00:12:02.000Like you mentioned that there's a media narrative about Islamophobia
00:12:05.000where non-Muslims are more persuaded by that narrative than Muslims.
00:12:09.000How true is it that ethnic minority communities are outraged by the idea of stop and search?
00:12:15.000Because we've also had people on the show who will tell you, you know, you go to a community,
00:12:22.000let's say a black community area in London, a lot of the local population are really keen on stop and search
00:12:29.000because it's their children that are being stabbed.
00:12:31.000Absolutely. I think that when it comes to stop and search more generally, there are disparities, that's obvious.
00:12:38.000But ultimately, if you're using that as an instrument to fight knife crime,
00:12:42.000there's a degree to how equal you can be when it comes to policing.
00:12:46.000You have to see where are the hotspots and, you know, what are the, how do you say,
00:12:50.000the sociodemographic characteristics associated with a particular form of crime.
00:12:54.000The reality is in London, young black males are disproportionately represented among perpetrators and victims of knife crime.
00:13:03.000And that's naturally going to guide the way you police particular areas.
00:13:08.000And I've even said that, you know, maybe we should have body worn cameras more widely in the Met.
00:13:13.000So we just increase the sort of accountability and responsibility when it comes to policing.
00:13:18.000But you're absolutely right that when it comes to law and order, you'll find some of the strongest conservative values
00:13:23.000are within ethnic minority communities. And you have my own ethnic group, British Bangladeshis.
00:13:29.000They have one of the highest rates of confidence in the local police force.
00:13:33.000And that's a Muslim majority ethnic group as well, by the way.
00:13:36.000So I think that when you actually look at law and order more generally, ethnic minorities, they ultimately want fairness.
00:13:43.000But crucially, they care a great deal about the security and safety of their local communities.
00:13:50.000And if you really wanted to go in the deep end and you wanted to talk about support for the death penalty,
00:13:55.000I'd suspect actually it'd be higher in many ethnic and religious minority groups compared to the more secularised white British mainstream.
00:14:38.000It depends on which metric you're looking at.
00:14:40.000I think, firstly, I'll make the point that the BAME acronym are absolutely useless and redundant, in my view,
00:14:46.000in terms of understanding the reality on the ground in modern Britain.
00:14:50.000Now people are trying to wheel out this global majority, you know, these kind of phrases to try and replace it.
00:14:56.000The reality is that ethnic and racial minorities, there may be certain values that they share across the board.
00:15:02.000One value that they'd often share is that, you know, irrespective of which group you belong to, being an ethnic minority in the UK,
00:15:08.000you're far better positioned than being an ethnic minority in other countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands,
00:15:13.000and the United States as well, something that I touch upon in the book.
00:15:18.000But if you actually look at educational performance, how are groups performing at school, labour market integration, trust in public institutions,
00:15:27.000there's a great deal of variance between different ethnic and racial minorities.
00:17:21.000And I think that also shapes your attitudes towards marriage as an institution.
00:17:25.000Some people may be more individualistic when it comes to approaching marriage.
00:17:29.000Other people might think, well, actually, there's a great deal of self-sacrifice required here, but I'm willing to take that on.
00:17:34.000That might be shaped by their faith or their cultural values.
00:17:37.000But I think that there is that overlap between family stability and culture.
00:17:41.000But crucially, when it comes to culture, for example, how is education valued in the household?
00:17:47.000If you're looking at the local community, what are the markers of social status?
00:17:51.000I think we have some very problematic subcultures in London, if truth be told, which actually glorify the glorification of violence, hyper-materialism, and also cultural values towards outer wedlock births.
00:18:05.000One of the strongest predictors of lone parent households, whether or not children are born in wedlock or not.
00:18:09.000Now, the reality is in certain ethnic communities, ethnic minority communities, having children outside of marriage is very controversial to be frowned upon.
00:18:19.000In other groups, it's almost become the norm, if we're being absolutely honest.
00:18:23.000I think those kind of cultural dynamics, they may be controversial, and some people may find it to be sensitive to talk about.
