Identity, Society & Multiculturalism

Should we seek a community of individuals

or of communities?

Canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo

Franciscan Tertiary

10 January 2005

Partick Sookhdeo is Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam & Christianity, a Christian research unit specialising in current trends in Islam and their effect on non-Muslim minorities. He holds a PhD from London University’s School of Oriental & African Studies, & is visiting fellow at Cranfield University’s College of Defence Technology. He lectured to the British armed forces and to NATO on Islam & Islamic terrorism. In 2001 he was awarded the Coventry Cathedral International Prize for Peace & Reconciliation.

My subject concerns the theme of multiculturalism, and you may wonder what your speaker has to do with multiculturalism. Most of us, in our lives, end up doing various different jobs. Most of my early work in the Christian Ministry was in the area of race, culture and religion. I was the Minister of St Andrews in the Borough of Newham for 23 years, and my earliest books, going back to 1969-70, were on issues of race and culture. I’ve been around a long time. Those of you who know my work, will know that now I tend to specialise in issues of Islam, terrorism and war. But for me, multiculturalism is not just an abstract subject, it tends to be personal. I grew up in Guyana in the 50s where co-existence worked immensely well. There were those that were termed East Indians from Old India; those from Africa, emancipated slaves who had stayed on; the Chinese, brought over like the Indians as indentured labourers; the Portuguese, who had entered during that era of the British; the Amerindians, the Native Indian people, and of course the British. British Guiana, as was then known, was perhaps the richest country in the Caribbean. In about 1959-60, it collapsed, due to a breakdown in the social structures and the social fabrics of the society. It polarised: on the one side, the East Indians; on the other those from an African background. The Chinese tended to side with the East Indians, because they had the money, and the Portuguese also; but changing political aspirations drew the Afro-Caribbeans, as they became known, towards power. Many Indians and Chinese fled the country, and Guyana, when it became independent, from being the richest country in the Caribbean, became the second poorest, after Haiti, the reason being disintegration of the social fabric of society. Racial disharmony and communal tension all played a role. During a recent return visit, there was an ‘East Indian Day’, which preoccupied television. Here were Indians, who had never really been to India, only ever sported British dress, never known what it is to sit on the ground, nor use many Indian words (fallen into disuse since their parents’ and grandparents’ generations), who suddenly had rediscovered their identity; an ‘East Indian Day’ was now a celebration of Indian culture. Suddenly everyone was sitting on the ground, talking of things they knew little about. The poor Africans were sitting there, very hurt, and very angry, because of what they saw happening.

We came to Britain when I was about twelve, and I’ve spent most of my life in London. From where I was born, and particularly from a British context, multiculturalism then became very important, and has been the context for most of my ministry. So I want to consider the issue of the future of multiculturalism, and whether indeed it has a future. One of the cardinal doctrines of the Commission for Racial Equality was challenged last year, when its chairman, Trevor Phillips declared multiculturalism out of date. ‘What we should be talking about is how we should reach an integrated society’. He went on to declare the need ‘to assert a core of Britishness across society in the UK’. He and some others have begun to say that multiculturalism is dead. Like myself, Trevor Phillips is Guyanese. Growing up in this country, I have seen the gradual evolution of British society’s understanding of the best relationships between minorities and majority societies in the world. When I look at the UK, I am immensely proud of it. I can think of few countries in the world that can match what we have achieved. Perhaps the one other place is New Zealand. My wife is a New Zealander, but more than that her country has achieved considerable harmony, though it has started to break down. A celebration a few years ago of the Treaty of Waitangi (between Maori chiefs and the British Crown, 1840) saw a multicultural society now shifting towards a bicultural society, and increasingly the Maori addressing the issue of their autonomy, within New Zealand.

