On Gay Caledonia...

As regular readers will know, I do like a good survey, and the Scottish Household Survey is a bumper compendium, examining issues ranging from Scots' housing tenure and internet access, to rates of participation in cultural activities and people's financial circumstances.  There is plenty here to divert anyone interested in quantitative sketches of Scottish demography. I intend to dip in and out of the figures over the coming months, but for today, a quick word or two on the results of a new question introduced to the 2011 survey.  

In the chapter looking at the "Composition and Characteristics of Households and Adults in Scotland", the researchers pose a range of question. Are you married, divorced, unmarried? How ancient, what ethnicity, living in an urban or rural environment? Last year, statisticians introduced a new "core" question, on sexual orientation. 

"Developed by the Office for National Statistics, the question was designed to provide accurate statistics to underpin the equality monitoring responsibilities of public sector organisations and to assess the disadvantage or relative discrimination experience by the lesbian, gay and bisexual population."

So what did they find? Of their base of 12,893 respondents...

And disaggregated by gender, with the ladies first:

And men...

If we take the General Register Office's most recent Scottish population estimates (5,254,800 in June 2011), and crudely extrapolate out from these percentages, our lesbian, gay and bisexual population would number just 47,293 people (nationally, just slightly more than the population of Ayr or Dunfermline). Of course, there are plenty of problems with this decidedly rough and ready calculation. The Survey figures concern only adults, while the population estimates include the whole population, including children. But bracket those qualms, for the sake of discussion.  Does this seem a plausible estimate?

As Better Nation blogger Aidan Skinner pointed out on twitter, if we look at the much more extensively disaggregated and cross-referenced Office of National Statistics findings from England and Wales in 2010 (neatly summarised by the Guardian here), these Scottish figures look strikingly similar. The Scottish data poses similar questions.  What is being measured here, precisely? As a number of folk would point out, sexual orientation and sexual activity and attraction aren't the same thing.  Moreover, a number of factors seem likely to influence whether or not people are likely to self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.  Unlike the ONS statistics, the Scottish findings aren't disaggregated by age, but if we look at the English figures, 14.5% of respondents who identified as gay or lesbian were aged 16 - 24.  A further 49.9% were aged 25 - 44, with 27.3% aged 45 - 64 and 5.9% over 65. 

It seems unlikely that the British youth of today have an innately heightened predisposition to take up recreational same-sex carnality on a far greater scale than their parents', and grandparents' generations.  What seems much more probable, however, is that different segments of the Scottish population are likely to exhibit differential comfort, identifying themselves with gay, lesbian or bisexual identities.

It was only thirty two years ago, in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, that the Scots laws criminalising "homosexual acts in private" were abolished, some scandalous thirteen years after the English and Welsh Sexual Offences Act 1967, with the abiding condition that "both" parties were aged twenty one years old, or above, and consented.  Add a third body, and you'd be in trouble.  These are developments of many living people's lifetimes. A salutary reminder, you might well think, that the unreformed character in which Westminster left much of Scots law before devolution is not a legacy which one can always comfortably celebrate.  

Ed Miliband: British nationalist.

The name may not be familiar, but most of you are likely to have come across some permutation of the “Moreno scale” in your time.  An attempt to measure national identities where dual loyalties may obtain, the Moreno measure sets the two potential identities against one another, obliging respondents to reject or give priority to one over the other, or in the alternative, hold the pair in balanced equilibrium.  In Scottish surveys, the focus has been Scottishness and Britishness, and the options usually take the following form:

Scottish not British

More Scottish than British

Equally Scottish and British

More British than Scottish

British not Scottish

For my part, I’m decidedly of the leftmost extreme.  I do not and have never felt British.  It is a concept which seems to address other people: I can’t find myself in it. Although I’ve lived and lived happily in England since the autumn of 2009, this resolution has not wavered, and is unaltered.  For me, concepts of Britishness generate only antipathy, and I find that I rub along quite cheerfully with my English neighbours as a Scot, without any need for an interceding British identity common to us both to form warm and meaningful ties.  Like my friends and colleagues who hail from Ireland - or Canada, or America, or linguistically adept folk from anywhere elsewhere in the world - shared language and common interests mediate the possibility of conviviality and social comity far more tellingly than any supervening national identity. 

In his "Defending the Union in England" speech this week, Ed Miliband applied himself to these sort of concerns. “What does this summer say about the United Kingdom? What does it say about our identity as a people in 2012?”, the Labour Leader asks, continuing on that in Scotland “the debate about who we are is in full force: “To stay in the United Kingdom or to leave? To be Scottish or British or both?” Note the framing. In a terse couple of sentences, Milliband has identified the independence referendum primarily as a test of popular feeling of identity.   On the logic he is propounding, if you are Scottish not British, you’ll vote yes in the referendum – anything else, and you’ll be opposed. 

