Tory challenges ‘political correctness’ of anti-discrimination measures.

(c) Philip Davies

Conservative MP Philip Davies, parliamentary spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, has written a series of 19 letters to the Equality and Human Rights Commission concerning ‘political correctness’.  Davies’ letters are a series of questions ranging from whether it’s offensive to “black up” or not to whether a “Miss White Britain” or “White Power List” would be racist.

The main thrust of Davies’ letters seem to be that anti-discrimination laws are so nonsensical that the very asking of his questions exposes their incoherence, needing no more explanation. Of course, for those who support anti-discrimination legislation, it is equally impossible to see the point of Davies’ questions.

The only possible response is to try to imagine what Davies’ problem might be. His most recent: “Why it is so offensive to black up your face?…  I have never understood this…” might be taken as sincere confusion. Perhaps Davies is simply unaware of the history of  ‘blacking up’  as a part of minstrel shows, where the prime ‘joke’ is ‘black’ people behaving as simple-minded rogues, with a permanent child-like grin. Or maybe the question is simply why ‘blacking up’ now is offensive. Surely this too is obvious though? It’s not hard to imagine the harm of ‘blacking up’ even for sincerely non-racist reasons. Even an act that does not directly offend anyone can have intensely undesirable effects by altering attitudes and changing social norms. Equality legislation is not about singling out those guilty of the ‘sin’ of being offensive, it’s about a framework of social expectation which produces a positive environment for those who would otherwise be disadvantaged.

Davies’ other questions concern the question of how white only organisations (like the BNP) are discriminatory but black police associations are acceptable, and why women only fiction prizes are acceptable but not all male prizes? Allied with the previous misconception of legislation as concerning ‘guilty racists’ rather than simply social effects of policy, these questions also show a failure or refusal to understand that the differing acceptability of actions in a society is contextual. All-female writing prizes were instigated because of an ongoing tendency for awards to favour male writers, setting women apart allowed a focus on the best of their work. Excluding women from major (male-dominated) competitions, conversely, would simply entrench an antecedent bias. The difference in effect between the BNP’s all-white policy, as opposed to black support groups being all black, is even more obvious. In arguing that context matters, I am not merely asserting that ‘these are OK’ whereas ‘those are not’. The combined effect of my two points is that differing contexts (such as whether a dominant group is excluding a disadvantaged one from access to resources) can produce differing effects and it is for this reason that their acceptability may differ.

The alternative argument of the anti-PC set is to call for “fairness, not special treatment.” This is to miss the point that anti-discrimination laws are fair, they merely account for differences and disadvantages in judging what is fair. To ignore this point is like a child’s retort that if she gets to go then I should get to, ignoring the fact that she is 18 and you are 8. The ‘fairness’ championed by anti-PC campaigners is of this narrow, purely formal sort. Simply asking: “If they can, why can’t we?” as Davies does, is not mere naivety, but serves to misrepresent the nature and purpose of efforts to protect fair and equal enjoyment of human rights.