This is Not America: why black lives in Britain matter | LSE Festival

my name is Mike Savage and I work at the LSC I'm professor of sociology and I'm also convene a program of research at the international inequalities institute around the themes of wealth Elites and tax Justice and I'm very pleased to welcome to our online audience and our audience in person to me were writes about cultural social and literary issues for the new Statesman the times Sunday Times The Observer unheard and the evening standard and he is the author of a book published next week I think this is not America why black lives in Britain matter so today we'll be exploring some of the themes in tomiwa's new book in which he argues that too much of the conversation around race and racism in Britain is viewed through American spectacles that don't reflect the history challenges and achievements of an increasingly diverse black population here in the UK should be an exciting and enjoyable discussion um for those Twitter users in the audience the hashtag for today's event is is Hash lse Festival so please do use that if you're on Twitter to spread the word about this event but also about the book um please can you put your phones on silent the event is being recorded and will hopefully be made available as a podcast so long as there are no technical difficulties the plan will be I think for to me where to speak for about 15 minutes or so I will then ask him a few questions and have a discussion with him about some other themes of the book which I have read in advance and which also links to some of the work I've been doing around questions of racing class in the UK and internationally so we'll do that for another 15 minutes or so then we'll throw it open to the audience for any questions you may have and the questions will be open to people online but also to people in person we'll try and make sure you both get a chance both groups get a chance to contribute to the debate okay so um let's move on to me would you want to say a few words about your book and why we should read it and what its highlights are you should read my book because it's amazing thank you very much Mike for that um warm and insightful introduction um so the initial idea for the book came to me in the summer of 2020 um during the height of the George Floyd protest that were taking place in London um and one particular incidents really sparked the Genesis of the book um so my old University UCL um somebody sent somebody informed me that um a group of students in my old University UCL at Santa letter to the English faculty accusing the English faculty of institutional racism um but in that particular letter they use the word bipok and for those of you that don't know bipark stands for black indigenous people of color um so the students accuse The Faculty of racism against bipoc people in the UK um now bipark would make sense in America it would make perfect sense in America because um the various indigenous communities in America who have clearly been oppressed and discriminated against what I found strange was what a word like bypoc was doing in a UK context when people talk about defending the rights or protecting the rights of indigenous communities in a UK context that carries with it a far more far right resonance rather than something that you would expect a progressive activist to express um so that was the initial idea um the the idea that all too often we um unthinkingly internalize a very specifically American way of thinking about race and racism um so once once that event happened I started to reflect more seriously on the ways in which the experiences of black and other minority people in the UK um differ from the experiences of ethnic minority people in America um and I think there are obvious striking um differences when you think of demography for example so in America the Black American population constitutes about 13 of the overall American population whereas in the UK the black population constitutes only about four percent of the overall UK population um another striking thing about America is that there are so many American cities and towns and communities across the southern black belt where the majority of the population are African-Americans um whereas in the UK the area with the largest black population is London and black people only constitutes about 14 of the population in London um so in America it's it's much easier to have an exclusively black Social Circle because the population of black people in America is much larger and also because the history of segregation in America is still the legacy of that is still present to this day it's present in things like school and it's also present in the in the ways in things like geography as well um by contrast in the UK I would say that um something like school for example isn't um race is in the dividing line in British schools I would argue that classes um and if we look up for example um just black people in the UK what we notice is that when we use a term like the black British Community singular that is is in my mind an inadequate term because I think it obscures the diversity within um the label of black and British um so just to use a couple of examples um black Caribbean pupils in the UK um are excluded um at three times the rate of black African pupils um so if you're a black Caribbean people you're three times more likely to be excluded from school than if you're a black African pupil um and I think different C differences like these matter because when we talk about inequality I think they should be rooted in material circumstances rather than reflecting any kind of abstraction so if we genuinely care about it the inequalities in a society we need to be more specific in our Focus rather than making vast generalizations this isn't just true of of black British people in particular but it's also true of all ethnic minority people um so for example the ethnic minority groups in the UK that tend to do best in terms of Education attainment are British Indian and British Chinese pupils um and therefore I I don't know and therefore I think terms like Bain b-a-m-e um are completely inadequate because why should we assume that the experiences of say a British Indian person or a British Chinese