What is interesting and curious about this account of the referendum is that it relies on an argument Miliband explicitly denigrates elsewhere. “The nationalist case, wherever we find it, is based on the fallacy that one identity necessarily erodes another”, he claims.  While this might be true for the black-white nationalist, if Miliband rejects this sort of logic, how can the independence referendum be a choice between being Scottish and British? On his own terms, rather than those of the straw man he duffs up, how can this characterisation of the referendum make any sort of sense? 

He quotes no nationalist who has framed the referendum as a moment of choice between being British vs Scottish, so he isn’t rebutting a specific contention made by a political rival.  I’m happy to concede that the Britishness vs Scottish model he discussed is one hypothetical argument amongst other arguments which a “Scottish not British” nationalist might make in the referendum, but Miliband doesn’t present this either/or choice as one nationalist articulation among others which might dissent from it, but instead, as an incorrigible, inevitable feature of nationalistic thinking “wherever we find it”. But if this sort of nationalism is a false choice – and incidentally, I agree, it is – then the independence referendum cannot really be about being British or Scottish, as Miliband suggests, can it? You can't posit a false choice, and then insist people stick to its dicky logic.

Accordingly, Miliband appears to be suggesting that the question – British or Scottish – is inevitably central to the independence discussion, whether or not nationalists actually base their arguments on the clash of identities he proposes. As Iain MacWhirter neatly summarises this morning, this is a familiar misreading of much of contemporary Scottish nationalism.  However, let's follow where Miliband leads.  Where does his theorisation of the link between nationalism and independence for nation-states lead us? Miliband seems to be claiming that nationalisms are inherently totalising.  But if Britishness is characterised as an identity constituted by its diversity, woven from various non-totalising national strands, for Miliband, Britishness surely cannot be a nationalism. But if not a form of nationalism, then what? He refers to the Jubilee’s exhibitions of Britain’s “gentle patriotism”, but at no point did he try to cavil out a workable distinction between British patriotism and Scottish nationalism, as Michael Forsyth did on BBC Question Time this week.  So we’re stuck with the confusion. 

I think it is safe to say that Miliband does conceive of Britishness as a nationalism, albeit different in kind from Scottish nationalism insofar as it is consciously constructed from other national identities which exist concurrently and compatibly with it. Which makes perfect sense, as his speech makes an essentially emotive nationalistic argument in defence of the current constitutional set up, shot through with premises he shares with many Scottish nationalists on the alternative side of the argument.  In many ways, Miliband’s speech exemplifies some of the British nationalist ironies I’ve discussed before.  Rather than using the Labour leader’s words, consider this pared down version of the argument.  Let’s take it through in stages.

I feel Xish

X is a nation.

Nations ought to be independent states.

Ergo, X should be an independent state. 

For Scottish nationalists of some persuasions, the argument takes this form:

I feel Scottish

Scotland is a nation

The United Kingdom is a state, but not a nation

Nations ought to be independent states

Ergo, Scotland should be an independent state and the UK Should break up.

What strikes me as interesting, and paradoxical, is that Miliband’s British national logic simultaneously adopts and rejects these premises.  Unlike the more typical Labour Unionist fare, Miliband’s defence of the United Kingdom isn’t premised on claims about shared social, economic and political projects.  While he makes a passing reference to impoverished grannies, his isn’t really an instrumental image of Union, bent on delivering social justice in a cross-national coalition of British workers.  His thesis isn’t stick together for a left-of-centre Britain, stay in the UK to help secure decent welfare provision for London’s vulnerable, but instead is explicitly concerned with a British identity, and implicitly, a British nationalism.  Despite his argument that either/or Scottish nationalism is folly and confusion, he puts British identity at the heart of his defence of the Union.  Indeed, one can summarise his argument in essentially the same form as the hypothetical Scottish nationalist case we were imagining:

I feel Scottish and British

Both Britain and Scotland are nations

Some nations ought to be independent states, others not.

Ergo, Britain should be an independent state, and Scotland shouldn’t.

If you accept these premises, the obvious question is: why should some nations become independent states and not others? I've argued before that this is one of the most curious aspects of British nationalist theory, coupling identity with the political project of sustaining the United Kingdom. For Miliband, nationalism seems both to entail and not to entail the demand that national identity find representation in political institutions, in parliaments and bodies and tribunals and so on. But for the Union to make any sort of sense, we have precisely to reject the idea that all nations ought to be independent states. Scots may be nationalists - think of themselves in national terms, share national identifiers - but the Unionist has to break the intellectual link between nations and the imperative to acquire separate sovereignty for those nations.  Critically, this sort of Unionism doesn't reject the idea that Scotland is a nation, but rejects the proposition that this must needs lead to distinct states and political institutions.  

Ironically enough, this argument is precisely mirrored by various nationalists who've recently been (unlike yours truly) elaborating on their own sense of Britishness.  In response to Miliband's speech, folk like Pete Wishart contend that his argument simply conflates Britishness and the United Kingdom state. Just as the Unionist Scot must insist that his Scottish identity need not entail independence, so Wishart simply inverts the argument.  Even if you feel British, and identify as British, you may support Scottish independence. A shared national sensibility need not equate to belonging to the same state. On this, ironically enough, both Wishart and the most inveterate Scottish Unionist surely agree. Rhetorically, theoretically, both the Scottish nationalist and the British unionist have to find ways to isolate the institutional and political consequences of admitted national identities.  It's a queer sort of mirroring.