00:18:29.000But I do think that it's worth having that conversation in terms of how they shape life chances and the progression of young people more generally.
00:18:37.000Yeah, well, definitely, sorry, Francis, definitely the case, because, I mean, if you want, this is what always bothers me about this patronizing attitude to ethnic minorities, where it's like, no one actually cares about outcomes.
00:18:53.100People care about how good they look saying things.
00:18:55.900Whereas if you actually cared about outcomes, you would go, well, as you say, you know, the BAME acronym, which is ridiculous, incorporates all sorts of different groups with different sets of behaviors and different outcomes.
00:19:07.140So what might we observe would be a good way to behave, and might we not suggest that most people should behave that way?
00:19:32.460And I think if you really, and I'll make this point, if you really care about young black lives, especially in inner city London, you would talk about family structure and community culture that little bit more, in my opinion.
00:19:45.160And I think it's very interesting, because when you're talking about those disparities that we were referring to earlier,
00:19:48.740if you look at school outcomes, level of educational attainment, pupils of black African origin are now performing better than the white British mainstream.
00:19:59.140Their co-racial peers of black Caribbean origin are performing worse than the white British mainstream.
00:20:22.900I think a lot of people talk about, you know, children need to be, you know, they need to be encouraged to be creative and innovative, you know, free thinking and all the rest of it.
00:20:33.640There has to be that sense of discipline and order in the household.
00:20:36.340And there needs to be an understanding that, in my opinion, in the mainstream, I think there's far too many parents who want to be their kid's mate, right?
00:20:48.180But there's also a clear understanding that within that friendship, there's a very clear parent-child relationship.
00:20:53.540And that's based on order and hierarchy.
00:20:55.440Now, those kind of terms sound very old-fashioned and reactionary, but I think they're necessary when it comes to talking about, you know, keeping your children on the straight and narrow and making sure that they progress well in life.
00:21:07.980And I think that these kind of debates on the left, they're shunned, if truth be told.
00:21:13.020A lot of these values are seen as almost oppressive.
00:21:16.320And I think that's something that needs to change.
00:21:22.500Why are we so loathe to engage in these types of conversations when the reality is we all know it's basic common sense?
00:21:33.100Well, of course, we know it's basic common sense.
00:21:35.040But I think that many people, they'd rather, they're more interested in appearing virtuous in the public domain.
00:21:41.160Now, I've never been interested in that, as you can probably tell.
00:21:45.860Truth be told, I get vilified for making some of these arguments.
00:21:49.340And I think especially a real problem is middle-class progressivism in modern-day Britain, because these are people who, I think they almost use racial identity politics as a way to deflect attention from their own position of socioeconomic privilege.
00:22:04.080Many people are actually insecure about their privilege.
00:22:07.280I just think, listen, enjoy your privilege, you know, but don't, you know, don't get in the way of effective social policy, right?
00:22:14.500And if you are insecure about it, I don't know, maybe see a therapist, you know, sort that out yourself.
00:22:19.600And I think a real problem here is that what racial identity politics does, it offers them an opportunity to appear rebellious without risking the destabilisation of their own class-based interests and advantages.
00:22:34.380When I think, in my view, the left still doesn't talk enough about class, class-based barriers.
00:22:41.600We do live in a fairly unequal country.
00:23:02.420They're certainly not part of the digital economy, you could say.
00:23:05.160And they're really lacking the sort of social infrastructure you'd need in order for young people to succeed and maximise their potential.
00:23:13.540So I think at the moment we have this over-focus on race and we're largely overlooking, in my view, very important factors which shape life chances in modern Britain.
00:23:23.680And there's the familiar conversation that we always have about white privilege, which has been, like a lot of this stuff, imported directly from the States.
00:23:34.320You know, just placed on this country.
00:23:37.460And you just go, this bears absolutely no reflection on what is really going on here.
00:23:45.420Well, I've seen blogs about white privilege published on NHS websites, which I just think is absolutely remarkable.