The Anglican Church in New Zealand didn’t do well, because it decided to celebrate diversity in terms of biculturalism, and split the Church three ways, the Islanders, The Maoris, and the pakeha, who are the whites, unfortunately they had no place for Indians and Chinese. When I go to New Zealand, and give a lecture or am present in a church, I ask them to kindly tell me what I am, here in New Zealand. ‘At best, you can be accepted as a token white’ they say, because in their society, and in particular in the Anglican Church in New Zealand, there is no place for a Chinese or an Indian. I think in the UK, however, that we have gone a long, long way in trying to see a society evolve, whereby acceptance can become the norm.

The immigrants who came in the 1950s, like my family, aimed above all else to assimilate. In the 1960s, Roy Jenkins set the agenda in the direction of acceptance, rather than assimilation. This was to develop further in the 70s, 80s and 90s, when the concept of ethnic identity came to the fore. Each culture was to retain its own identity, like the tiles of a mosaic. Now, in the 21^st century, David Blunkett, when he was Home Secretary (it seems like a long time ago), appeared to be seeking to institutionalise this concept, which he described as ‘integration by diversity’. I’ve compacted quite a lot in two sentences. I’d like to try to break it down, and to look at some of the terms being used in relation to a multiracial, multicultural society. In great measure, what starts in America arrives in due course on our shores, and social scientists in the UK are borrowing increasingly from the US. I make quite clear that I am not a social scientist, nor a sociologist, so I shall transgress tentitively into their territory. It is however a field which I have looked at in some detail, because it refers closely to the subject in hand. The question of terms, what they mean, how they are utilised, how they are understood, and how they shape our own thinking and being, and almost behaviour, in the 21^st century, I think, is crucially important.

So before I move back into my text, I want to address the key terms in understanding society, from within a multiculturalist framework.

Culture. What do we mean by culture? Some would say that it is all learned behaviour. Culture is a product of religion, though some would reverse that, saying that religion is a product of culture. In theology, one notes that Calvin places the emphasis on culture, but I for one believe that from religion and its values comes culture.

Ethnicity. What do we mean by ethnicity? The root of the word, of course, is ethnos (nation), but its use is based increasingly on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, language. They all combine together to create ethnicity. Ethnicity involves descent from common ancestors, usually in a specific part of the world, and is currently utilised in that way. Ethnicity is central to the development of:

Ethnic identity, a sense of shared membership in an ethnic group, based upon language, religion, customs, values, history and race. To diverge briefly, where does this place me? At a recent hospital check-up in London, I was presented with a form asking me to tick my ethnic identity. I wanted to put but couldn’t find British, only a number of sub-categories. On a census form I had the same problem. My dilemma was this. I was born in Guyana, but my family was in South Asia. My mother’s side are Pathans. Those of you who know the Pathans will know of the strong tradition that they are the Jews of the dispersion from Babylonia, so I could be Semitic. The Pathans in Afghanistan are heavily influenced by the Persians, so there could be a bit of me there. My father’s side is Kaunpur, North India, Arian, but some of his relatives were from South India, Dravidian. Who on earth am I? What is my ethnic identity? To say Indian is as meaningless as saying European. My wife is a New Zealander, but her family hails from the Shetland Islands, and she has relatives that go back to Olaf, in Norway. Her great great grandfather was the first Maori king of New Zealand, the famous King Tawhiao, who came to see Victoria. So what are my children? What is their ethnic identity? What is mine? To complicate matters; language? English, I’m British. Religion? Christian. Customs? I dress and eat like an Englishman, and I wave my Union Jack. I write for The Telegraph and the Spectator. History? At school in British Guiana, I studied British history, British geography, I waved my flag, as proud as any English boy when the Queen came by. But am I English? Am I British? (A member of the audience suggests the test of ‘attachment’.) So when the Celts came along, and the Jutes, and the Anglo-Saxons, and they all fought each other, and out of that you came along, then why can’t I come along as well? You would look at Malcolm Rifkind and say he’s Scottish, but he’s Jewish, or Howard, the present leader of the Conservative Party, Jewish, from Eastern Europe. If they can be acceptable, why can’t I be? I see you now struggling with this. If I say English, you all shake your heads, no way! (From the audience ‘it’s whatever you want to be.’) That’s not good enough; it’s what you would have me be! It’s not what I want to be. When the hospital presents me with a form, they want to know my ethnic identity, but I refuse to fill any of the categories, because I say I don’t belong to any of them. If you were all at home this evening, rather than listening to me, you would have found a discussion on Radio 4 on just this subject, with Asians saying that they don’t want to be defined as A, B or C, and all struggling for definitions as to who they are. The problem here, which started in the States, is that ethnic identity became linked to history, and I am deeply unhappy with that if I am what I am on the basis of what my family were 2, 3, 4, or 5 generations ago, but I reject that concept. I regard myself as British, and having lived in England, with all my children born here, as English. But it’s not allowed, each must find their identity, from within that historical context, which means that minority becomes the crucial issue: Ethnic Minority.