I was also struck by the terms in which Ed characterised his “dark English nationalism”.  A “mirror image of the worst aspects of Scottish nationalism”, the conception of Englishness which Miliband denigrates is envisaged as “anti-Scottish, hostile to outsiders, England somehow cut off from the rest of Britain, cut off from the outside world, fearful what is beyond our borders. Convinced that our best days behind us”. Ed circumlocutes around the real-world points of reference he intends to refer to, but it seems fairly obvious to me that the mordant, melancholy defensiveness he describes refers not to England, but to the primarily English spokesmen and women of contemporary mordant, melancholy and defensive Britain and Britishness.  Think about it.  England’s better days behind it? England doesn’t want all these immigrants? When was the last time you heard anyone say either of these things?

If, by contrast, you replace English with British, the sentences start sounding much more familiar.  And here’s the rub.  If you listen to contemporary political debate in these islands, you’ll soon find that the narrow nationalism, xenophobia, anti-European sentiments and melancholy for lost imperial mission which Miliband alludes to are primarily articulated in terms of Britishness, rather than Englishness.  As Michael Gardiner has so neatly put it, at present, we have a British politics in England as opposed to an English politics in England. That the key voices articulating this sort of British politics are English shouldn’t prompt us to make Miliband’s mistake of attributing to a “dark English nationalism” the vices of a very British nationalism. 

That he makes the mistake is explicable when we remember that it isn’t exactly unusual to see England/Britain conceived as the twin good-and-bad Janus faces of England’s patriotism. While Britishness is seen to be inclusive, civic, porous, available to all pigmentations in the human spectrum, Englishness has often been imagined in ethnic and racial terms, the property of white men and women.  The stuff of racist soccer hooligans and the EDL.  For those who see English nationalism as incorrigibly reactionary, Britishness offers the inclusive alternative national story. Madeleine Bunting's piece after the 2011 Holyrood election typifies this sort of anxiety: "If Scotland goes, all we'll have left is the Englishness we so despise".

In Scotland, by way of contrast, we have a nationalist discourse in which Scottish identity uncomfortably incorporates both of these elements, the racialising and the non-racialising.  There is evidence, for instance, that Scottishness is currently perceived as an civic identity available to our ethnic minorities in a way that Englishness is not. And a grand thing that is too. However, that isn’t the whole story, and there are certainly Scottish nationalists out there who would reject this understanding, couching their nationalism in suspect theories of race, envisaging their wan-faced compatriots as the privileged bearers of Scottishness.  A given Scottish nationalist may be a racist, or strongly opposed to racism, and must struggle between themselves to promote their understanding of their nationality, civic or ethnic, racialising or non-racialising. While Scots must contend with the Janus faces of their nationalism, for many folk in England thinking about Englishness and Britishness, Jekyll and Hyde are simply seen as two different men, the one brutish and unattractive, the other fond, open and fair-minded.  England all vice, Britain all uprightness.  Neither proposition seems to me remotely convincing. 

While Miliband’s distinction between a good and bad Englishness shows some awareness of this sort of analysis of nationalisms, his speech effects an altogether different sleight of hand, devolving British vices onto English nationalism, while glossing over the extent to which lapsed imperial and Britannic stories are palpably much more strongly implicated in contemporary Britain’s xenophobic, anti-European and nostalgic politics.  The exclusions demanded by our political discourses on immigration, for example, are conducted in British – not English – terms.  While the Janus-faced logic of nationalism is thus recognised in Englishness, it is conspicuously absent in Ed’s candyfloss account of Britishness, all inclusion, emancipation and generosity.  Humbug and moonshine.   

Devolution's vaulting prison population...

The Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 has a lot in it, including provision for a Scottish Sentencing Council, new offences, non-harassment orders. Of its measures, perhaps most prominently featured in public discussion surrounding the 2010 Act is the presumption against short term sentences which it enshrines. As you will recall, the SNP Government were in favour of a presumption against prison sentences shorter than six months. The cohort of Liberal Democrats, alas, were not to be persuaded and between them, the two compromised on supplementing the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 with the following provision:

"A court must not pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 3 months or less on a person unless the court considers that no other method of dealing with the person is appropriate."

Despite being passed by Holyrood in 2010, this section of the Act only came into force on the 1st of February 2011. It is important to bear this in mind, when considering the freshly-published statistical bulletin on the Prison Statistics 2010-11.  For me, one of the most interesting things about descriptive statistics of this sort is their capacity to surprise. Take the census, for example. I find that most Scots are surprised to discover that in 2001 only 15.88% of the population identified themselves as Catholic, imagining that the number would be far higher. And the prison population? I've been banging on about this for a number of years now, but how many of us really appreciate that since devolution, Scotland's average daily prison population has increased by around 2,000 people, increasing year on year until 2010? The graph below vividly illustrates how much has changed since 1900 - and depicts the substantial prisoner-hike of the Noughties...

