Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Nigel Biggar: Was The British Empire Good?

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Nigel Biggar: Was The British Empire Good? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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Here's a doozy for you.
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An idea so dangerous.
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Others dare not touch it.
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It's that the British Empire was on the whole good thing,
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and colonialism is okay.
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What?
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What?
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How dare you even suggest such a thing?
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I don't know if I agree with this.
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In fact, I'm pretty sure that I don't,
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but it's worth wrestling with why I don't,
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and there's no one better to do that with than the man
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who is perhaps Britain's foremost exponent of what's supposedly
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being an apologist for colonialism.
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I ask him about that, and you can hear his response
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about whether or not he characterizes himself that way.
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Nigel Bigger is a professor at the University of Oxford.
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At that little place, don't know if you've heard of it.
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It's quite old.
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It's terribly nice.
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And he led an interdisciplinary project,
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a five-year project starting in 2017,
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to quote, test the ethical critiques of empire
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against the historical facts of empire,
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and talk about writing books that kick the hornet's nest.
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I mean, his book is called Colonialism a Moral Reckoning.
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He has another book called What's Wrong with Rights.
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You know, rights, those pesky little things.
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And another book called In Defense of War.
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I mean, if you thought Josh Zeps liked kicking hornets' nests,
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why do you get a load of Nigel Bigger?
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So big questions of race, colonialism, power, empire,
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indigenous rights, and all the rest, please enjoy.
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And what I know only, is because of Nigel Bigger.
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I love it, I talk to you, thank you for being here.
1:53
I've heard you describe there's an apologist for Colonialism,
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which to some people's ears sounds a bit like being a cheerleader
2:00
for rape or something.
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Is that what you are?
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To describe me as an apologist is more misleading than it is truthful.
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Because it makes me sound as if I justify everything
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that happened under the colonial governments, which I don't.
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I've had one person describe the experience of reading
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my book Colonialism a Moral Reckoning and saying
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that he never knew that half of the bad things
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that happened under the British Empire that he learnt there.
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So anyone who says that I whitewash imperial history
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is not telling the truth or else just hadn't read the book.
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But I'm an apologist in the sense that I do not regard Empire
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generally as necessarily an illegitimate form of government.
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And I do not regard the British Empire
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as a simple listening of racism, exploitation and oppression.
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So the truth is I'm a semi-apologist.
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When you say that you don't regard Empire as illegitimate,
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is that any empire or the British Empire?
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Oh, no, no, I'm saying in a very general sense
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that Empire as a form of political organization
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can sometimes be legitimate.
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What do we mean by empire in that sense, Nigel?
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A political organization in which some people,
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which began with some people dominating other peoples,
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that can be politically legitimate,
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insofar as the people who are dominated
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for a variety of reasons, except and cooperate
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with the imperial government.
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So to give a concrete example, Josh,
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in the 1950s, unknown millions, probably a million,
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possibly two million Chinese people,
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voluntarily left the mainland of China,
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which was then involved in civil war,
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and entered the undemocratic British colony of Hong Kong.
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They volunteered to do that.
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Because, although Hong Kong's not democratic,
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it enjoyed the rule of law, it enjoyed political stability,
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which compared to what was an offer on Chinese mainland,
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at least to allow people the conditions
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in which to build lives and to flourish.
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So even though imperial government was not,
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at least in the British case, was not democratic
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until right toward the very end,
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it could sometimes provide sufficiently the legitimate government.
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So you're tripping me up a bit, Nigel,
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with the word domination, probably,
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which we should probably dig into,
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because domination to me, to my moral intuition,
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just seems antithetical to human flourishing and autonomy.
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But of course, Hong Kong, in comparison to mainland China,
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was a place in which you were much freer to do a whole range of things.
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You were very to do almost everything,
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except for choose who was administering the state above you.
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If that's all a mean by domination,
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don't feel like we're sort of abusing the word domination,
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a bit, aren't we?
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Well, in other words, what I'm saying is,
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there were all kinds of aspects to the domination
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of the British Empire under the Raj in India
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that people would regard as being morally problematic
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that didn't exist in the case of Hong Kong.
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So to use the same word for both sounds like a shell game.
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So first of all, I'm going to try and redeem the word domination,
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because there are certain circumstances, it seems to me,
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where we approve of domination.
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So in war, we approve of the good guys,
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dominating the bad guys.
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We approve most of us in the Anglo-Saxon world,
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at least, approve of the fact that the Allies dominated Nazi Germany.
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So there are some senses in which domination,
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I think, makes perfect moral sense,
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and it's a good thing.
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Now, there are different kinds of domination.
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So in Hong Kong, but both in Hong Kong and in India,
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you have British people who are in charge of the top.
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But you have considerable buy-in for a variety of reasons
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from Indians and Hong Kong Chinese.
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Let's focus on India.
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In 1900, in India, there were roughly 300 million Indians,
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and there were a total of 164,000 Brits,
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which amounts to the current population of Oxford.
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Now, yes, of course, like any state,
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the Raj depended on force or the threat of force,
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but the Raj, like most of the colonial empire in Africa,
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could not have survived without widespread buy-in
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from local elites and local people.
