Ehsan and ‘the new conversation’.
Despite some differences in focus, content and tone, the similarities between their two books are so strong that they well justify Owolade’s call for ‘a new conversation’. The respective titles, distancing themselves from the very similar ‘USA’ and ‘Grievance’ models of understanding race relations, are strong pointers towards the need for a new basis for the conversation.
How do the two books challenge the ‘old conversation’?
The disparities=discrimination fallacy is dead.
The Sewell Report called time on it. Both books draw on the extensive differences of outcome between different ethnic groups to indicate that white racism is not the only player in the game, despite the dogmatic refusals of the Runnymede Trust and the Evidence for Equality National Survey to move out of their doctrinaire laagers and consider evidence that does not come within their preconceptions.
Ethnic minorities have agency.
Both authors show irritation (stronger with Ehsan than Owolade) with white people being eager to take blame. Both recognise the realities of white racism but are resistant to levels of guilt overwhelming a sense of minorities’ capacity to take control of their own destinies and become – as we increasingly see – more adept at handling their life situations than is the population of the white mainstream.
The centrality of family.
Again, Ehsan is more full-on here with a whole chapter devoted to it, whereas when considering disparities between black African and black Caribbean students Owolade shows (a rather English?) restraint: ‘one reason is perhaps differing family formation’ (italics mine). But both use the statistics showing the ethnicity-transcending benefits of stable parenting upon children, and its key role in developing agency and positive outcomes.
But both pay little attention to the situation of African Caribbeans.
The elephant in the room is that whilst all other ethnic minorities are, from quite varied starting points, nonetheless seeing improvements in their situations this is less obviously the case with the African Caribbean population. Despite its relatively small size, it is this group that has often been taken to be the normative ‘minority ethnic’ group (not least by the Church of England), and, as Olowade observes, this derives from taking as our model an American narrative formed by the history of the once enslaved black population, a history which is shared by African Caribbean people. The community traumatising consequences of that history are still with us (rightly emphasised, for example, in Delroy Hall’s ‘A Redemption Song: Illuminations on Black British Pastoral Theology and Culture’) and deserve serious attention.
There is much in our understanding of ‘race’ helpfully set out in these two books that needs to be reset by the ‘new conversation’. They share perspectives that need taking seriously. They are generally positive about minority ethnic life in Britain, but they also need to both focus and widen the conversation about how we respond this continuing disparity of outcome.
Related Blogs:
# 35: Not the USA; # 25 Report of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (Sewell); # 40: Runnymede vs Sewell?; # 100: 100 Up: Defining my Voice
Add Ons
Tomiwa Owolade is being interviewed on ‘What Britain Gets Wrong About Race’ by Inaya Folarin Iman of the Equiano Project on Tuesday 1st August from 1-2 pm online. Tickets £9.99 from the Equiano Project.