person should necessarily align with the with the interests and also the experiences of a black Caribbean person or even um other supposedly white ethnic minority groups like The Traveler and roma communities as well who tend to um be discriminated most I would argue in terms of education and educational outcomes so the my book makes two main points which is that in terms of race and ethnicity we are not like America um that's the first point the second Point uh is that in terms of race and ethnicity we need to be more specific in our focus and we need to um look at groups and also individuals not through the lens exclusively of their race and ethnicity but also take into account other various factors such as class geography culture family formation religion language and I think this is important for a couple of reasons it's important because it allows us to have a more fine-grained approach to thinking about and also trying to combat the inequalities in our society but I think it's also important because I think it allows us to affirm the indivisible Dignity of each and every individual as well um I'll I'll stop for now and see if my has got questions for me thank you thank you tamiwa and uh yeah you you really think highlight the kind of key message of the book which is not to over generalized about issues of race and racism and to recognize specificity and the need to locate these issues very clearly in particular country contexts I have to say um you know I'm a sociologist who has worked a lot on UK issues over most of my career but also internationally to increase the extent actually working in South Africa and certain parts of Europe and parts of South America I think you've identify a really important polish which is really uh significant across the social scientist which is the the power of the American models which we work with it's not that it's just about race it's about all sorts of ways which we think and the dominant to those models and the need to contest the kind of the their power anecdotally just give you an example of how you know the issues you've raised strike called me in a number of ways uh four or five years ago I went to give a talk at the University of Curacao which is in the Dutch Caribbean and if you know it it's um small island it's part it's still part of uh the Netherlands it's still still a colony of the Netherlands if you want and it has it was the sense of the Dutch slave trade and they I went as part of this my visit I went to a museum of slavery which is extremely interesting and it really was nuanced in the specific experience of the Dutch slave trade which I found very interesting and then right at the end of the museum um you suddenly entered this Gallery which is all about the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement nothing to do with Curacao nothing to do with the Dutch you know Colonial experience and suddenly you get plunged into Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and that sort of it did feel very jarring partly in the style in which it was done so it did it struck me at the time on the other hand let's answer the question I put to you I can see because those motifs of the civil rights movement and the anti-racism of the 60s because they were so powerful and because they have such Global Currency I can see they might still be important resources to draw upon all over the world just because of their iconic power yeah so for those reasons should we actually still you know give some value and some you know credibility to to those messages in in our thinking about that race in the UK yeah yeah I think I think that's that's a um a perfectly um reasonable point to make because um but what I would say is that the lessons from the Civil Rights Movement were not only adopted by black people across the world um so I I know that in Northern Ireland for example um the Civil Rights movements to try and um protect the rights of of of Irish Catholic people in Northern Ireland were clearly inspired by the Civil Rights movements um against white supremacism in America um so that that um underlying message of fighting against um discrimination and inequality I I think can be adopted by by and anyone because it's it's all about the underlying principles rather than say any maybe particular um fine-grained similarities or not um but yeah I do think because what many people would say is that uh well what about racial solidarity the importance of racial solidarity and I think that's that's a perfectly um Fair Point to make what I would say is that you can also have solidarity not on the basis of race but on the basis of shared moral values um and the reason why I say that as well is because um the idea of racial solidarity necessarily assumes that the values of black people across the world are necessarily the same which is clearly not the case because there are many black people that might be conservative there are of course many black people that are liberal there are many black people that are socialists black people do not constitute a homogeneous block and I think the risk of just assuming that there is this um shared racial solidarity presupposes that um I I think solidarity should be ultimately predicated on shared moral values okay thank you much okay so so at the start of uh Tommy was book you discuss a number of areas of of theoretical thinking about how American models have become so influential and one of the chapters is about the critical race Theory um which is which is a really uh has become a very influential body of thought and very contentious in the U.S context so you know some states are Banning it because it seemed to be too subversive but too radical and so on and it's certainly gaining a lot of power and Traction in the in in the UK um and you and you'll get your your what you try and do is emphasize how it's rooted in the American Experience sure you look at the way which is yeah Notions of self-help and social Mobility is all tied up with that critical race Theory I take I take that but I have to say I have so what area of critical race Theory which I find quite powerful is actually what they talk about to do with the way in which White's interests get institutionalized because my reading political basically always it's