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So to describe the impact...
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But isn't that sort of...
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Just to pause there, sorry to interrupt,
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isn't that sort of like primer-facing
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true of every dictatorship?
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I mean, in the sense that if there was sufficient unrest,
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then the dictatorship would not be able to survive,
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I mean, unless it's a deeply authoritarian,
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totalitarian state.
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Yeah, well, it's true of any state,
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a democratic or authoritarian,
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if the state doesn't enjoy sufficient popular support,
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it won't survive.
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But...
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It doesn't outline the case for democracy altogether,
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because you can just say whether it's democratic
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or undemocratic, or obviously the people like it,
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otherwise they'd be rising up and overthrowing it.
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So by the mere existence of a state, that's proof that it's okay.
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No, what's required for a legitimate state
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is that it serves the interests of the people.
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Of course, the people comprise different groups of people,
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not all of whom can be pleased all over the time,
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but a legitimate government needs to look after the interests
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of all the people according to its best judgment.
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And in order to do that, any government,
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whether it's democratic or not,
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needs to be sensitive to what the people need,
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and there needs to be sufficient communication
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between the bottom and the top for it to do that.
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Now, democratic popular democracy is one way of doing that,
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maybe even the best way of doing that.
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But governments before the era of master democracy,
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which was basically the early 20th century for most of us,
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maybe the late 19th century, governments before then,
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these are ways of being more or less sensitive
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to popular needs.
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And if you don't believe that, I mean,
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I guess I find incredible the idea
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that sufficient political justice never hit the earth
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until the late 19th century or the 20th century,
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that no government before the era of popular democracy
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was legitimate.
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So I think popular democracy,
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well, even without going back in time,
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I mean, I think everyone can think of examples
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right now in the world where you would rather live
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on the certain authoritarian states than certain democracies.
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I mean, my cousin lives in Singapore,
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and she has a superior life to if she was living in,
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I could name a dozen, quote unquote, democracies,
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where she would live in fear of life than in Singapore.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So I guess there's different kinds of authoritarian.
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I mean, I mean, I imagine living in North Korea
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is living in a certain kind of authoritarianism,
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but the authoritarianism, the authoritarian government
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in Singapore is not quite of the same thing.
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So we need to be discriminated here.
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As I understand it, and you will know more than I do, Josh.
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Singapore does enjoy the rule of law,
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albeit law that we might,
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that some of us in the West might regard us as more
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exacting or impermissive than we would like,
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but still law and the rule of law is important.
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So hang on, take me back to,
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we're stirring up, we're stirring along.
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Domination was where I was.
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Or domination.
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Well, domination, I think, yeah.
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Like, because I understand that I understand
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that sometimes domination is where, if it's in war,
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we want the Allies to dominate the Nazis,
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but to me, my intuition is that the reason why domination
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is acceptable in war is because there's a necessary component
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that's going on there, which is the immorality of the dominated.
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And if you remove the immorality of the dominated,
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it strikes me as difficult to justify domination over a people.
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Yeah, yeah, except I think we in liberal democracies
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like the tale of equality and it's not an entirely a false tale,
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but let's be frank, some people in democracies have more power
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than others, some classes have more power,
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there's such a thing as a ruling class.
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So there are illipologies of power,
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which we try and compensate for in various ways,
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but believe in democracies, even liberal democracies,
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some people dominate more than others.
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I guess I regard domination in one form or another
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as a factor of life, whether within a state or between states,
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the moral demand is to use superior power well rather than badly.
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But I think dominance is a factor of life.
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I mean, there was a time when 100 years ago,
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I guess when the Brits dominated the world,
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now, until very recently, the Americans laid
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and my generation and my parents' generation of Brits
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had to get used to being dominated culturally
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and in other ways by America.
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I don't regard that as wrong.
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I regard it as a factor of life,
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and I think in some respects, the US has dominated
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much better than some alternatives.
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Right, but it's a bit cute, isn't it,
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I suggest that having to endure
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Seinfeld and American reality television
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is akin to having an army swoop in
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and take over the machinery of state and reorganize your society?
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It's only true, if you think the one word means one thing.
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I mean, words mean different things in a different context.
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I'm just saying, I guess all I'm,
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maybe my argument with Josh is that let's stop thinking
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of domination as referring to one thing only,
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namely, illegitimate oppression.
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I can refer to a number of things,
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including illegitimate oppression.
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I agree with that.
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So we have to think about when domination is unjustified.
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We take.
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Yeah, okay, so let's talk about that.
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Yeah, no, of course.
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Let's talk specifically about the British Empire there,
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and I suppose the most obvious example is India.
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I mean, I noticed when the Queen died,
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there was this provoked a reckoning at my,
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soon to be former employer,
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the public broadcaster here in Australia,
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between the instinct of the public broadcaster
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to engage in all of the forning pomp
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that one would expect when the monarch dies,
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versus a generation of younger people.
