The Less and Less Silent Majority?White People, Multiculturalism and the Challenge

of ‘Englishness’Paul Thomas,

University of Huddersfield

BSA

4TH April 2013

Contents

• ‘White’ people?

• The ‘white backlash’

• Class acted out as ‘race’?

• Policy responses – Community Cohesion/ Integration and Prevent

• The challenge of ‘Englishness’?

‘White people’?

• ‘White’ is a highly problematic concept historically• ‘Whiteness’ often seen as an un-interrogated norm but

it was always contingent and class-based until the unifying processes of colonialism (Bonnett, 2000, Preston, 2007)

• Concept of (all) white people having power has been central to modern anti-racist critiques but this problematically essentialises and reifies ethnicity

• Racism and anti-racism have therefore both contributed to very limited and problematic discussion of ‘whiteness’, such as ‘white flight’

The ‘white backlash’

• Multiculturalism’s necessary policy focus on essentialised ethnic ‘culture’ and identity at the same time as de-industrialisation and globalisation has left many white people unsure of ‘their’ ‘culture’ (Nayak, 1999) and feeling mocked as ‘chavs’ (Jones, 2008)

• Implementation of ‘anti-racism’ within education has often been highly problematic for white working class young people – the ‘white backlash’ (Hewitt, 2005)

• Perceptions of ethnic favouritism within state funding was important to 2001 riots and preceding tensions (Cantle, 2001), and continues over housing and employment, with a direct link to the discursive shift in policy

Class acted out as ‘race’?

• Myths and realities around the supposed discrimination towards and failure of the ‘white working class’ (Collins, 2004;Svenisson, 2009)

• Is there such a thing as the ‘white working class’?• Groups like the EDL appear to be a vehicle for disgruntlement

and scapegoating around profoundly negative economic and social change, as experienced by some (white) working class communities and failure of mainstream politics to acknowledge class inequality (Busher, forthcoming)

• These issues are challenging for those continuing to hold to an ‘anti-racist’ paradigm – are such political manifestations a product of ruling elite manipulation, or of concrete community social and economic experience of threat and competition?

British Policy Responses

• Post-2001 policy shift towards community cohesion and ‘integration’ is partially a discursive acknowledgement that ‘multiculturalism’ is an increasingly problematic policy term, especially for sections of the white majority (‘rights for whites’?)

• Parallel developments, driven by similar feelings amongst parts of the white majority in other European states , such as The Netherlands (Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2009)

• The British shift towards ‘cohesion’ was even-handed (Cantle, 2001) and is NOT assimilationism (Thomas, 2011) – instead, in practice, it has sought to augment existing identities with stronger forms of commonality, so inherently working with ‘cooler’ (McGhee, 2008) and more intersectional conceptions of ‘identity’ in a society of increasing ‘super diversity’, but also a continuing ‘multiculturalism’ at ground level

Further analysis of Community Cohesion policy

British Policy Responses

• Policy discourse and operation around cohesion and Integration continues to focus overwhelmingly on Muslims, although white people are clearly more ‘segregated’ (Finney and Simpson, 2009)

• Research in West Yorkshire shows that this in itself continues to create resentment at their lack of inclusion in some white communities (Monro et al, 2010) – a real problem of civic society capacity within white communities?

• JRF (Beider, 2011) report on need to respond to white working class communities and their lack of engagement by focussing on local issues and dynamics – the mundane, rather than the exceptional, and in ways that inherently de-racialise understandings of social realities

British Policy Responses

• Good local Cohesion practice has tried to augment existing identities with stronger commonality, but recent research in Oldham and Rochdale finds white young people are considerably more resistant to and pessimistic about diversity (Thomas and Sanderson, 2013, ’Crossing the line: White young people and Community Cohesion’, in Critical Social Policy, 33:1, 160-180):

• 60% of the group self-identifying as Muslim (n=76) agreed that ‘Britain is a stronger country because of difference’ as opposed to 23% white young people (n=172). In response to the converse statement that ‘Britain is stronger if groups live separately’, only 16% of Muslims definitely agreed and 71% definitely disagreed, as opposed to 36% of the white group definitely agreeing and 30% definitely disagreeing, so displaying a small but significant white majority in support of the idea that even greater ethnic segregation would be better for all concerned

British Policy Responses

• Prevent has overwhelmingly focussed on Muslims as an entire community, ignoring the cohesion analysis of how oppositional identities harden and that of ‘cumulative extremism’ (Eatwell, 2006)

• It has continued to ignore far-right violent extremism, re-stating this just weeks before the Norway massacre (HMG, 2011)

• The short-lived Labour ‘Connecting Communities’ programme showed potential to extend Prevent and cohesion work to white communities (‘communities under pressure’!). To be effective, Prevent needs a cross-community focus on building youth engagement with democratic debates and processes (Thomas, 2012 , ‘Responding to the threat of violent extremism: Failing to Prevent’)

The Challenge of Englishness?

• Clear evidence that non-white ethnic minorities, even marginalised Muslim youth, are positive about Britishness, but see ‘Englishness’ as ‘white people’. In parallel, evidence that some marginalised white communities have a racialised and exclusionary conception of their own ‘Englishness’ (Thomas and Sanderson, 2011)

• A clear failure of policy and political discourse to engage with ‘Englishness’ and develop an inclusive and multi-cultural Englishness (Bragg, 2006; Perryman, 2008; Aughey and Berberich, 2012)

• A Scottish vote for independence in September 2014 could leave us with an ‘Englishness’ viewed as racialised and exclusionary by large sections of both the ‘white’ and non-white population

Contact details

Paul Thomas

School of Education and Professional Development,

University of Huddersfield

d.p.thomas@hud.ac.uk

References

• Beider, H. (2011) Community Cohesion: The views of white working class communities, York: JRF

• Bonnett, A. (2000) White Identities: historical and International perspectives, London: Prentice Hall

• Cantle, T. (2001) Community Cohesion- A Report of the Independent Review Team, London: Home Office

• Eatwell, R. (2006) ‘Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in contemporary Britain’, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 77:2, pp. 204-216

• Finney, N. and Simpson, L. (2009) ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation’? Challenging Myths about Race and Migration, Bristol: Policy Press

• Hewitt, R. (2005) White Backlash: The politics of Multiculturalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Monro, S. ,Razaq, U. , Thomas, P. and Mycock, A (2010) Regional Improvement & Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) Community Cohesion (PREVENT) Pilot : A report prepared for Local Government Yorkshire and Humber, Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield

• Nayak, A. (1999) ‘White English Ethnicities; Racism, anti-racism and student perspectives’ Race, Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.177-202

• Preston, J. (2007) Whiteness and class in education, Dordrecht: Springer

• Sniderman, P. and Hagendoorn, L. (2009) When ways of life collide: Multiculturalism and its discontents in The Netherlands, Woodstock: Princeton University Press

• Svenisson, K.P. (2009) ‘The White working class and multiculturalism: Is there space for a progressive agenda?’ in Runneymede Trust, Who cares about the White working class?