talking about the kind of the way which state structures and corporate structures legal structures are tied in with forms of racial power obviously classic example of that is apartheid in South Africa but it can be generalized a lot of your book is looking at um and very interesting and thoughtful ways looking at the black experience but if you are also as we have to be interested in kind of how white people are organized and how they're powerful then I think I I do think critical race Theory um can be useful in those terms so I'm kind of wanting to say a bit about you know your Reflections upon critical race it can be useful at all should it be so yeah um there's this um idea amongst um certain in particular um American conservatives that see critical race Theory as a kind of Marxism as an idea as an ideology that's foreign to America um and I would argue that critical race theory is um is is a fundamentally American way of looking at the world it's rooted in um American law in American constitutional law the founder of critical race theory was this man called Derek Bell and he was a constitutional lawyer and his Central thesis um which is has been shared and adopted by many subsequent people the spouse critical race theory is that America has fundamentally failed to live up to the moral and constitutional values that it professes to believe um so I I think it's it's American in that sense because it's still sees America um as this exceptional moral country even though it is a vow stop but in the surviving that it presupposes that America is the model by which um but by which race and racism and inequality should be judged American values I mean should be the model by which these things should be judged and evaluated um what I would um say about what you say about whiteness and about the protection of whiteness is that um I guess it would depend on um how widely or how thinly you would Define whiteness and we would be included in the category of whiteness um because recently I I wrote a column in which I I said that racism for example isn't just um something that affects only black and brown people there are certain ethnic minority groups that are often racialized as White Spot nevertheless experience various forms of racism and discrimination so I I mentioned for example um traveler and Roman communities Irish people and of course Jewish people as well um so I I think it would depend on how far and you you would sort of Define whiteness because again I don't think whiteness is this um abstract thing which just exists out of particular material um contacts and circumstances because ironically and I would agree with the many critical race there is I think rightly argue that whiteness is um an invention of of circumstances um so they would argue that um racism gave birth to race um race did not give birth to racism um but nevertheless many of them still cling to I think a very fixed notion of race and whiteness so I I think it would depend on how you define it well yeah so my next question in a way touches on this issue for another angle so in the second part of your book you sort of talk about the the lived experience of black British people you know and explore that across different domains and it's very interesting and obviously you draw up on your own experiences yeah very intriguingly and you'll and you make this really important points which is about the fact that we should not assume because there is racial disparity of course many many indicators of well-being that means there's necessarily um institutional racism causing these disparities all sorts of reasons why they could be inequalities in the experiences or in the incomes or educational outcomes or whatever different ethnic groups different racial groups important points to recognize I mean we cannot assume we cannot read off from racial disparity that there is you know racism at work so I was left a bit unclear at the end of it is as to whether you whether you whether you think there isn't it's still useful to use the concept of institutional racism yeah whilst recognizing it's not necessarily the only thing it works yeah yeah but within certain areas yeah it's important whether you think the whole concept is in a way not really helping us unpack the yeah I think there are circumstances where um terms like institutional racism um is useful so um the police for example or more recently um the fire department so there was that recent report that came out in December um last year which found institutional racism in the fire department um so I I'm not opposed to the use of that term I just think that racism is not the only thing that is causing inequality inequalities in our society and um I I think there are two ways to look at it if we assume that um all ethnic minority people um experience inequality simply on the basis of their race and nothing else then I don't think you would be able to find a satisfactory way to account for the vast disparities in terms of educational outcome um employment outcome and also interaction with the criminal justice system so for example if we say that Bain people so for example are oppressed by the police in the UK then yeah that applies of course to um black people but it doesn't apply to British Chinese people and British Indian people um which is not to say about racism doesn't cause the way in which black people are oppressed by the police I I think it does it's just to say that when we think about racism we should have a more fine-grained and nuanced approach to it rather than what I think is this very simplistic approach that many of us have adopted okay lots of lots of questions bubbly up I'm sure with this let me ask my last question um let me then we can throw it out open to the audience because you have this also have a chapter on Empire and of course that's a really contentious issue isn't it and and for instance Winston Churchill you know yeah it was pretty clearly racist you know if you read it you know he doesn't hide his tracks very well you can find all sorts of quotes about what he thought about Indians and black people and so forth and yet you know he was the kind of Savior of Britain during the second world war so kind of how we how we deal with the legacy of Empires deeply contentious and of