As you'll see, this year, the daily prisoner numbers dip very slightly, to an average of 7,853 prisoners locked up in Scotland on a daily basis. Some of these are people on remand awaiting trial, others are awaiting sentencing, while others have been tried, sentenced and are serving out their punishments, and so on. Under the topline, there have been a number of changes.  Unsurprisingly, the population profile of our prisons is starkly gendered. Of the total, 7,419 are men compared to 435 women. That said, it's worth noting that while the male prison population has increased by 1,494 extra prisoners in daily lock-up since 2001, an increase of 25% over the decade, the percentage increase in the rates of female imprisonment, while lower in terms of the numbers of women locked up, are much greater percentage increases. The average female population of our prisons rose from 257 in 2001 to 435 in 2011 - an increase of 69% in ten years.

Sitting as we are in 2011, this bulletin clearly doesn't cover the whole year, so it remains to be seen what effect the presumption against short term sentences might have on how many folk we bang up. That said, at present, on average, only some 78 people in the daily population are serving sentences of less than three months, about 1% of the Scottish prison population. Admittedly, this is a small decrease on the 2009/10, where 89 souls were serving sentences of three months' extent.  Far more sentenced people fall within the 3 months to 6 month range. On average, 347 prisoners in 2010/11 were serving sentences within this range.  These are only the daily average figures.  Table 13 shows total direct receptions to penal establishments in Scotland (excluding those who are incarcerated for fine default), with data comparisons made from 2001 - 2010.  While a total of 13,109 people were directly sentenced to serve jail terms in 2010/11, 3,011 were sentenced to terms of three months of less - 413 for less than thirty days, 662 between 30 - 59 days, 1,344 people to between 60 - 89 days and 592 to 90 days/three months. The comparatively low figure of the daily average belies the potential impact the SNP's three months presumption might have on the much larger number of folk who spent short bursts in jail. As ever, we have pangs of international comparison. How do our rates of incarceration compare to elsewhere? The statisticians have generated this handy graphic. In 2010, incarceration rate per 100,000 population is as follows...

In other points of particular interest (at least to me), Table 4 shows "Offenders in custody by age, ethnic origin, religion and supervision level." Totalling 7,983 people, 3% of offenders in custody are recorded as being of non-white ethnic backgrounds.  Unfortunately, the data we have on the % of folk of different ethnicities in the Scottish population is now a decade old, hence the 2011 census. However, with caveats about potential demographic changes since in mind, it is interesting to compare the ethnic percentages of the prison population with the 2001 Census's findings about the Scottish population by ethnic group. The survey found that 97.99% of the Scottish population was white: Scots, British, Irish, Other.  The largest ethnic minority group were Pakistanis, representing 0.63% of the total population in 2001 and almost a third of Scotland's ethnic minority population, at 31.27%.  The second largest ethnic group were Chinese, at 0.32% of the total population and 16.04% of the ethnic minority population. Indian, the third at 0.3% and 14.79% respectively.  The Religion statistics have their own interest. 38% of offenders in custody identify as having no religion, with a small smattering of Jehovah's witnesses and Mormons.

I'll end on a controversial note. I've already mentioned that in the 2001 census, Catholics represented only 15.88% of the Scottish population.  In terms of offenders in custody, however, 23.3% are Catholics...

Scotland's useless racist incident statistics...

I've railed on several occasions before against the racialising concepts used all too commonly in government-sponsored, quantitative social research. White is not an ethnic category, it is a racialising category. These old, guilty, pigment-obsessed familiars dominated the 2011 Census and furnished the analytic categories deployed in the recently-published Scottish Government statistics on Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2009-10.

Not only are these categories objectionable in theory. In terms of trying to understand the phenomenon of racism and racist abuse in Scotland, they prove totally useless. Squeezing useful information out of this document is about as straightforward as milking a bull, casting almost no light whatever on how and why bigotry and intolerance are practised in Scotland. We should also record the clear caveat that here we're only dealing with incidents recorded by the police, doubtlessly excluding a great deal of racist sentiment and conduct and presenting a limited picture of the phenomenon. Immediately implied here is the question, how parsimonious should we be about using the term "racism"? What should the definition be, the grounds of inclusion or exclusion? To pose this question should not be taken to imply that abuse or recrimination which falls outside the category is fine and dandy. However, it may be analytically useful and normatively important to distinguish different kinds of hatreds and loathings. For example, one might be an enthusiastic Scottish chauvinist with a hatred of the English, without any belief that the latter is a categorically different, organically-constituted "race". Alternatively, one might be an old-fashioned biological bigot, with a selection of books on phrenology and a delight in intellectual bell curves, confident that your black fellow citizens are essential inferior, and are allotted their subordinate social position by the unerring operation of physical and racial necessity.