Ethnic Minority: traditionally, the term minority has been associated with inferiority, and it implies that there is a majority. Many ethnic groups no longer like to be described

as ethnic minorities. In a recent discussion in Birmingham, a friend who is a Pakistani Christian (the first Asian mayor of any city in Britain and who sits on various government bodies) attended a meeting in Birmingham with a number of ‘ethnic minority leaders’ if I can use that term. They were all struggling with these terms, and the Muslim community there, was adamant that the word minority should no longer be used. I was flabbergasted by the reason, which he told me when no white person was present; ‘If we use the word minority, then everyone will start to speak of minority rights. Soon in Birmingham it’s the white people who will be a minority, and we will be the majority. So if we use the word minority, then the white people will all start demanding their rights, and we can’t have that.’ And they struck the word minority out. It was interesting how a minority can become a majority, which is fairly much the UK context. So the term Ethnic Minority is not adequate, because who is the ethnic minority in the borough of Newham. In 1991, Nigel Spearing, our then MP, confided in me that at that time, whites were a minority within the borough of Newham. It could never be said publicly, or it would have lead to massive racial riots. Today, whites in Newham are about 35% and non-whites about 65%. In Pewsey, by colour of skin, I am in the minority. So we have to look at the UK now from a different perspective, rather than use generalised terms to describe the nation.

Race: ethnicity is primarily a sociological term. Race is primarily a genetic, biological term. Race, of course, has negative overtones, which has lead to stereotyping and prejudice. There are television programmes about England, using genetics to try to find which parts of England show genetic characteristics, and origins like Norwegians. My colleague, who was a Cambridge geneticist until she came to work for the Barnabas Fund, was telling me that the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons, sworn enemies, ended up inter-marrying, and out of that came a new race. So race is not static, as some anthropologists would have us believe; hence the difficulty that I have in defining myself in racial terms. Am I Negroid? Am I Caucasian? Interestingly enough, in the States, I would be Caucasian, because that’s where they put North Indians, who were Arians. The race issue is not as simple as some would say. There are negative overtones, particularly following legislation to discourage racism, whose consequences include, in the field of genetics, the slow progress being made to treat certain illnesses that are common to certain categories of people, because it might be considered offensive, even illegal, or makes people avoid the subject. These negative connotations have to do, I believe, with the collapse of what I term white identity. One of our difficulties in discussing the subject of race (and I apologise for putting it bluntly) is that white people are not always sure of themselves. You look at your history - ‘we weren’t that good’; you look at the present – ‘we’re not quite sure what it is’; so you adopt the concept of what is known as the international person or the multicultural person, and anything goes, apart from that which is white. To affirm a white identity now becomes anathema. You shake your head! Try affirming it – you’d soon be branded BNP! Waving a Union Jack or a St George’s flag in Newham would put you into the BNP category.

