Race laws - any point?
01 January 1991
Race laws - any point?
artdoc November=1992
There has recently been discussion about petitioning the
European Parliament for race discrimination laws to be
extended to cover the whole of Europe. CARF asked A.
Sivanandan, a leading analyst/critic of race policies,
what he thought about the campaign.
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In the first place, I don't like the term petition. To petition
is to beg, to be a supplicant. And you don't beg for your
rights, you demand them. In the second place, I would have
thought that such petitioning of the European parliament should
begin in Europe, where no such legislation exists. In Britain,
we have legislation, however ineffectual. So if we petition
Brussels for similar legislation, we are basically holding up our
own legislation as a model-which is rubbish on a number of
levels.
First of all, the law here is ineffectual. As I have said
before, not only does the law have no teeth, it also has no gums.
You have only to look at the record of the Commission for Racial
Equality to see that the 1976 Race Relations Act has made
absolutely no difference in terms of racial discrimination in the
things that matter, in the things that Improve the life chances
of ordinary black people -in housing, employment, education,
health and in relation to the criminal justice system.
Secondly, let's take the argument that, even if legislation
is not effective at this level, it could still be a way Of
teaching people that discrimination is wrong. This might have
been true; to some small extent, at the time that the legislation
was passed in this country - although, there again, its educative
value was undermined by the weakness of the law (which showed
that the government had no belief in its own legislation) and the
context in which the law was passed (as an antidote to racist
immigration laws).
But the position in Europe today is entirely different
People are not ignorant about racism or racial discrimination.
They choose it, they are unashamed about it, they borrow from
their past traditions to uphold it, they vote racist parties into
parliament. Hence, the argument that legislation has an
educative function is no longer tenable.
Besides, what has such legislation in Britain achieved
except the creation of a race relations industry and a black
bureaucratic class to go with it?
The only legislation that we can ask for is that which
outlaws racism, makes racism a criminal act. And that is not
something you petition for; that is not something a government
will hand you on a platter. It is something you have to fight
for, and mobilise public opinion around, as part of a larger
anti-racist struggle. And one of the demands of that struggle
could be such a law.
The demand for anti-discriminatory legislation, in other
words, should be a tactic within a larger strategy. And it
should be a demand, not a petition. You can't petition racists.
CARF magazine, July/August 1992 Europe