gravalicious

“Psychiatry comes closest to the police among medical specialties in pursuing practices and procedures that explicitly discriminate against minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom. The disproportionate numbers of black people in psychiatric detention,[2] the overdiagnosis of schizophrenia in black people, the exclusion of black people from the “softer end” of psychiatric practice because they are deemed psychologically unsuitable,[3] the alienation of black patients from mainstream psychiatric services,[4] the general lack of trust and extreme scepticism about psychiatric practice that is evident in minority communities, and the professional preoccupation with theories of ethnic vulnerability or inferiority, which continue to echo the sentiments of 19th century race science,[5] all confirm the similarities between policing the black communities and controlling their minds. Unlike in other branches of medicine, the racial bias in treatment and outcome that is evident in psychiatry cannot be understood fully by an examination of procedures, practice, or policy governing service delivery. The theories and assumptions of psychiatry are problematic when they are applied to people who are socially excluded or culturally marginalised. Black communities in the United Kingdom will continue to bear the brunt of such a professional bias as long as the coordinates of psychiatric practice remain culturally fixed.”

“Even before her appointment as the British Prime Minister in May 1979, Margaret Hilda Thatcher was already courting controversy. As Secretary of State for education from 1970 to 1974, she was responsible for revoking free milk for children of infant and primary school age, an act which singled her out for extreme criticism. However, this was to be the beginning of a series of hard-line legislative measures which was to litter her three terms, and 11 year premiership. Her legacy will be remembered by many for the sheer number of violent civil disorders that the country witnessed under her watch. In addition, the new powers that Thatcher had given to the police, changed the face of British policing beyond all recognition. With Thatcher as Prime Minister the fabled golden age of British policing ended (Newburn, 1990). Community policing and policing by consensus was curtailed particularly within notorious urban environs such as Newham. With her implementation of target hardening, and deployment of military trained personnel into key positions of police authority, the cohesive and co-operative relationship between communities and law enforcement was destined to break down. The police were no longer a service in place to serve the public. Under Thatcher, they became a quasi-military organisation, in place to keep the working class subservient. One of the results of the militarization of the police was the inevitable criminalisation of black communities. In 1987 Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kenneth Newman outrageously insisted that areas inhabited by ‘ethnics’ should be policed as if policing terrorists [1]:[“]There is one thing that policing terrorism has in common with policing ethnic ghettoes. Policing activities must be accomplished by social and economic measures, and the policies of the police and civil administration must be coordinated with a coherent strategy[”](Metropolitan Police Commissioner Newman 1987 cited in Rose, 1992 : 37).”

“Once the right-wing press had established its misinterpretation of the Macpherson report as being about national identity, it had already effectively secured its victory. The debate had been shifted away from questions of justice and political rights and on to the terrain of cultural rights. The report was seen as a call to the authorities to give more consideration to race in policing, education and society generally[56]. But if racism is the result of institutions ignoring the specificity of particular racial groups, then surely, the Right argued, the most discriminated against group of all are the English, for they can claim no special privileges. We are now in familiar New Right territory. Ever since Powell's 1968 prediction that `‘in this country in fifteen or twenty years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man' and Thatcher’s 1978 comments that the English might feel `'rather swamped’ in their own country, we have been familiar with the argument that a liberal elite has turned England into a multicultural society by allowing mass black immigration and then giving the newcomers a whole host of minority rights[57]. As Littlejohn put it in the Sun, `'no-one ever voted for a multi-cultural society’[58]. This argument goes on to claim that, as a result of this process, the English no longer feel at home in their own country. What makes these new nationalist appeals more dangerous at the present time is their ability to connect with a wider set of fears and anxieties, centred on a general sense of loss of control - whether through devolution, through the ceding of symbols of sovereignty (like the pound) to European union, or through the hectic pace of globalisation. And each of these different developments appears as another sign of the decline of Englishness and the eradication of old certainties. Whereas in the early 1900s, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories focused on Jewish bankers, today insecurities stemming from the transformation to a global economy are projected on to imaginary plots by German officials to control Europe via the European Central Bank. Trade disputes over beef and German take-overs of British firms can all get dragged into this logic. Likewise, the creation of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments gets interpreted as another insult to the downtrodden English.”

“The key points to bear in mind here are as follows. First, institutional racism does not require overtly racist individuals: it conceives racism as arising through social processes - a difficult idea for the English imagination since (as a former Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, once gloriously observed) the latter has no concept of ‘the social’ which cannot be reduced to 'individuals and their families’. Second, institutional racism has clearly taken the argument that culture regulates conduct. These behavioural norms are carried within the occupational culture of an organization, and transmitted by informal and implicit ways through its routine, everyday practices as an indestructible part of the institutional habitus. Racism of this kind becomes routine, habitual, taken for granted. It is far more effective in socializing the practice of officers than formal training or regulations. (The arduous reporting of racial incidents or domestic violence, by contrast, is defined, in the occupational culture, as 'rubbish’ policing.) And it blocks a professional reflexivity from ever coming into operation. Far from being seen as exceptional, this 'unwitting’ type of racism becomes part of the very working definition of 'normal police work’. It is perfectly possible for young officers - whose promotion up the ranks and acceptance as 'regular cops’ depends on imbibing as an unreflected practice this folk-wisdom of 'how to be a good copper' - to love reggae, eat Vindaloo curry every Saturday night, have a few black friends, and still think that 'good policing’ requires them to act on the assumption that a young black man carrying a holdall at a bus-stop after dark almost certainly just committed a robbery and should be 'sussed’ - stopped and searched. This is certainly not the only kind of racism which operates in our institutions, but it is one, distinct variety and, precisely because of its institutional embeddedness, one of the most difficult to identify and dismantle.”