Ethno-centrism: A tendency to favour one’s own group over other groups fosters a sense of pride in one’s group, maintains a positive self-image, so it is argued; and affirms one’s group at the expense of the other – that becomes the problem, and of course hostility can arise, hostility and conflict, which is partly the difficulty we’re in. To affirm a white identity in Newham would be regarded as a hostile act. In the Greengate, one of the key areas of Plaistow, where I lived, a restaurant was opened which called itself an ‘English Restaurant.’ It lasted a week. The owners were forced to close. They were told that it was a racist act to have an English restaurant. You could have an Indian restaurant, a Chinese, Greek, Turkish, or a Polish restaurant, but to have an English restaurant was not allowed. This brings us to:

Stereotyping, a generalisation about a group characteristic that does take account of any variation from one member of the group to the next. So now we have to see every one in blocks. ‘I am an Asian’. What on earth does that mean? There’s a cognitive aspect, beliefs about a particular group, and you may say ‘that’s what it is’. There is the affective aspect, the emotional dimensions of prejudice. Both are important, in trying to define how we see another group, whether we like them, or dislike them. And so we arrive at:

Prejudice, an unjustified irrational attitude towards an individual, based on the individual’s membership in a group. Most of you (with greater expertise in the English language than me) will know that among the original meanings of prejudice has to do with neutrality. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and concerned balance of opinion: ‘I like bananas’, someone may like apples, nothing wrong there. Preference. But prejudice has moved away from opinion into quite another area. William James argues that one function of education is to re-arrange prejudice, which is what is happening increasingly in our schools and in our society. Our Labour Government, in particular, has taken upon itself to rearrange prejudice in the context of the UK. I’m not quite sure I want my prejudices rearranged. That becomes the difficulty. But of course, prejudice is different from discrimination. Prejudice can be unexpressed; it doesn’t matter to anyone what I think or believe…

Discrimination occurs when prejudices leads to differences in treatment, based on the individual relationships of a group. But there’s a real dynamic here as to how far discrimination can be controlled. I was reading a paper just out today, by one Ahmed Kamil Abdul Majit, a prominent Islamic scholar who addressed a UN-sponsored seminar on 7^th December, entitled ‘Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding’. He said that the word tolerance is derogatory, particularly with reference to Islam, and continued: ‘What we are aiming at is much more positive than the mere tolerance. Usually you don’t tolerate something that you admire or like, but you tolerate something that you are going to live with, although you do not like it.’ Therefore he is advocating that, in order to be tolerant to Islam, you must be advocating respect, admiration, and actually like it, and then you must go on to revere it.

Racism, a belief that members of another race of ethnic group are inferior. I want to move on, and to suggest to you how those terms have impacted on us as a society, in the context of the evolution of our society over the past 40 years, and how I’ve seen my own life transformed. There was:

Assimilation. When my father came to Britain, he told all his children: ‘You are here now in Britain, you must live as British people, live like the English, learn the language, become a part of it’ - in other words assimilate. It was hard. The first week, I was beaten up everyday by white thugs; my brother and myself were the only Asian or non-white kids in the school. On the fifth day, it was snowing, I was on the ground having snow stuffed into my mouth, when the headmistress came along, saw me lying on the ground, stepped over and walked away. We had no one to defend us. It was brutal. I grew up in East End and in the north East End of London, which is Hoxton. If you wanted to know brutality, that’s where you would go.

My father said: ‘You never steal, you never borrow, you never go on the dole, you never blame anyone, You are to be proud that you are English. This is the country that has welcomed us, and you owe it everything, never mind the way it treats you, that’s how you are going to treat it.’