course lse like all universities is thinking about decolonization what it means to um try and become an open space and inclusive space which is not privileged on certain assumptions so I wondered if perhaps you wanna talk a little bit about what you think about Empire but also putting back to you the issues you might say that the the point to you um you began with or the book focuses on about the dominance of the American model in a way that is the sign of colonial power almost yeah so it is actually uh are you calling for a certain kind of decolonization so we still need to have that in our mind even though we make or test some of the ways in which it's our beautiful yeah yeah I think the American thing is is um it's it's more of a it's a cultural thing it's a cultural um Imperial um thing because it's um it's not something which is coerced or done through violence um I I I I I think again with with the issue of Empire um I I think the debates about it as to morally simplistic and it lacks any um sense of sophistication um and Nuance um and I think even when we talk about what it means to be um a colonized subject or what it means to experience colonialism we need to see it take it on a case-by-case basis rather than just looking at it through one singular perspective um so the experiences of empire for a black Caribbean person in the UK is in general quite different to the experiences of how a black African person would experience Empire um so just to say um and this is something I forgot to mention earlier um so up until about 25 years ago the majority of black British people in the UK were black Caribbean people um but over the past 20 25 years there's been a massive influx of immigration from Africa and now there are twice as many black African people in the UK as black Caribbean people um and if you and which means that um the majority of people of black people in the UK as of today um are not the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade um and I think being the descendants of enslaved Africans taken to the new world deprived of your language your culture your Origins shapes the way that you look at Society I think I think it must influence the way you look Society um I and I think that if you are a black African person you are in the UK you are either as of today either an immigrant or the children of immigrants and you came to the UK from an independent African country and you still um retain your your language your um distinct culture um and so I I think even though um these two um black communities um share the same experience even those these two black communities are above colonized um share the same history of colonialism there are important differences within that history um and I think that needs this this also needs to be incorporated in debates as well um I think another thing I'll mention is that um when we think of British Asian people as well we need to be more um nuanced in our discussion so for example I mentioned in my book the experiences of British Asian people whose families immigrated from Africa from East Africa and and many of them are now um senior senior members of the Tory farts yes including our current prime minister yes but I think one way to explain because this is something that some people have wondered why is it the case that many um British Asian people from African backgrounds espouse conservative values and I think one way to think about it um is is to um acknowledge the fact that um if you are um if you come from that particular background you basically can't trust the state to protect you so you have um an attitude where you need to rely upon your own individual um work ethic you need to be um it needs to be a capitalist in that sense um because you can't necessarily trust the state because um the state didn't protect Asian communities in post-colonial Uganda and Kenya and I think that I think that assumption is carried through to too many of them and and I think this is different this is very different to the experiences of British um Pakistani or British Bangladeshi people that came to the UK from Asia so again and both these Asian Community all of these Asian communities all share broadly the same experiences of colonialism and colonization but the way that manifests itself is different and I think we need to acknowledge and incorporate those differences in thinking about it and analyzing race keep those out of our earshot so I think it's time to open it up for questions we have about 25 minutes left so what we'll try and do is I think make it into a bit of a discussion rather than the Q a backwards and forwards and I'm looking at Pete to see if any online questions no nothing online so let's just take perhaps three questions from the floor um and then we can have some some answers afterwards and please say who you are and you know name an affiliation please hello my name is Calvin I represent the interests of European Bunty um which is a non-profit organization dealing with China Europe stuff so obviously I am white I am I'm very wise for putting outside I'll reflect the Sun but I'm also from South Africa I'm born and raised in that country I was really speaking English Afrikaans and closer Bang um so you both touched upon whiteness I'd be interested in both of your perspectives on what whiteness is um and then also the other topic is I couldn't agree more I think it was profoundly Salient what you're saying about recognizing the individuality of experience um vehemently agree but do not think it's useful to retain these umbrella terms to better start and initiate these conversations because it's a kind of style I think the plane is drowning your voice it's a it's a good starting point to have these umbrella terms yeah to be able to initiate conversations yeah there's already such strong resistance against just having the conversation at all sure I feel like greater individuality May drown out the conversation so just the lines between that and and what you what you think thank you okay how do you define whiteness Mike uh ask any questions or should we should we look at that one first yeah at the back there the white white cap it was yeah yeah hi my name is Tom I'm a student at a Manchester grammar school um I think your talk is I think your