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Predominantly, I would say,
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Indian Australians and indigenous Australians
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who felt really conflicted about what we were celebrating exactly
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and that the monarch was a representative of an empire
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that had systematically bulldozed over their civilizations
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and steamrolled over the interests of their ancestors
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and stolen their land and stolen their wealth
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and imposed its vision of the world upon them
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and stripped away its resources and on and on and on, right?
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And I wonder what you make of that critique.
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Are they misguided?
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Yes.
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I mean, to us right,
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the shrifty we've just given of British empires of travesty, frankly.
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It's a travesty which contains elements of truth.
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So yes, sticking to India,
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there were periods of the British taking control by means of conquest.
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But please let's put this in context.
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In the past, particularly in the 18th century,
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which is what we're talking about,
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all sought to be more conquering other peoples
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for good reasons and bad reasons,
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or just because they felt like it.
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So let's, let's, if we disapprove of conquest,
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let's disapprove of it fairly
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and spread the blame across not just white people
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or British people, but across all peoples.
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In the 1820s, there's a lose in South Africa.
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It did a lot of conquering
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and other African peoples didn't appreciate it.
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Even the Mara have done conquering over their own.
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So we live in a very different world.
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As it one thing we have to do, Josh,
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is to imagine a world in conditions very different from ours.
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And it may puzzle us.
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It may puzzle us that slavery was so widespread
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up until the 1800s, even after the 1800s.
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It may puzzle us that people were such it,
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so into slavery on every continent,
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people of every skin color.
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But we have to reckon with that
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and to figure out why people in the past
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were so different. Anyway, so the point is, yes, indeed,
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the Brits in that period, along with their own us,
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were often into conquest,
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and sometimes the conquests were unjustified.
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But to describe the entry of the East India Company
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into India in the 1700s,
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simply in terms of the Brits coming along,
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conquering poor Indians and raping and pillaging them
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is a travesty because the East India Company
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landed in India first of all to trade.
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That was their business to make money.
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What happened was that when the East India Company
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was in northern India, when the Mughal Empire
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had disintegrated, there was widespread war
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affair between different Indian kingdoms or groups.
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As is often the case in such a case,
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one set of Indians invited the East India Company
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to help it against another set of Indians
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and because the East India Company found peace
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much more favorable to trade than warfare,
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it had an interest in settling the dispute.
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So it ended up allowing itself to other Indians
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and together they triumphed and as a reward,
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the East India Company was granted ports and lands, et cetera.
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So it wasn't simply a case of the Brits
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entering India and conquering for themselves,
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initially, like most trading companies,
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the East India Company had no interest in taking on
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responsibilities and the expense of governing territory,
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but one thing led to another.
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So, and then, yes, I'm going to go back again
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to the point about the ranch being unsustainable
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unless for a variety of reasons,
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lots of Indians either acquiesce to the net
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or positively cooperate with it.
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And I've just given you one instance in the early 1750s,
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60s, when for reasons of their own,
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Indians, particularly Indian merchants,
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had good reason to cooperate with the East India Company
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because it was in their interests.
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So I think for that's one example
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of how the history is actually more complicated
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than the simple colonial oppressor
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versus victimized or oppressed.
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Yeah, I'm not sure how much I buy the consent
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of the dominated argument, just in the sense
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that the bulk of, I mean, if I'm a farmer in Punjab
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and I just live in a hut and along comes a British,
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you know, officer in a shiny outfit with a gun,
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what is that dynamic?
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Well, what am I supposed to do to articulate my displeasure
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with the fact that now I'm being ruled by this foreign empire?
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How can my acquiescence be regarded as consent?
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Bob, but you're good as you are a consistent liberal, aren't you?
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Two things, you're all right.
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One is, you know, for most of history,
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as it were, explicit consent,
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really wasn't part of government.
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And I guess consent would often take the form acquiescence.
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And you're poor Indian peasant.
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Let's be clear here,
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have been ruled over by other people for millennia.
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If it wasn't the Brits, before that it was the Mughals,
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before that it was someone else.
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So your peasant is usually being ruled over by other people.
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And even if British rule was no more legitimate
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than the Mughal rule or the rule of a local Indian prince,
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it was no worse.
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And actually, in the late 1780s,
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the British, the East India Company government,
20:22
sought to improve the lot of rural peasants
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by making it possible for peasants to own their own land.
20:33
Now for reasons I'm not going to,
20:35
that scheme was not successful if it was kind of productive.
20:40
The intention was to give peasants who,
20:43
here the two have been working out the people's land,
20:45
an interest in their own land and their own property.
20:48
It was well-intentioned.
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They all think about the poor peasants
20:55
is some poor Indian peasants never saw Brit.
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There's a story I read recently.
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During the war against the Japanese
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in North East India and Burma of British officers
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coming across people, these, I guess,
21:15
will help people kill tribesmen rather than rule peasants.
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There was no idea that the British were ruling India at all.
21:23
Never heard of it, never heard of them.
21:25
So lots of Indians will never come across the British at all.
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How do you feel about, how watertight do you think
21:34
the everyone was doing at argumentiers?
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I'm a bit torn on this.