00:23:52.060Because if you travel around the country and you see where the NHS is really crumbling, it's in those left-behind, impoverished, predominantly white British communities.
00:24:01.040If you're going to go into those communities and start lecturing them about their racial privilege, it's going to fall on deaf ears.
00:24:06.300Or actually, they're going to find it quite offensive.
00:24:08.360They think, I'm actually really struggling in my local community here.
00:24:11.500And the NHS services here are not particularly good.
00:24:14.180And I think that, once again, when it comes to those kind of theories, I think they're hugely divisive.
00:24:33.540We've talked before about the various grooming gang scandals.
00:24:37.880You know, people want to talk about power structures, you know, structures of oppression, all the rest of it.
00:24:42.460You can very clearly see where the power dynamics lied in those interactions.
00:24:47.840There are very clear cases of group-based child sexual abuse, which are also grossly mismanaged by public institutions that prioritise political correctness and racial and religious sensitivities over the bread and butter of protecting the most vulnerable.
00:25:02.480Where's the presence of white privilege in those particular cases?
00:25:05.160Because I don't see much evidence of it.
00:25:07.820We'll be back with the interview in one minute.
00:25:10.300First, we want to talk to you about the sponsors of today's episode, AG1.
00:25:15.080We take AG1 to stay healthy and stave off illness whenever our schedule gets really busy.
00:25:20.600We used it on our last America tour, where we were constantly on the move, living out of a bag and working every day.
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00:30:07.700There's a reference to parasitic merchants have to be rooted out, the local community.
00:30:13.200Sort of echoing the kind of vilification of Asian business owners by Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator,
00:30:21.060who expelled Asians, only gave them 90 days before they could leave the country.
00:30:27.480So, I think when you look at those kind of incidents, it's very interesting for me,
00:30:32.960because I think the biggest thing from that particular incident was that we had this sort of
00:30:37.780de facto decriminalization of lower-level crime in many urban areas.
00:30:43.200The country has a shoplifting epidemic, in my view.
00:30:47.200And I think that was the big takeaway from that.
00:30:49.640But you could see that people saw that through a racial lens.
00:30:51.820And that was understandable, because there have been similar episodes in places such as Birmingham,
00:30:57.880especially the Lozels area, where there's a great deal of disillusionment, you could say.
00:31:04.400And I'd go as far as saying resentment within black communities,
00:31:07.540especially of African-Caribbean heritage there.
00:31:10.180You know, businesses being bought up by Asian-origin entrepreneurs.
00:31:15.240And then, actually, you know, there's a shift in the sort of ethnic and racial ownership of businesses there.
00:31:21.500And then there's sort of accusations of, you know, many of the shoplifters belonging to the African-Caribbean population.
00:31:29.180Asian shopkeepers being accused of not treating their black patrons and customers very well.
00:31:37.200So you could see that those kind of complaints emerged in Peckham as well.
00:31:42.300So I think it shows that there are racial tensions which are obviously involved.
00:31:46.480But I think that the broader or rather the central problem for me is how there's a real lack of local neighbourhood policing in areas with a high concentration of shops.
00:31:57.600And all too often that leads to, well, people can, you can call them customers.
00:32:02.400But in my view, these are people who are taking liberties, to be honest.
00:32:06.880And many businesses are already feeling the pinch because of the cost of living crisis.
00:32:12.040They're now having to deal with this de facto decriminalisation where many shoplifters, to be honest, get away with what they're doing.
00:32:19.680Well, that was the curious thing to me because you know how when you're a kid, you go to the playground, you get into, you know, scuff with another kid or whatever.
00:32:29.980Your mum will be the one telling you off and his mum will be the one telling him off, right?
00:32:33.860What I found odd about this is like this is someone who is committing a crime who is essentially a representative of their community by virtue of their skin colour.
00:32:53.440In fact, we're going to tell them off and get them on the straight and narrow so that people of our background aren't stealing things from shops.
00:33:00.340Why is no one having that conversation?
00:33:01.700I think there are some black British individuals who did flag that, but they weren't especially high in number.