talk has been honestly just Spangled but um how strong do you think is the relationship between Class more so Bourgeois uh class ownership and the kind of rejection of uh solid diversity in various solidarity in value solidarity and lower values and um you know classes I remember you I sort of just two days ago I heard about it it was um it was Kenya where a lot of British Asian people uh have immigrated from I'm pretty Patel I think people tells family come from but she kind of has afforded with rhetoric of consistent anti-critical race Theory um which is it seems kind of confusing uh considering a background but do you think it could be explained by perhaps a class and perhaps a um economic status sort of how class and economics explains um do you want to start on that I'll say a few words yeah I I do think class is the um um major elephants in the room when it comes to you conversations about um inequalities in our society um and there's something else that I forgot to mention which which I think again relates to your class um so I I went to um a state comprehensive School in in London um and my school was both um ethnically mixed but also mixed in terms of socioeconomic backgrounds as well um about the Striking thing about my school is that the both the white middle class kids and the white working class kids um were all friends or at least friendly with um all the ethnic minority kids of whatever class background um bought the white working class kids generally speaking were not friends with the white middle class kids and vice versa um and this is something that I've only really um noticed in in retrospect um which which I find which I find fascinating because when we when we tend to think about inequality in education we we tend to think of the division between um private schools and state schools but even within State schools I still think there is that important socioeconomic um divide um to to the point of the ways in which um class interest influences of people's political beliefs I I think that that is true to an extent um but again I I'm I'm skeptical about um any kind of reductionist way of looking at things so even though I do think that that is true to next then I I I can't say that class definitively um shapes the way that people look at the world in terms of the values that they espouse let me so let me try and Link the two questions because you asked about my thoughts on on whiteness but also a bit about class and and I've done a lot of work on class um over many years most most famously I suppose with a Great British class survey which came out about 10 years ago they had this big BBC web survey and everyone could tick in their few questions and see which class they were and you can still do it if you're interested if you Google class calculator you can you can find out which club which class you're in so I've always been interested in class um I also I also went to a competitive School in London uh so you know a different generation different race but some overlaps there but I've also got it really interested more in the kind of mobile app between between racial divisions and and um class divisions in a certain kind of way and particularly at the top end at particularly around the elite and the upper middle class because um and just to give you a flavor some of the some of the overlaps which I think are very powerful if you've got time after this you can look at the maps we have over there and the in the festival exhibition and I have a little uh well I have some maps on the work we have done on UK non domicile to taxpayers said these these non-doms as they're often called are people who um they're living in the UK so they're living in UK you have to file a tax return but they claimed and under missiles which means that they're claiming that their permanent home is somewhere else in the world and if you do that you get certain tax breaks and then most mainly that you don't have to pay any tax on your overseas assets you probably all know that the wife of the Prime Minister famously was outed as a non-dom last year and caused a bit of constellation but the interesting thing is so this is this is a kind of tax perk for certain kinds of people and on the whole non-doms are wealthy people because these days you have to pay a fee to claims in London so only reason you pay that fee is if you have big assets to hide but the overarching um the kind of people who who we think I should mention my colleagues Aaron nevani and David Bergen Andy Summers on this project the kind of people who we think are these non-doms even though they're International by definition is very much predominantly white white Elites because the countries in which they tend to have come from or which they came into nationality are places like Australia and Canada USA other European nation South Africa but we assume it's mostly white South Africans so I do think that the particular the privilege end of the social um Spectrum if you like the the whiteness and the class the upper class categies do overlap um and I think that is a very powerful feature of the British um class structure I have had a PhD student called Emma Taylor um who graduated last year she's working in the LLC now the Earthly fellow teachers under our undergraduate students who did this wonderful ethnographic a detailed study of a British private school um one of one of Britain's top private schools actually she's a teacher there um and it's at one level uh not all the kids are white these days okay so there are there are [Music] um a smattering uh minority kids but she was also interested in despite the fact and despite the fact the school talked about diversity all the time you know makes a big fuss about we're really open actually the assumptions are still based around these forms of whiteness and sort of kind of Imperial assumptions including things like you know getting people's names wrong in the award ceremony and and things like that so my my feeling is that sure and certainly in some ways there is more diversity at the top but we should not really necessarily assume as a fundamental change in the cultural values I think you see that in the way governments operate I could talk much more about this but any more questions there's a question yes yeah