21:37
It came up quite a lot in Australia
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over the course of the referendum,
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which we had recently,
21:43
into where not the country should create a first nation's body
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to parliament and advisory body.
21:48
And I heard some conservatives who were opposing
21:54
the motion making the case that, look,
21:57
I mean, Australia was going to get conquered.
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I mean, there's just no way that you are going to have
22:02
a landmass this size in perpetuity
22:05
with the oldest civilization in the world living on it
22:09
without it crashing into modernity at some stage.
22:12
And who do you want conquering you?
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Probably the Brits are the best of the lot.
22:17
If you look at the other countries that were conquered
22:21
by the Spanish or the Portuguese,
22:23
Australia is probably doing arguably better than any country
22:26
in the world as a former colonial subject.
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And so, you know, this is about as good as one
22:34
could ever expect history to have gone
22:35
for First Nations people.
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And there's just something a little bit smelly about that
22:43
in the sense that I can imagine, you know,
22:45
someone saying, you know,
22:46
if you're in a high crime,
22:48
lawless environment and everybody's stealing everything,
22:52
or you're in a mob situation, a feeding frenzy,
22:55
you can imagine that same rationale,
22:56
everyone's doing it, someone's going to steal
22:59
the stuff out of the shop.
23:00
Why can't I take the TV out of the shop?
23:03
If I don't do it, someone else is going to do it.
23:05
Yeah, but you did it.
23:07
You did it, owner.
23:09
Yeah, yeah.
23:12
Okay.
23:17
I think, you know, the argument that modernity
23:20
was going to hit Australia sooner or later,
23:22
is absolutely true.
23:23
If you haven't been the Brits,
23:24
it would have been the Americans of the French.
23:27
So it would have happened.
23:28
And let's be frank, if the tables have been turned,
23:32
if Aboriginals or Native Americans
23:36
had invented maritime technology
23:39
that would have carried them to the far sides of the world,
23:42
they would have done it.
23:45
And if I'm rightly,
23:46
I mean, the people who ended up occupying New Zealand
23:50
before Europeans came, they came from elsewhere
23:53
and they came by boat.
23:55
And I gather that when Marie landed in the Chagos Islands,
24:00
they massacred the inhabitants, right?
24:02
So a lot of migration going on, it was going to hit.
24:06
But, you know, the terms in which you talk Josh
24:09
are so prejudicial, you do a lot of conquests
24:12
from conquering and robbing and seabing.
24:15
That happened, but it doesn't really do the,
24:20
the particulars of history justice.
24:23
It doesn't, it doesn't mean injustice.
24:25
You know, why did Brits first turn up
24:30
on the coast of Australia in the 1760s?
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Well, it was James Cook,
24:35
among other things, exploring scientific exploration.
24:41
And then, and then in the 1780s, why did Brits return?
24:45
Well, it was transporting convicts.
24:47
And yes, we disapprove of that, but at the time,
24:52
at the time, the alternative to being transported
24:54
to being hanged.
24:56
So, relative to what was practiced then,
25:00
being transported to Australia was a better deal,
25:02
at least for those being transported.
25:04
Did the people, did the Brits,
25:06
the turn up in Australia, intend to conquer?
25:10
Did they intend to save?
25:14
This is disputed matter, but to them,
25:17
much of the land looked vacant.
25:20
They didn't understand that land that looked vacant
25:23
might actually have been the traditional gathering grounds
25:28
of Aboriginal peoples, so there was misunderstanding.
25:32
And yes, yes, as things developed,
25:34
as more settlers came, there was instances of murder,
25:44
even mass murder and instances of the seizure of land
25:48
that came to, but to talk about all this,
25:51
simply in terms of conquest and seething,
25:53
is far too simplistic, I think.
25:57
But go back to a regional point,
25:59
everyone was doing it.
26:01
Yes, of what everyone was doing it.
26:03
And, but everyone was doing lots of things.
26:06
Everyone was exploring, everyone was emigrating.
26:11
Everyone was trying to find a new life in a new place.
26:16
And everyone was trying to make sense
26:19
of the native peoples they found,
26:20
sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes they failed.
26:24
Sometimes they kept critisers, sometimes they broke them.
26:29
The language of conquest and seftis is far too simplistic, I think.
26:36
Is it fair enough from the perspective of the people
26:38
who were living on the land where the empirical power landed?
26:48
From their perspective.
26:51
Okay, so from their perspective,
26:55
what happened was firstly tragic.
26:58
A lot of tragedy in human affairs.
27:02
As I said, when Brits arrived,
27:04
they didn't plan to decimate the nature of peoples.
27:09
But given their overwhelming power,
27:11
and given the relative,
27:14
given the relative weakness of the people,
27:20
that Aboriginal peoples far weaker than in Southern Africa
27:24
or even North America,
27:27
they were going to be dominated.
27:29
And so first of all, it's tragic.
27:32
Secondly, yes, they often suffered injustice.
27:34
But now those who survived get to live in one of the most prosperous
27:40
and most liberal countries on earth.