In both cases, the villain might be an abusive thug, but the mental springs and cogs of his thuggery differ substantially in their motions. In many other cases, the ideological content of "racist" hatred may be significantly less clearly delineated, however obvious or odious its effects. For example, it is very easy to envisage ways in which different issues come to be blurred together. For a devotee of the Battle of the Boyne and a great hater of Irish Catholicism, religious perceptions and perceptions of nationality seem likely to intertwine. However, if we conceive of any subsequent violence as wholly motivated by Irishness, we clearly miss the real significance of the conflict. Similar difficulties attach to the compound religious-national identity of a "Muslim Scot", and so on. 

What one is all too often left with is an impenetrable, pitiful muddle of hostile perceptions associated with (a) pigmentation (b) "ethnicity" (c) nationality and often as not (d) religion, all of which are clumsily labelled "racism". Oho, but isn't this simply reflective of a knotty, tangled Reality? you might well ask, and ask fairly. I'm certainly not contending that unravelling these threads is an easy enterprise, not least because many or even most may not have neatly delimited, consistent ideas about why and how they hate particular groups of other people. However, in terms of understanding the phenomenon of groupist abuse, if I can use that rather infelicitous phrase - whether based on perceptions of creed, colour, religion, sexuality - these fine-grained distinctions can be exceedingly important.  I realise that it will be little comfort for an individual to know that the person who assaulted them did so on the basis of cultural-ethnic ressentiment, rather than due to biological-racist assumptions. However, if we're to understand the phenomenon of Scottish racisms, it is manifestly insufficient simply to tabulate the number of ugly scenes on our streets and the incoherent, contemptible bawlings of bigoted cretins. It matters how and why such scenes arise at all.

The Scottish Government figures attempt no sort of internal distinctions, employing this entirely shapeless definition: "a racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person."  Data is recorded by the self-declared ethnicity of the victim of racist incidents, rather than in terms of the content of the abuse suffered. As a result, the data does not allow anything useful to be said about discrepancies between the self-declared ethnicity of the victim, and the animating bigotry that lead to the abuse . For example, when my father was a boy, outdoors all day, he was of decidedly dark colouring. If a passing old bigot had  mistakenly persecuted him for being Pakistani, these figures wouldn't capture that. This example is not as idiosyncratic as it might seem.  In terms of pigmentation, I've heard stories of folk from Mediterranean countries being persecuted by pale-skinned Scots youths, inaccurately accusing them of a jumble of things, from being "Pakis" to members of the Taliban. What is the nature of this incident? Mistaken, certainly - however, the way this data is recorded at present makes its implications for our understanding of the real nature of racism is Scotland unreadable. A similar point has been made by many others before about related "hate crime" datasets, emphasising that it is important to include perceived homosexuality or disability, as well as counting those who self-identify as disabled or homosexual - and so on. To do so is to emphasise the character of the incident, rather than its victim. Take, for example, this table from the publication, on the ethnic origin of the victims of racist incidents recorded by the police:

Ethnic Group	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
White British	826	1,030	983	1,030	1,094	1,145
White Irish	63	91	139	121	124	87
Other White	130	122	414	477	509	531
Mixed	127	149	170	152	150	128
Indian	443	431	507	488	609	557
Pakistani	1,773	1,545	1,833	1,654	1,584	1,452
Bangladeshi	67	26	67	48	54	61
Other Asian	508	984	532	559	505	499
Caribbean	92	171	59	53	58	46
African	321	325	404	443	478	543
Other Black	118	68	111	181	160	70
Chinese	151	153	183	117	152	126
Other	295	379	339	290	290	326
Unknown	145	346	222	177	226	187
Total	5,059	5,820	5,963	5,790	5,993	5,758

The largest group of victims, by ethnicity, are "Pakistani", numbering 1,452 of the 5,758 or 25% of the total victims recorded in 2009/10. The group containing the second highest number of victims was "White British", 1,145 of 2009/10's 5,758 recorded victims or 19.9% of the total. This second category is made up of the undifferentiated combination of "Scottish White, English White, Welsh White, Northern Irish White and British White". "Irish White" are recorded in a distinct category, as are "Other White" victims, which "includes Gypsy/Traveller, Polish White and Other White". Instantly, this strikes me as a continuation of the outmoded race relations model, which unjustifiably homogenises the racial category of "white", while finely analysing "non-white" categories. Given the research's "definition" of racism, though to style it thus is thoroughly charitable, this approach is wholly unjustified. I dare say a good many of you will have been rather surprised to discover that according to these figures, the second most "racially" victimised category in Scotland are "White British" persons, albeit with the vast majority of victims whose ethnicities were known were other than "White" (3,808 of 5,758 recorded incidents, or 66%).

So what the devil is afoot? Because of the research's undifferentiated category of "White British", it is impossible to say who is victimising who, or why.  However, the bare figure suggests, at least to me, that we should be paying much more attention to the phenomenon of anti-English abuse in Scotland. There have certainly been a number of exceedingly ugly scenes reported where little Scotlanders indulged in grotesque anglophobia, sometimes to physical injury. It is intolerable.  In no respect am I suggesting that the bare statistics on the number of White British victims of racist incidents are simply attributable to Scottish anti-English bigotry. We have no data on that point, but I am both curious and concerned to discover what percentage of racially victimised "White British" persons were mistreated as a result of Anglophobia. However, if we are properly to identify the scope of this phenomenon, and come to some understanding about its intensity and prevalence, then the Government is going to have to do a damn sight better, in picking out and presenting its data.*

*This last paragraph has been amended slightly post publication, better to express what I was trying to get at.

