Race

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Since I started blogging I found that one of the best rules of thumb is to agree with Sunny Hundal, who is wise, practical and funny - and brief and to the point. Oh dear. Is he getting old before his time, and a touch too tolerant? Or am I becoming hardened? I refer to Sunny's extraordinarily relaxed, let's not get hot under the collar reaction as reported by the BBC to a member of the Royal Family thinking it normal to call people Paki. In my view, if this is what an Eton education does for you we should be worried: racism starts at the top. 

This is not the language a young officer should be using. It is loaded with disrespect and laced with the presumptions and arrogance of rule. In cases like this I always think about the US Army. It may well be used for imperialist ends but it is an exceptionally effective multi-racial organisation. It did not get that way by casual tolerance. Colin Powell, I believe, was one of those who decided to rid the Army ranks of racism towards each other (I'm not talking about Abu Graib). How could they rid it of snide remarks about food and diet? They forced the entire army (it is said) to eat specific ethnic foods on a given day. They trained themselves to know what it was like to be the other. OK, that is putting it rather grandly. But there was a determinatioin to stamp out prejudice not pander to it or treat it lightly. One result was Powell's extraordinarily powerful and influential endorsement of Obama when he said that an American muslim had every right to aspire to be president. Can you imagine Harry saying to a TV interviewer, "Why can't a Paki one day be king?".

The point, not to go on about it too long, is that the Prince is not an ordinary bloke. He is a commander, trained as such, born to lead. Now the BNP can shout 'Harry, Harry, Harry' as they kick someone's head in, and we will all know what they mean. But can you charge someone with racist chanting and taunting if they proclaim their allegiance to the third in line to the throne? 

Kanishk Tharoor (London, oD): It's a measure of Barack Obama's global impact that his candidacy for the top job in Washington triggered soul-searching in Whitehall. In a bid to accelerate the production of "British Obamas", Keith Vaz (with Harriet Harman's encouragement) has introduced a bill that would allow parties to positively discriminate in favour of minorities, encouraging the development of "all-minority shortlists" for parliamentary seats. Though ostensibly not "colour-coded", the shortlists could conceivably lead to the tagging of constituencies with large immigrant populations as available only to minority parliamentarians.

Vron Ware (London, author): On the Monday following the end of BBC2's White season it was announced that Rupert Murdoch's new printing plant in Hertfordshire was to be opened with great ceremony. Much was made of the fact that it was now the biggest newspaper production site in the world, and it was only mentioned as a footnote that it made Wapping redundant, cutting the workforce from 600 to 200. The real news was that the print media was still alive and well.

Guy Aitchison on Race, Identity and Belonging introduced by George Shire (with contributions from Bilkis Malek, Ejos Ubiribo, Paul Gilroy, Patrick Wright, Roshi Naidoo, Tariq Modood, Zygmunt Bauman, Nira Yuval-Davis, Amir Saee and Farhad Dalal).

(Soundings 2008, Race, Identity and Belonging, 138pp)

This collection of recent essays challenges dominant assumptions on race and identity in modern Britain.