27:43
So I can imagine Aboriginal peoples having a variety of different views
27:48
and I did have the privilege of being interviewed
27:51
alongside Jacinta Price of whom you will know well.
27:55
And you made her agree with her views,
27:57
but she is an Aboriginal.
27:58
And she can speak with at least the authority of one Aboriginal voice.
28:05
Yes, for people who don't know,
28:07
she's an Australian senator and indigenous senator who,
28:12
she opposed the referendum.
28:13
She would regard her as being broadly opposed
28:17
to the sort of politically correct version of indigenous,
28:20
you know, perhaps paternalistic white indigenous uplift.
28:25
Yeah, and I mean, she, you know, she,
28:27
well, I spoke to her at least, she, she's less nuanced than I am.
28:32
I mean, I admit that that bad things happen
28:36
to Aboriginal peoples and the 1800s.
28:39
I've not heard her admit to that.
28:40
I mean, she might admit that.
28:42
But her main focus is on the fact that she has Aboriginal Australian
28:45
as far better off than a grandparents or great, great grandparents.
28:49
It's a very, yeah, I mean, so what do you,
28:51
what do you make Nigel of the moral crisis really that is,
28:57
I think keenly felt in Australia and Canada and New Zealand,
29:02
less so in the United States because I think their relationship
29:05
to First Nations people is, is swamped by the crime of slavery
29:09
and their relationship to the African American population.
29:12
But certainly in the, in the other Anglophone countries of empire,
29:18
the relationship between the gap that what we call the gap in outcomes
29:24
of life expectancy and health and so on,
29:27
between white people and First Nations people
29:30
is a source of constant national shame and conservatives
29:36
will occasionally whisper to each other, well, yes, there's a big gap,
29:39
but it was a lot bigger when we arrived.
29:42
And First Nations people are still doing much better off now
29:47
that they have access to vaccines and heart transplants
29:51
than they were in the 1700s.
29:55
Is that a fear moral calculus or is that stacking the deck?
29:59
I just noticed you, you, again, you paint the picture in man and key
30:03
in black and white terms, literally black and white, right?
30:05
So you've got, you know, Australian whites versus aboriginals
30:11
and the aboriginals are suffering disadvantage.
30:14
Josh, I'm not an expert in this and Duke Rick me,
30:17
but what I was told by Jacinto was, and I asked to this,
30:22
as in Canada, I assume in Australia, many people, at least,
30:29
who have aboriginal blood and of course there'll be lots of people
30:31
who have mixed blood.
30:33
Now are living in cities, and many of them will be professionals,
30:39
middle-class, just like you and me, I presume.
30:44
And the responsibility gave me was I think that, you know,
30:47
those living in remote parts of Australia,
30:51
like native Canadians living in reservations
30:54
in Western Canada, let's say, 20%, I think she said 20%.
31:01
So it's a minority.
31:03
So first of all, let's differentiate between whites and blacks here.
31:06
There are aboriginals in different conditions.
31:10
As indeed, there are no doubt poor whites in Australia too.
31:14
So I prefer not to think of disadvantage
31:20
in these starkly racialized terms.
31:23
I'm thinking partly of the British case
31:27
where people are left here talk of white versus black
31:32
and black suffer disadvantage because of white racism,
31:35
whereas the social scientific evidence
31:40
is that in Britain today, often Asians and, I mean,
31:47
Chinese and Indians, ethnically Chinese,
31:51
ethically Indian Britain's, there outcomes for them are very good.
31:56
Outcomes for West Africans are better than those for Caribbean Britain's
32:01
and guesses at the bottom, poor whites.
32:04
So let's, by all hits, my point here is unfair advantages
32:10
between different social groups.
32:13
Yes, that's a problem, and we need to address that problem.
32:18
And insofar as racism is the problem, we need to address it.
32:22
But there is, I believe, plenty of each
32:26
to suppose that the causes of disadvantage are various.
32:30
Now, as for the plight of aboriginals in very disadvantage,
32:38
communities in remote parts of Australia,
32:41
yes, that's a problem, and yes, it needs to be addressed.
32:45
But as I understand it, as in Canada, so in Australia,
32:48
attempts to address the social disadvantages
32:53
of these communities over decades have not been successful.
32:59
I know they're why, but it's not as, I understand it.
33:04
It's not as if there have been no attempts.
33:08
And as to what would do the trick, I don't know.
33:11
I do know that there are some in Canada who say
33:14
that the exceeding to the demands of some Native Canadians
33:23
for greater autonomy of Native Canadian peoples,
33:30
some of them very small, would result in those people
33:36
being even more isolated from mainstream urban,
33:40
Canadian society, and therefore even more disadvantaged.
33:43
Now, that seems to be plausible in the surface.
33:50
But I'm open to any solution that will actually address the real problem.
33:53
And the problem is always raised.
33:55
Yeah, I mean, this is a constant debate here as well,
33:58
and one finds over the course of the 20th century,
34:02
and the 21st century, this waxing and waning
34:05
between people, between a paternalistic approach
34:08
versus an approach of autonomy,
34:10
you know, the case can certainly be made
34:13
that giving more autonomy to communities
34:16
who are systemically broken and suffer extremely high rates
34:20
of alcoholism and domestic violence
34:23
does not empower them.