Our racialising Census...

I totally loathe the racialising nature of the categories used so often in large-scale, quantitative government research. The old and guilty divisions by pigmentation - black and white - are racialising categories. Period. I cannot understand, on any level, how we can claim that "white" is a plausible ethnic group. Ethnicity explicitly recognises the social and cultural nature of the ties which constitute it. Our understanding of ethnic distinctions ought to be self-consciously poised, mutable and content with overlapping identifies; constructions, constituted by a legacy of our biographical connections, and spurning anything which smacks of the biological concerns of racist theory.

Opening up my census, then, I looked with incredulous disappointment at the questions asked, the options furnished, and the assumptions which the questionnaire implicitly subscribes to. Worse, the census asks us the question what is your ethnic group? Its emphasis is not on ethnic background, your parents or wherever in the world they may have hailed from. Throughout, the questions are obsessed with pigmentation. It is grotesque. Interestingly, I discover that the Census questionnaire differs in different parts of the United Kingdom - and that the offending section on ethnicity is also different, North of the Tweed.  Britology Watch has the full text of both English and Welsh and Scottish questions, and subsequently pens a very sharp post on the implications of this, which largely captures my own feelings. I'd vigorously encourage everyone to read the post and have a think about it. Here's an excerpt from his analysis:

"Spot the difference? In England and Wales, non-white ethnic groups, are not offered the standard option of including ‘English’ as part of their ethnic group: they’re officially classified only as ‘Black British’, ‘Asian British’, etc., and not ‘Black English’ or ‘Asian English’. By contrast, black and Asian persons living in Scotland are permitted to identify as ‘Black Scottish’ and ‘Asian Scottish’.

Not only is the ethnicity of black and minority ethnic (BAME) persons in England and Wales not officially to be classified as ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’, but those latter terms are reserved as ethnic categories exclusively for white persons. I.e., according to British officialdom, if you’re ethnically English, you’re white. If that sounds a bit like the BNP, that’s because this is a form of – indeed, a form for – racial apartheid."

Read the full post here: White and English, but not white-English: how to deal with the discriminatory Census for England and Wales...

On Scotland's people...

The Scottish Household Survey "is a continuous survey based on a sample of the general population in private residences in Scotland" which is "designed to provide reliable and up-to-date information on the composition, characteristics, attitudes and behaviour of Scottish households and individuals, both nationally and at a sub-national level". The numbers of respondents are very large - running into the tens of thousands - and as a result, it is always an exciting moment for obsessives when new annual figures are published. My remarks of last year bear repetition:

"I’m a great fan of quantitative social research. While much of the texture of people’s lives are lost by its persistent reduction of lived experience to a webway of percentages, percentiles, means and medians, groups above or below average, the quantitative view invariably tells us something we did not know, or only dimly appreciated. I’ve found that life exercises strong temptations to regard the self and your ordinary life, universalised, as the ordinary condition of most men and women. While sometimes, images and information succeed in temporarily rebuking this jealous sense of one’s own ordinariness, it tends to return, the lives lead by our fellow citizens collapsing once again into our own experience, its tenor informed by the settings in which we loiter and the people we meet. Big, hefty quantitative research is uniquely empowered to give those comfortable assumptions a shoogle. Even if the aggregation of conceptual categories can be problematic, and leave us empty-handed in terms of the whys and wherefores which brings that state of affairs about, the social frame is sketched in in our minds. We know ourselves better. That at least is my polemic on the goodness of quantitative research, and the interest in the Scottish Household Survey..."

The survey's concerns are domestic and civic, capturing forms of life in Scotland in broad quantitative categories, from marital status to housing tenure, internet access to participation in "cultural activities", rates of smoking to rates of saving, perceptions of anti-social behaviour and attitudes to peoples' environments. For example, did you know that 51% of Scotland's adults (folk aged 16 or over) are married, while 1% are in same-sex civil partnerships, while 6% reported being divorced, while a further 3% were separated? Or that 46% of men are in full time work in Scotland, compared to 28% of women, while only 1% of men "look after the home/family" compared to 10% of women? All is not entirely positive. In particular, I get agitated by "ethnicity" statistics. In particular, how can white or black be ethnic categories? Isn't white a loose coalition of pinkish pigments? I'm at a loss to see how skin colour can plausibly relate to the cultural and social differences that support ethnic distinctions. Indeed, such categories are basically racialising, however innocently the statisticians might have resorted to them. Here are just a few of the other statistics which caught my eye. 

On housing tenure...