hello thank you sir I my about this obsession with America and taking it as a model I found it's I'm I'm a Franco British I was born in France and I the issue of racism for instance is very is reframing some of the discourses in France in France the word race is racist you can't really say that is is a is a racist word in itself to be odd so uh black people who at the moment are sort of reclaiming they call it rationalized uh people um reclaiming the word anyway but I I my question I haven't read your book yet um is about don't you think there's a little in this Obsession you said it or you know perhaps black people um think the situation is the same or are making parallels but I think white people as well in this country are using America [Music] um has a way not to actually look at themselves and I remember when Trump came suddenly everybody oh it's just all me to in front of number 10 now you know okay this is dysfunctional government and you're not going to gone astray but Trump is coming and that's a big issue anyway that's my question is it is that I don't know whether you talk about the question let's try and get a couple shall we and then we can get some answers yeah hi hi you know that terms like babe and bipok just don't account for all the things that you've spoken about today but where do we kind of go from here to still have that racial solidarity but move past these terms like what should you think is next question one more purpose if there was one yeah the gentleman over there yes there are a number of issues there that are profound in many respects my question is relating to colonialism and Empire as you mentioned I'm just curious as to whether you mentioned values internalized but from the USA and in UK but let's be realistic in terms of what interests control both institutions and economics globally in your experience do you think combating inequalities and exclusion but we need a new say intern International or Global model to combat the disparities okay okay do you want to apply it um yeah I I do how do you take your points about um the way that um some white people would would use the um phrase um written is not America um therefore we shouldn't focus on race at all um I think I think that's that's uh that that's a valid and valuable point to make um what I would say is that um just focusing on race is is not enough I think um because just to use your example of France for example um so in the um 50s um and the 60s many African-Americans as I'm sure you know moved to France and the reason why they moved to France was because they felt that France was a far less racist country than America and they felt that they felt liberated when they moved to France so I'm thinking of writers Like Richard Wright and James Baldwin um but but what was striking is that um so there was another African-American that moved to France um I think his name is William Gardner Smith um and what what he said and what he wrote is that even though many um African-Americans moved to France they and they saw France as this um a fantastically liberating country many of them um failed to pay any attention to the racism and discrimination against Algerian people um so when they when they were in France in the 50s and 60s this was during the time of the Algerian War of Independence um where those um incredible racism and violence done to um the um Algerian people and other colonized subjects in frankfur North Africa um and and again and I think this this links back to my point which is that um it's all about emphasis and all about um focus and all about Nuance because from their perspective France was a perfect country but from the perspective of somebody from Algeria or from francophone North Africa France was the oppressor um so I yeah again I think I think that's that's why um emphasis um is important to nuances important and taking National context into account is important in terms of because I think those two questions are interlinked um I I do think we should yeah I do think we should have a more International approach to um inequality but but I think that that there is a risk in in if we just have a blanket um approach we we can't um take into account the way that inequality um manifests in in each particular country so we can't take into account the particular or peculiar ways that um ratio and other forms of inequality manifest in each country um which is why again that's this which is why again I emphasize the importance of solidarity on the basis of shared values share the moral values rather than solidarity on the basis of of being non-white which which I find um which I also find quite condescending as well and quite patronizing the idea that simply because um I I share um a lack with somebody else that we're both known why that we should necessarily have a shared sense of solidarity um and and I think another reason why is it also doesn't take into account the fact that um there are various um non-white countries across the world where anti-black racism is still um a very prevalent Force um and there are various um non-white countries in the world where other forms of racism against other non-white ethnic minorities are still a prevalent Force what about the issue about the main terms yeah um so I think I I understand why why Bame exists um because it's um because it tries to um make sense of of of racism and inequality but I I'm still um skeptical about the um way it's applied the um the applicability of the term because it's not clear to me what um so for example would um traveler and roma people be included in vain I'm sure like the fact that that's not even clear is is a bit confusing to me um and and people of color is another term which which I find um a bit perplexing because it's not clear to me how would you how you would define color in in that way it's partly because it's not politics isn't it if you don't have that term yeah yeah all these problems one term do we use instead yeah but let's get some final round of questions and then yeah it's one over here hi my name is saurav um I am born and brought up in India so I'm very new here it's been two years I work as an economist in climate policy and my question is a bit contemporary organizational question when I came here and I started looking