34:24
And if you want to empower them,
34:25
then you have to find ways of encouraging entrepreneurialism
34:30
and having essentially creating a tougher environment
34:34
in which the best characteristics of human ingenuity can flourish.
34:38
And that may be on counter to what the locals want you to do.
34:42
Yeah, that's certainly something
34:44
that is constantly cropping up here as well.
34:46
On the point about whether we should be looking at racial identity
34:51
as the measure of disadvantage,
34:54
I think that's an opportunity just to pick your brain a bit about what we mean
34:57
by racism, because I'm sympathetic to what you seem to be pointing to,
35:02
which is that we've somewhat lost sight of class
35:06
and disadvantage and economic hardship
35:08
as the crucial barometer, the light on the hill
35:11
that we need to to vanquish if we are liberals.
35:16
And also at the same time, I'm somewhat sympathetic to people
35:20
who say, well, yes, of course, if you were just
35:22
for all of the other factors that cause disadvantage,
35:26
like in the case of Australia,
35:28
if you're in regional and rural Australia,
35:30
you're going to have less access to health care
35:31
than if you live in a big city.
35:33
Well, First Nations people are more in regional Australia than white people are.
35:37
So there's that there's that yardstick,
35:39
you know, if you have a propensity towards having grown up in an alcoholic family,
35:44
then we can iron that one out or maybe you have diabetes in the family,
35:48
we can take that one out.
35:49
Maybe you didn't get a university education,
35:52
we can take out that factor.
35:54
You remove all of these factors and you go,
35:55
see, there's no racism in Australia,
35:57
because a white person of exactly the same conditions
36:01
fears no better than a black person of exactly the same conditions.
36:05
But to the person who now has a,
36:07
what they would regard as a more nuanced attitude towards what racism is
36:10
and who sees racism as a kind of systemic thing
36:13
that is institutionalized in the society and the culture
36:16
rather than just being people having an amosity towards people of another race.
36:20
They'll say, yeah, but the taking out the,
36:22
the fiddling with the dials of all of those variables
36:25
is what the systemic racism is.
36:26
The racism is the fact that every region
36:28
is a suffering from all of those things,
36:30
the white people don't, at higher rates.
36:35
Okay, I guess I'm,
36:37
you call it the end there, I'm kind of puzzling
36:39
as to what one of the word racism referring to.
36:42
So it doesn't refer to, um,
36:44
well, I think, I think, yeah, I think in the modern sense,
36:46
it is just a, a, I mean, and again,
36:50
you may sometimes mistake me for that saying things that I believe,
36:53
but I'm just trying to tease you out and make it interesting.
36:56
So I may or may not love them.
36:57
Um, you know, the, the claim would be that there,
37:00
that any significant and persistent, um,
37:04
racial difference between racial outcomes
37:07
is evidence of something, and that's something,
37:10
for that something, the word racism is, is as good a word as any.
37:13
Yeah, that's not good.
37:15
No, kind of that.
37:17
I do just for the sake of, for the sake of, um,
37:20
argument, Josh, I'm going to assume what you say you believe,
37:22
because I can't tell the difference.
37:23
So I know, yeah, that's all right.
37:26
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:27
But so I will address them through you.
37:28
Um, so let's, uh, so that that's not good enough.
37:32
You just put it sticking the label racism on,
37:35
on, on the cause of the difference in outcome,
37:39
because it doesn't explain anything.
37:40
Uh, uh, I mean, you know, um,
37:43
I've written about this recently that if you really care,
37:47
if you really care, uh, about correcting unfair disadvantage,
37:51
you will really care to get a precise grip on the cause of the problem.
37:57
And as you put it there, just taking the label racism on the cause,
38:02
it doesn't tell me anything.
38:04
Um, I need to know more precisely what it's causing,
38:06
or has caused the difference in outcome.
38:08
Now, here's, here's, um, an alternative,
38:12
at least through the facial alternative.
38:14
Um, 20, uh, uh, uh, uh, 30 years ago,
38:18
uh, when I was in Leeds and Northern England,
38:21
there was a black West Indian Britain lecturer,
38:25
uh, who let it be known that in his view,
38:28
um, one reason why, um,
38:31
Young West Indian Britons were not achieving as much as they should,
38:38
had to do with, um,
38:40
um, anti-educational subculture among Young West Indian
38:44
Britons.
38:44
Now, um, it may be that there's,
38:48
that behind that one can trace the anti-educational subculture to racial attitudes.
38:54
And I don't know what sense to make of racism,
38:56
except in terms of either, um, a, um,
39:01
a positive and active contempt of disparagement of other people,
39:08
or, um, it could be, uh,
39:11
an active neglect of other people that's, so,
39:14
so the wrong can either be positive or,
39:16
as, as a passable or active,
39:18
I don't care what it is.
39:20
Um, but it has to do with, with an attitude or disposition
39:24
on the part of, let's say white people
39:26
that has led them to neglect, uh,
39:29
non-white people, so that non-white people have to,
39:30
to survive, to something like that.