In 2008-09, 66% of householders “owner occupied”, with 22% in social rented housing, 10% in private rented housing and 2% making some other arrangement. This is much the same as last year, save that social housing loses ground 1%, accruing to private rental tenure. We don't always notice transformative social changes. If we needed a reminder, contrast 2009's figures with those a decade previously. While in 1999, owner occupation was still a high 61%, 32% of respondents at that time lived in social rented housing, compared to only 5% who undertook private leases. The shifts are even more telling if we leap back further in time to 1961. At that time, only 25% of folk owned and occupied their own houses. Returning to the “15% most deprived”, the rate of home ownership within this category is 39%, up from 34% last year. Social rented housing remains the predominant form of housing tenure among the most deprived at 53%, decreasing from 57% last year. 

Safe walking home alone?
In the middle of a very fulsome section on attitudes towards our civic habitats, risks of crime and perceptions anti-social behaviour, they asked three quarters of their respondents if they felt safe walking home alone at night. 75% of adults said they felt fairly or very safe doing so, while 20% of the total feel imperilled doing so. However, the figures also bear out the fact that men and women's comfort occupying public space and perceptions of endangerment differ. While most respondents of both genders felt safe, there was a 19% difference, with 85% of men feeling safe in the posited situation, compared with 66% of women. On the very unsafe or bit unsafe side of things, only 12% of men reported concerns, while 30% of women thought they were endangered, walking home alone at night.

On smoking... 
In 2009,  24.3% of respondents smoked, a decrease on last year in line with an (almost) continuous reduction in smoker numbers since 1999, when 30.7% of the population partook. Men have a higher rate of smoking than women, 26% of the chaps doing so compared to 23% of the chapesses. Smoking is most common among men aged 25 - 34, 33% of them lighting up. While only 3% of those still at school owned up to nicotine use, a massive 59% of those unable to work due to short term illness do so, followed by 51% of the unemployed seeking work and 48% of those classified as permanently sick or disabled. Like so many of these figures, deprivation looms large here. The contrast is at its most delineated when the most deprived 15% is compared with the rest of Scotland. Remember the average rate of smoking across the population is 24%. 41% of the most deprived Scots smoke, compared with 21% of the rest of the country.   

On "life satisfaction"...
A rather irritating phrase one can imagine a vacuous life coach goading their devotees with. However, not an insignificant concern, one's fundamental happiness with one's existential lot: "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays on a scale where 0 means extremely dissatisfied and 10 means extremely dissatisfied?" This question is new to the Survey and happily revealed that 15% are extremely satisfied with life and that 86% of all respondents choose positive numbers, 8 being the number selected by the highest number of people (29%). Women were slightly more disposed to express extreme satisfaction than men, 17% of women doing so to 13% of men. Many older people seem to be having a whale of a time. Just under a quarter of 60 - 74 year olds (21%) said they were extremely satisfied with life. That said, 11% picked the middle point on the scale, presumably denoting neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction with their continuing vitality.   

On internet use...
In the last quartile of 2009, 67% of households were connected to the internet, up from only 40% in the first quartile of 2003. In 2008, 68% of men use the internet, whether on a personal computer or at work, while 30% don’t. Amongst the ladies, 61% make use of it on the same terms, with a 7% hike in female internet non-use, up at 37%. Recently published figures show that use continues to rise, with 71% now making use of the internet whether at work or at home, while only 27% never make use of it. On the female front, usage now stands at 67%, compared to only 31% who never give it a go. Age clearly plays a part in this. That said, a great many people across the generations now have access. While an overwhelming 90% of 16 - 24 year olds have access, although usage declines slightly from this useful high, usage remains in the 70s and 80 percentages until a sharp decline in those over 60 to just under 50%. On the phenomenon of the “silveriest surfers” in Scotland, the figures show that 90% of women over 75 still don’t use the internet – while 19% of more tec-savvy chaps over 75 “surf”. Affluence makes itself felt here. Only a tiny 4% of those in households with incomes in excess of £40,000 do not use the internet. In stark contrast, of those in the 15% of households which are most deprived, a significantly larger 42% of people don't connect. 

On banking...

Asked, do you have a bank or building society account? 93% said yes, while 4% confirmed they did not, another 3% not owing up, one way or the other. Contrast this with 1999, when 86% of respondents confirmed accounts, while a significantly larger number – 12% – had no account in the household. Here's an easily overlooked deprivation variable. While only 7% of all respondents had a Post Office card account, among 14% of those who are most deprived have one. Compared to the 1% of the total population with no account of any description, in line with last year's results, 4% of the most deprived continue without one. 

On reading for pleasure...

Books are great friends and boon companions in my life. 63% of the population think so too, reading for enjoyment's sake, but sniffishly excluding newspapers, magazines and such like. Affordably printed and made available through public libraries, books have a potentially emancipatory, democratic accessibility, partially reflected in the responses. While those with degrees are the most likely to read (82%), 47% of those with no qualifications. Women are keener bibliophiles than men, 69% of them reporting an enthusiasm for reading, compared to 57% of men. Moreover, for most readers, their books are almost constant companions, 83% dipping into one at least once a week, with 10% doing so less often than weekly, but certainly once a month.