00:33:07.280And I think what that really shows is that there's a great deal of what I call it to be racial tribalism.
00:33:12.040But the truly toxic thing about this racial tribalism is that you're ultimately asking for preferential treatment over forms of illegal behaviour.
00:33:25.600And I think what was quite remarkable was how, and by the way, the lady in question behaved quite aggressively towards the shopkeeper before she was apprehended by him.
00:33:35.500And I think it was just absolutely remarkable that she was being portrayed as the victim when she was engaging in behaviour which was deeply inappropriate.
00:33:44.880And I think that what really concerns me is that you have people who look to excuse deeply inappropriate forms of behaviour because that particular person might share their racial or ethnic background.
00:33:58.820And I think that's a very serious problem.
00:34:01.120I think that social cohesion is at its healthiest and at its strongest when people are willing to face up to very uncomfortable realities within their own racial, ethnic and religious communities.
00:34:14.160And I think that's something that I'd like to think I have quite an impressive record on.
00:34:18.460I've written a great deal about Islamist extremism and the threat it poses to modern Britain and more widely the Western world.
00:34:27.260I've also talked about attitudes towards women in more closed off elements of British Bangladeshi communities.
00:34:35.700And that's not to say there's not good going on in those communities as well.
00:34:49.700Because other people who may well see those trends, they may feel uncomfortable.
00:34:53.440They don't want to be accused of being racist or Islamophobic.
00:34:57.880But I think you should take it upon yourself.
00:34:59.740And what I saw with Peckham, actually, you saw people excusing this behaviour, expressing solid...
00:35:05.960But what was really interesting, you had Runnymede Trust, an organisation I used to respect a great deal when I was growing up.
00:35:10.880The so-called leading, independent, race equality think tank in the country, expressing solidarity with the lady in that particular episode.
00:38:26.660But it's only when you start to go, wait, Afro-Caribbean people are very different to African people.
00:38:32.980But it's actually a form of, I mean, it's not racism per se, but it's a form of ignorance about the complexity of all of these different groups.
00:38:40.200Absolutely. And it reminds me of a study that I did a couple of years ago which showed that one in six people of black Caribbean origin have an unfavourable view of people of black African origin.
00:39:24.280And I think many people, and I think the biggest problem is really that there's many members of our political establishment,
00:39:31.020they're either not understanding of these dynamics, they don't understand it, or they know about it, but they don't want to raise it.
00:39:38.400They don't want to raise it because that would mean they'd need to have some very uncomfortable conversations in their local sort of surgeries and all the rest of it.
00:40:53.420You're also talking about, you know, maybe recently arrived refugees who follow Islam coming from countries such as Somalia, fleeing civil unrest.
00:41:02.060But they're all technically in the same ethnic category.
00:41:07.340And really, I think the problem comes as well, is then when you put identity politics on top of that, it just toxifies the whole debate, doesn't it?
00:41:17.300Because part of the problem, if we go back to Peckham, is that people are seeing themselves as one group against another group.
00:41:34.480I mean, you have some, say, South Asian families.
00:41:36.940They'll reject their child's, you know, proposed choice of marital spouse on the grounds of his or her skin colour.
00:41:43.900They might belong to the same ethnic and racial group.
00:41:46.660They're not even interested in understanding about their character, personality, career, vision for the future.
00:41:50.500You know, if they're not happy with their skin colour, oh, you know, I don't want my grandchildren to be too dark.
00:41:56.880These are the kind of sentiments that do exist in modern Britain.
00:42:00.120And these are tensions within the same ethnic and racial groups.
00:42:04.660So it doesn't come as a surprise to me.
00:42:06.400You're talking about the Nigerian heritage teaching assistant who, unfortunately, didn't have a high opinion of people of Congolese origin.
00:42:13.540It just doesn't come as a surprise to me because within the African continent, you know, we know it can be incredibly,
00:42:20.620the sort of tribal tensions, you know, opinions of other people who may originate from a different region of Africa.