39:32
Um, um, so I, I guess I,
39:35
I, I want, I want to press for a more precise division of what racism is.
39:39
And just, just, and the, um,
39:42
in March, ready one, um, a commission,
39:46
the commission, uh, for race and ethnic disparities,
39:51
which was, yes, it was commissioned by Conservative government.
39:54
Yes, it was, but of, I think, the 10 commissioners,
39:59
nine were not white,
40:01
and the chair was a West Indian Briton.
40:05
And, um, uh, they concluded that,
40:10
first of all, that these terms, systemic racism,
40:13
institutional racism, structural racism, are very vague.
40:16
And they need to be used more precisely, um,
40:20
because they're just, uh,
40:22
clicking the, because the left end to slack them and anything that, uh,
40:26
the assumption is any, um, unequal outcome,
40:30
but, between, let's say, a white
40:33
social group in a black resident,
40:34
church group has to do, has to be attributed to racism.
40:38
And they said, no, um, uh,
40:40
they said that overall Britain is not systemic racist,
40:43
and that we've made a lot of progress in the last 50 years.
40:45
We certainly have, um,
40:48
um, I, I, I mean, I just, I do think,
40:52
uh, that the fact that, uh,
40:54
Britain now has a, um, uh,
40:56
an ethnically Indian Prime Minister,
40:58
and that most of the
41:00
cavilers of Boris Johnson's conservative government
41:03
were not white, um,
41:04
is not the kind of thing that, that,
41:06
that a
41:07
systemically racist white supremacist society produces,
41:11
which is not to say that there may not be
41:13
structural forms, uh,
41:15
as a way racial prejudice might not be as it were, um,
41:18
ossified or embedded in, in certain structures.
41:20
I accept that.
41:22
But it needs to be demonstrated, not simply assumed.
41:25
Uh, you're reminding me a little bit of, um,
41:29
a friend of mine, uh, who makes the point that,
41:33
you know, why are Russians great at gymnastics?
41:36
And Chinese great at violin and Australians great at swimming,
41:41
you know, uh, you don't have to assume that Chinese
41:45
gymnasts are being discriminated against,
41:47
or Australian violinists are being discriminated against
41:50
on the world stage.
41:51
There's a cultural milieu in which you grow up
41:53
that has certain traditions,
41:55
right, that, you know, here in Australia,
41:57
everyone, there is a totem pole,
42:00
there is a hierarchy,
42:02
and swimmers are at the top of that,
42:03
not violinists, uh, you know,
42:05
so that has consequences.
42:08
And, you know, similarly, why can you take,
42:10
why can you take Koreans and Jews,
42:13
and you can strip them of everything
42:15
and throw them anywhere in the world,
42:16
and they always seem to thrive,
42:18
or they always seem to find a way to get an education
42:22
and get ahead.
42:23
You know, there's something in not the DNA,
42:26
but in the fabric of the way that we think about,
42:31
family, education, values, or whatever.
42:34
But that does seem to me, I mean,
42:37
that is a really tricky thing to talk about at the moment,
42:39
because surely the truth of the matter,
42:43
if we're being really honest,
42:45
is that both things are going on,
42:47
that in a situation where you have persistent,
42:51
uh, differentials in racial outcomes,
42:54
there has to be presumably,
42:56
especially in societies that have a long history
42:58
of racial discrimination and injustice
43:00
that was only overthrown in the past generation or two,
43:04
there has to be echoes of that,
43:06
and perhaps that intersecting with existing racism,
43:12
by whatever definition,
43:13
and then there also has to be probably what you're talking about,
43:16
which is some kind of cultural dysfunction
43:20
or cultural differences that are giving rise
43:23
to the persistence of the disadvantage as well.
43:26
And once you start talking about the latter,
43:29
you know, you've got to be quite careful
43:30
about where you think the dial is on that,
43:34
on that percentage,
43:35
yeah, how much is going into the soups of each
43:37
in order to make it worth fretting about,
43:39
and what can you do about either of them
43:41
that makes it worth fretting about?
43:43
As this were on this episode of racism,
43:46
can we just, we'll come back to those particular points,
43:49
Josh and Mum, can I just make a couple of general points
43:53
that I like to be able to put this in context?
43:56
Please.
43:57
And I guess what we know,
43:59
what I'm really here reacting against
44:04
is the assumption that,
44:07
you know, first of all that racism is something peculiar
44:09
that you're being, or white,
44:10
and that it's always white people who are racist
44:13
or black people.
44:14
And again, I want to complicate things.
44:15
But first of all,
44:17
I regard racial prejudice as one form of rude prejudice,
44:22
and at your degree with this,
44:25
there can be prejudice
44:27
toward other groups on social class grounds,
44:31
on religious grounds,
44:32
on political grounds,
44:34
all sorts of grounds.
44:36
And I don't regard racial prejudice as such
44:42
as any worse, certainly no better,
44:45
but any worse than social prejudice.
44:48
Any kind of rude prejudice is wrong.