And you assimilate; that’s what we did. This occurs when people like me, to a degree, have to relinquish part of their cultural identity. We had to move into a larger society to become full members of that society, and that did mean a loss of identity. Then came:

Acculturation argued that cultures were a cultural change that results from continuous contact between two distinctive cultural groups, and which seek to preserve the cultural identity of both. So Jenkins was arguing in the middle to late 60s; ‘The individual becomes a competent participant in the majority culture while still being identified as a member of a minority culture, Then came:

Alternation. This assumes that it is possible for an individual to know and understand two different cultures. Individuals can alter their behaviour to fit a particular social context. In this model it’s possible, so it is assumed, to maintain a positive relationship with both cultures. Then we have:

Multiculturalism, which seeks to promote a pluralist approach to understanding two or more cultures, argues that people can maintain their distinct identities while working with others from different cultures, to meet national or economic needs. Multiculturalism encourages all groups to maintain or develop their group identity, to develop acceptance and tolerance of each other, to engage, so it is argued, in inter-group contact, and sharing and learning each others cultures etc. People can maintain, it is argued, a positive identity as members of their culture of origin, while simultaneously developing a positive identity with another culture. Tremendous idealism! The question is: ‘is it workable?’ So we have:

Integration, which we will now struggle with. This implies the maintenance of cultural identity, as well as the movement to become an integral part of a larger culture. In this type of cultural arrangement, a number of cultural groups cooperate within a larger social system. So we move now to:

Fusion. This implies that cultures sharing economic, political or geographic boundaries will fuse until they are indistinguishable, and form a new culture. This is of course the great vision of the multiculturalist; the melting-pot theory. Each culture brings to the melting-pot various strengths and weaknesses, and takes on new forms, through the interaction of culture, as equal partners. The fusion model differs from assimilation and accommodation in that the fusion model assumes that no culture is superior to the other. The implication is a mosaic. Every culture is a tile of the mosaic. There is no foundation. So now we come to:

Separation, the self-imposed withdrawal from the larger society or culture. If imposed by the larger society, separation becomes segregation. The minority can say ‘we want to separate and create our own Bantustan’. Is that where we will find ourselves in the future? People might maintain their traditional way of life, because they desire an independent movement. Separate movements can create separate states – Balkanisation. So will Britain be Balkanised? The dominant culture might exercise its power to exclude the other culture – slavery… or apartheid. Or of course you have:

Marginalisation, the process in which groups are put out of cultural and psychological contact with both their traditional culture and the largest dominant cultures. Consider me. Am I marginalized? Will the Asians have me? As a priest in East London, I worked closely with the police, and what do you do with criminality, asylum-seekers, illegals, drug-pushers, murder, violence? I believe in the primacy of law. I remember a Pakistani Muslim once saying to me ‘but you are Asian, you are Pakistani, you are not like them, you should not be working with the police’. Today, I work with the Military very closely, and I am told that chaps like me should not be working for the British Military. I am Asian. So am I the classic marginalized person? And what future will there be for people like me, in terms of a multicultural ideal? People who have been marginalised often feel alienation, and a loss of identity.

If one is expressing all of this in another way, again using American parlance, you start with a melting-pot, then you have the stew-pot, then you have the tossed salad, then you

have the fruit-bowl, and now you are out of the fruit-bowl, which is where society is in the States. If you study architecture, and look at the evolution of communities in the States (of which I have seen several), you enter though great big gates, and suddenly you are in a whole town: golf courses, shops, and manned security, rigidly maintained and controlled, to keep other peoples out. That’s where the US is moving; and where we are moving also, again if you study contemporary architecture, linked to security.

If the Muslim community decides (as it is arguing for) that it wants separate development, where might that lead? Supposing you link increasing numbers, or demographics, to where people live. What’s the future? Consider where we find ourselves now, and what Mr Blunkett says about integration by diversity. On the one hand, I found that somewhat meaningless, and on the other, very, very troubling. I don’t know what integration by diversity means. It worries me stiff, about what he thinks it means.