at organization how they function I found it very interesting that they all had the EI Community committees diversity and inclusion and the way they operate it I find it very weird and and and and and and the values and the way it kind of boils down on how they practice this ter values so I wanted to ask you this question on these diversity committees that apparently every organization has now I'm sure lse has has as well and try to kind of really because I don't have opinion and view on these communities but there are definitely some pros in in the way they approach this problem but at the same time it becomes a compliance thing for many organizations to do it so do you have any opinion or stands on these the EI committees what they're doing right where they are completely getting the point wrong yeah it seems like every organization has one um somebody was telling me that the um even um the times they've got a diversity and equity and inclusion committee I wonder if they managed to get Reaper motor to to come and attend that um and um again I I think the the risk in um a lot of these initiatives is that um many organizations would say that oh well we've got a diversity equity and inclusion committee therefore we've done our bit therefore we can move on um um which which I think is is a risk because many organizations would approach it in a very cynical Manner and I think it relates again to what you were saying earlier about um the way some some people sort of promote diversity without actually materially changing the um institutions I mean that stuff I thought on that too exactly because the LSA is about you know I think is really Exposed on this issue actually because we have a very diverse student body um but the actual if you look at the senior professorias at the lse um it's incredibly White and lsc's vote is kind of aware of it and and there are kind of policies in place um but it's it's a they're like but I think it's also goes back to the issue about how certain kinds of whiteness do get institutionalized and and actually in the case of the lse it is being recorded but hopefully it's not going to cause too much too many eruptions um you know they value the best thing you can do if you don't know it's published in an American journal they're the best in the world therefore the more you publish in the American Psychological review the better it is for your careers they're absolutely right that those forms of privilege and whiteness and eliteness go hand in hand with our valuing of America as the kind of dominant force in that respect I think you're really under a powerful thing but I do but there are specific issues definitely around how we how we tackle um diversity yeah and I think it's I'm sure in the times it probably is a bit of window dressing definitely but it doesn't mean it's not important yeah in numerous environments okay uh well we got we got perhaps is that a question yes if it's you have a question yeah yeah just wait for the microphone okay thanks whilst uh sort of fully agreeing with the drift of what you're saying I'm surprised you don't make more of the um of anti-Semitism in in supporting your case uh I'm sure you've read David badille's book uh I I mentioned on census in my book you and I did I did mention it earlier okay yes you did I'm just surprised I mean after all the greatest crime of the 20th century was committed against the Jews um and uh I'm I'm just wondering if this is a sort of partly an ideological thing to do with uh the left's obsession with um uh those they identify as being suitable uh victims of of racism which do not include Jews I mean I do you are you supportive of that supportive of what of of the notion that the left tend to emphasis tend to exclude Jews from their from their model of of of racial victimization I think it's definitely true of parts of the left um so I I think the um the clerics example of this is um Diana recently um wrote a letter um to a column written in the Observer which argued that um racism affects um other ethnic minority groups of commercialized as whites including Jews and she mentioned that she said that Jews um were not forced to sit at the back of the bus in um in Jim Crow America and they were not discriminated against in apartheid South Africa without of course mentioning um the um the greatest genocide of the 20th century um so I do think there is definitely a part of the left which um doesn't incorporate and semitism into their analysis because anti-Semitism is is a a very particular kind of racism it's it's not it's a racism against um against the group that's seen as more powerful rather than racism against the group that's seen as less powerful um and in fact um a Social Democrat called August Babel once described anti-Semitism as the socialism of the fools um by which I think it meant that it appeals to somebody um that that's a bit obsessed with conspiratorial power and I think a risk of of seeing everything in in a slightly conspiratorial sense is that it can lend itself to ansemitism which which again links to what I was saying about racial disparities and the inequalities of society because um I think increasingly some people would oh well you know Jewish people um they they seemed like quite a privileged Community um therefore they can't be victims of racism and that lends credibility or that provides the um that the the um yeah lens credibility to one of the key tropes of antifemicism okay I think they're probably reaching the end as you can see Tommy this book opens up lots of issues it's really I really encourage you to read it and and everybody elaborates the debate on race and racism in the UK oh in five days you know good for good book shops and some bad ones as well but you can also sign it over here I believe I believe if you want to get a copy available yeah available over there you might even sign it afterwards if you're hanging to hang around yes definitely so so thank you everyone so much Tommy well thank you for coming and and can you please give it a warm Roundup [Applause] foreign

Channel: LSE

Views: 1,126

Keywords: LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics, University, College

Id: U0-Fj8XCEEY

Length: 58min 9sec (3489 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023