44:51
That's the first thing to say.
44:52
Secondly,
44:55
rude prejudice is extremely common.
44:59
Even progressive people have been known to be
45:02
prejudiced against what they regard as regressives.
45:08
And, you know, long before
45:12
Europeans met Africans and learned to abuse them,
45:18
you have the medieval Muslim philosopher
45:24
called Yden Koldum in the 1300s,
45:27
speculating as to why on earth it is
45:29
that Arabs have so much superior to black Africans
45:34
and to white Europeans,
45:35
because, you know,
45:37
medieval Muslims were manifestly superior
45:41
to both of those,
45:42
and actually many respects they were,
45:44
judging by the things they built.
45:47
And he speculates that it's a bit of a climate.
45:50
So the poor people inhabiting Kold,
45:54
wet Britain are stupider because they're so cold.
45:58
People are the poor African.
46:01
As an Australian, I love this theory, Nigel.
46:03
I love it. Yeah.
46:04
Oh, wait.
46:06
The poor Africans are stupider because they're too damn hot.
46:12
I was so close.
46:13
Sorry, sorry.
46:15
And then bring it up to date, 1940,
46:18
Gerald Hanley, an Irish man in British uniform
46:22
in British Somali land in the Second World War,
46:27
commanding Somali troops,
46:29
whom he discovers,
46:31
will not obey a black Buntu African.
46:34
Why?
46:34
Because the Somalis,
46:36
Buntus are natural slaves.
46:38
Thank you very much.
46:40
I could go on,
46:41
but just to make clear,
46:43
Richard British is bad.
46:46
It's not the only form of group prejudice that's bad.
46:48
And secondly,
46:50
it isn't particularly white thing or European thing.
46:52
So I do want to make those two kind of general statements.
46:57
Again,
46:59
as we're discussing
47:02
the imperial colonial past,
47:04
these things need to be put into a wider context,
47:06
otherwise they, I think, get
47:09
taken out of proportion.
47:12
But I've taken this away from the particular line that you were.
47:17
I was just talking about how much of the soup
47:21
of racial difference has to be from racism
47:24
versus the dysfunction of the dispossessed community.
47:29
Yeah, I mean, I mean, to warrant out concern.
47:34
Absolutely. I mean,
47:36
I don't know, is the answer.
47:38
But I'm perfectly willing to accept.
47:40
And in fact, I would be surprised if we weren't the case
47:43
that racial prejudice,
47:45
whether passive or active,
47:48
is it work?
47:49
And I have read,
47:51
more than once that if someone experiments with job applications,
47:59
and let's say a Pakistani Brit applies for a job under his own name,
48:06
clearly Pakistani,
48:09
he won't get the job.
48:10
If he sends the same application in with an Anglo-Saxon name,
48:13
he may get the job.
48:14
So there is evidence actually of, of least passive,
48:18
perhaps not very self-conscious prejudice.
48:23
So no doubt about that.
48:24
But I just, you know, I just, again, in terms of prejudice,
48:29
certainly in terms of Britain now,
48:31
if it's true, as I'm told it's true,
48:34
that Asians and Chinese Britons
48:38
perform much better educationally and professionally than you're average white,
48:44
that it can't be true, I think,
48:47
that Britain is fundamentally structured by,
48:51
fundamentally structured,
48:53
by the prejudice of whites against non-whites.
48:57
Because otherwise,
48:58
certain kinds of non-whites wouldn't flourish the way they do.
49:01
Now, I guess they come back at that as,
49:03
well, you know, the, the, the,
49:07
really soon I've only got to where I did,
49:08
because they had to endure years of racial prejudice.
49:13
Well, I think you're,
49:15
you're students, in case that,
49:16
evidently not the case,
49:18
given, given the quality of the thing.
49:21
I mean, I don't hear that response.
49:23
I mean, I think the response is,
49:24
you can always cherry pick the, you know,
49:26
the privileged idealized version of the minority community,
49:30
but you can't generalize from that to the experience
49:32
of the average South Asian in England.
49:35
But anyway, well, I don't think we need to,
49:36
I don't want to waste your final precious moments on this.
49:38
I could also ask you about, you know,
49:40
the new definition of racism being
49:43
that racism is prejudice plus power,
49:45
that there has to be a power imbalance
49:47
that you have to be sort of punching down
49:49
in order for it to really count as racism,
49:51
that a black person being,
49:52
quote, up being prejudice towards a white person
49:55
isn't actually racism,
49:56
because they're not enacting a historical
49:58
disadvantage or something.
49:59
But I think most of our audience
50:01
is probably smart enough to see that
50:02
that's just a bit of a language game.
50:04
And if you want to make up a new word for that thing,
50:06
then you can.
50:07
But like, it's not the only thing that racism is.
50:11
I'm just going to take that as a given.
50:13
So for, I want to ask you just lastly
50:16
about the upsides and downsides of empire.
50:21
Let's go back to empire.
50:22
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50:24
I'll bid them farewell now.
50:26
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50:29
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50:33
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50:35
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50:39
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50:44
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50:47
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