Week Sixteen - Race, Ethnicity and Victimisation

Question 1

What sort of category is race?

Answer 1

Biological Category

Question 2

What sort of category is ethnicity?

Answer 2

Cultural Category

Question 3

What is racism?

Answer 3

Racism: opinions, attitudes and practices that have the “consequence of treating people in a discriminatory manner on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin” (Newburn, 2013: 796)

Question 4

What was the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (s.95)?

Answer 4

Home Secretary has to produce statistics that enable those involved in the CJS to avoid discrimination on grounds of race, sex or other improper grounds.

Question 5

General…

Answer 5

Questions about race as a valid biological construct

Categories – ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘Asian’, mixed’, ‘other’ – used for recording (Census data etc), but also problematic

Question 6

European Enlightenment?

Answer 6

Other races and cultures seen as inferior

Question 7

Slavery…

Answer 7

Dehumanization legitimised slavery

Slavery ended 1833 (1807 in Britain), but racist thinking (‘raciology’, Gilroy, 2000) embedded in colonial policies across Africa, Asia and the West Indies

Question 8

Lombroso (1876)…

Answer 8

Lombroso (1876): “many of the characteristics found in savages, and in the colored races, are also to be found in habitual delinquents”.

Question 9

Racist ideas led to institutionalized practices in many parts of world…

Answer 9

Racist ideas led to institutionalized practices in many parts of world – white supremacy, racial purification and systems to exclude the arrival or settlement on non-whites

White Australia policy; apartheid in South Africa

Racial segregation in US; Nazi regime in Germany

Question 10

Post 2nd World War

Migration/Immigration

Answer 10

International migration encouraged due to labour shortages and poor economic climate in the ‘colonies’

Immigration occurred in climate of hostility and superiority

1960’s – ‘influx’ of immigrants – political climate more overtly hostile and racist

Question 11

Enoch Powell…

Answer 11

Enoch Powell’s famous ‘rivers of blood speech’ – predicted racial disharmony and concerns about racial mixing

Question 12

What is the definition of a racist incident?

Answer 12

…any incident, including any crime which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person whereas a racially or religiously aggravated offence refers to committing an offence based on the victim’s membership (or presumed membership) of a racial or religious group or where the offender is motivated by hostility towards members of a racial or religious group

Question 13

Graph data…

Answer 13

Adults from self-identified mixed, black and Asian ethnic groups were more at risk of being a victim of personal crime than adults from the white ethnic group.

Homicide victims disproportionately black and Asian

Killing tend to be intra-ethnic: 78% black victims killed by someone from same ethnic group (Smith et al, 2011)

Question 14

Victimization…

Answer 14

Race hate - a crime the police will not solve

Fewer than 2/10 allegations followed up by police

Proportion of hate crimes being recorded by police in England and Wales has fallen by almost 20 per cent in the past three years.

Reporting vs recording

PCCs and the pressure to report downward trends

Harassment and violent attack not just a recent thing (Fryer, P. 1984)

But fairly recent politicized issue (1981 – Brixton and New Cross fire)