Of course we have Mr Powell, and that becomes the problem, because any discussion like this is bedevilled by Mr Powell. If I may put it this way, I believe there were good things about Powell, and bad things. You may be shocked, because I lived through his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. What do I mean about good and bad? He failed to differentiate between race, religion and culture - that was bad, a mistake. The good was that he did argue profoundly for what was British, and warned that conflict could arise in those areas. I think the conflict will arise over the issue of religion and culture, not the issue of race. None but a lunatic would believe in genetic theories that suggest that black people are fundamentally inferior to white people. I think those days have gone. The real issue now is: where do we put religion and culture in the context of a society? I think he was right at that point. Whilst I do not want to predict ‘rivers of blood’ in this type of speech, I am concerned at the possibility of internal conflict within our societies, and that troubles me deeply.

To take an analogy from military matters I have encountered in some of my work, everyone in the army has a cap badge; it defines the regiment to which they belong. Do you need it? In battle groups these days, you don’t have cap badges, because to be effective, you have to fight as a unit, as a Nation? Is that what we are called to be? Or, do we emphasise too much the differences? That’s the issue of the badge. And that impacts heavily on blasphemy. Those of you who follow the work I do will see that the Barnabas Fund has been orchestrating the move against the vilification law which the Government is planning to bring in. We found ourselves strange bedfellows. You may have seen the speech by Rowan Atkinson, who organised the meeting at the House of Commons. On our committee we have Rowan Atkinson, Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, an atheist and a member of the National Secular Society, all the so-called ‘oddballs’ united together against a Labour Government wanting to define what language should be used in terms of religion.

I say publicly that I do not want blasphemy laws. I do want

freedom. I do not want blasphemy laws. I do not want laws that relate to incitement to religious hatred. I think religion should stand on its own values and its own merits. It doesn’t need protecting. It should protect itself by virtue of the goodness of its members and faithfulness to its doctrines. That should be sufficient. If we live in a world of ridicule and abuse, it should learn to take it. I deeply disagree with this Government, and that is why I have been fighting it. And with our coalition of the weird and the wonderful we may come close to defeating this Government on that particular bill. Herein lies the dilemma. Think of the Sikh issue in Birmingham. I profoundly disagree with the Sikh community (who closed a theatrical performance). Here was a woman who was writing about experiences of women within the Sikh community, where sexual abuse can be normative. Is she going to be silenced? What of the Muslim women in the UK who are subjected to horrific treatment by the Muslim communities, whose men want to see (criticism) stifled? I want to defend Sikh women and girls, and Muslim women; I’m not interested in the men, or their ideas. But this becomes offensive to the multicultural dream.

Australia is interesting in this context, and is discovering this problem in the wake of a law recently passed by the State

of Victoria, which dealt with the history of religious vilification, which is quite horrific. They have now legislated what you can say and what you can’t say about a particular religion, going back to the debate about Calvinist Geneva. I for one don’t want to live in Calvinist Geneva. The Australian treasurer of the Liberal Party, Peter Costello, has actually criticised what has been taking place in the State of Victoria, and, referring to the fact that Austalian law and society are founded on the Ten Commandments, he said: ‘We have the rule of law, respect for life, private property rights, respect for others, valued as strings from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Tolerance under the law is a great part of this tradition. Tolerance does not mean that all views are the same; it doesn’t mean that differing views are equally right. What it means is that where there are differences, no matter how strongly held, different people will respect the rights of others to hold them.’ It is essential to realise that some of the basis of western society, such as respect for individuals, and the right to comment on others’ beliefs, are not universal norms. The very fact that they are so deeply embedded in western culture makes many westerners assume that they must to all humanity. The Judeo-Christian western tradition, I believe, makes a fitting context for multiple cultures to coexist, but equally, it is vulnerable to cultures that do not share these attitudes. The British form of secularity, embracing all cultures, will not be long sustained if any one of the cultures takes advantage of the tolerance of the rest to promote itself, and condemn others. It remains to be seen whether Britain will move back towards integration, and reassert the core of Britishness, or move onwards to a further separation and independence of its constituent communities. Changing these trends may seem to be slow, and as difficult as trying to change the course of an oil tanker, but tankers are steered by small movements, and it’s just a case of starting to act early enough.

I think I’ve said enough.

Summary by Martin Sturge