Those are just a few, hastily collected bits and pieces. The report itself runs to over a hundred pages, with innumerable graphs and divisions by category. For those of you who enjoy a good going bout of social research in your spare time, you can read the whole publication here.

Ethnicity, racism & the SNP

Scottish politics does seem like an echo room at the moment. Following that principle of mutual citation, to get this brisk, first morning of the week off to an echoic start, I wanted to draw the eye and bend the ear to this and that.

Firstly, I’ve made tapped nary a single key here to comment on the so-called British National Party hoohah and the easy effort of not being a racist or pandering to racists when you are on a Question Time panel. Rather more difficult, it seems to me, is sticking to those estimable sentiments when Labour Governments and Tory Governments are formulating and regulating their policies on immigration and the seekers of asylum – and representing these to the wider public. For me, as a quasi and occasional scholar of the historical phenomenon of racism in particular communities, what was particularly of interest (not strictly interesting, but of interest) was how different panellists constructed the question. What is this racism and why is it bad? Who do we think of as our archetypical racist, and what error is he or she making?

Some answers emerge from the language. An easy place to begin is the older discourse of race relations, still tacked to the top of the current U.K. legislation from 1976, elucidated sociologically by Michael Banton in his book Race Relations (1967). Implicit in this tack to the issue and “construction” of the “problem” of racism is the maintenance of the categories of race. This sort of approach is now far more common in America – and in its long penumbra, we sometimes find ourselves encompassed. The idea of being “mixed-race” has taken on a lurid prominence since Barack Obama became a real prospect for the American elected kingship. Numerous, utterly fatuous inquisitions follow. Is he really black? Is he white? In what sense is it justifiable to call him a black man? The more pointed answer to this is firstly to point out – race is socially constructed. Race has no given conceptual ordering, no benign, ininterpretative “truth” which can be found outside of our own, social and philosophical concepts. Once these sinister conceptualisations have slithered into our minds, the world begins to take on a racist shape. We ask questions of the world – like those asked of Obama – which assume the basic validity of race as a conceptual tool. In short, we become to dupe of the ideas we create and recreate day to day by seeing the world in a racialising way.

This, I’d suggest, from an anti-racist perspective is a distinct and continuing problem. Rather than scorching the roots of a false ideology, we merely trim the savage plant, constrain its growth within an orderly box, and hope all past blights cannot return. I’d suggest, as a sine qua non, we should stop talking about race as if it had a meaningful underlying referent. Period. Certainly, we might want to analyse the social phenomenon of race-thinking in public life – of which there are extensive examples – but as a political project and a conceptual frame, race and race relations ought to be hastily junked. I look forward to the day when our lexicons will read only:

race (n) (archaic)

However, a hasty change in our terminology won’t do of itself either. I’ve attacked social research before which draws on discourses of ethnicity, and promptly asks me whether I’m white or black – not, I notice the wobbly, peelywally pinkish hue typical of unsunned Scots. If our emphasis is cultural, and ethnicity recognises in the way a racist cannot that ethnic categories are socially begot and none the less valid for all that – then why do the guilty terms of black and white reappear, bashfully pretending they do not draw on a racialising discourse which might explain their presence. At which point, to the promised echo room. The august Lord Rector of the Universitas Academica Edinensis – first class – Iain MacWhirter has an excellent article this morning in the Herald which tied my tongue and stole (albeit without the reticent mens rea) much of what I had wanted to say about the inevitable kilting and Scotticism of the issues raised by wider awareness of the BNP’s platform and how that relates to the SNP. All of this particularly pertinent in the context of Professor Tom Gallagher’s suggestion that Darth Salmond is dabbling in the dreich arts of “mass manipulation associated with Europe in uglier times.” Other sceptical pronouncements include:

“This is replacing civic nationalism with the blood-and-soil variety. I’m angry that such ideas might see the light of day. How would an English child or an internationally minded Scottish one feel on such a visit?” ... “Scotland is a country where the texture of society is still authoritarian and certainly conformist” ...

“I find it creepy that a movement’s future is so bound up with such a talented, impulsive and autocratic leader. The SNP would get more value out of Salmond if they made him accountable for his policies rather than crowning him the unofficial King of Scotland at each party conference. If independence is full of disappointment, then weak democratic institutions could be menaced by a demagogue.”

While a reasonable tactic to popularise Gallagher spanking new (and presumably, hard sell) book The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland Under Nationalism – we ought not to be too brisk to call the man a wobbling numpty. If there are answers to these claims, and easy answers at that, we ought to be able to produce them. Personally, I see in Gallagher’s suggestion about the force of the Maximum Eck’s mass manipulation a manifestation of the traditional Scottish cringe. Even our masses are crapper and less massful than everyone else’s, our manipulations rather … er … incomplete. I’m more interested in his suggestion about the conformist and authoritarian tack of Scots culture – that is an issue about which we can – and ought to have - a real discussion.

Yon article by Mr MacWhirter is not a bad place to start.