Week 11: Ethnicity and victimisation

"I think we should consider the possibility that this attempted murder was a hate crime."
"What, as opposed to one of those 'I really, really like you' type of murders?"
- Life on Mars

This week's lecture took the approach of critical criminology, with its stress on power and injustice as the context for crime, and applied it to the area of ethnicity and 'race'.

Critical criminology focuses on power: the fact that some groups of people hold power over others, and do so in ways that are unaccountable and unjust. Is this a useful way of thinking about ethnicity? It's certainly not true to say that every member of an ethnic minority is less powerful than every White person. Nor is it true to say that all White people would discriminate against Asians (for example) if they had the chance - any more than all Asians would discriminate against Whites.

The point is more about the relationship between prejudice and power. This country, like many others, has a long history of discrimination against ethnic minorities: fifty or a hundred years ago it would have been completely routine and unsurprising to see positions of power reserved for White people, and to see those people using their power in discriminatory ways. This is no longer normal or acceptable, but it's still there in the background - those discriminatory values and practices are part of all of our history.

Because of that history, the White majority - on the scale of society as a whole - has a power that ethnic minorities don't have: the power to discriminate, in ways that have a major effect on people's life chances. It's not a coincidence that black and minority ethnic people are significantly more likely to live in poorer areas - and, as a result, significantly more likely to become victims of crime, including 'normal' crimes with no racial motivation. What's more, there is a minority which feels threatened by equality - by the erosion of the (unjust) privilege which the White majority used to have - and wants to restore it, if necessary by violent means. Racist crimes, like violence against women, are very often crimes committed, not by people who actually have power, but by people who feel they ought to have power - and use violence to make it a reality.This is what ethnicity, and the more-or-less imaginary categories of 'race', have to do with power and injustice.

Whether it's useful to talk about racist crime in terms of 'hate crime' is another question; the police certainly think it is. Personally I'm sceptical; this is partly for the reason given by Gene Hunt, partly because I think the 'hate crime' label is too general. If members of any group can be a victim of 'hate crime', then 'hate crime' is purely about irrational prejudice - and not about power and histories of injustice. I think losing that background makes racist crime harder, not easier, to explain - and to challenge.