Status,
tribalism and racism |
||
|
There is a programme on the television which follows the goings on at Monkey World, an ape rescue centre in the unlikely location of Dorset. It takes in apes of various species from around the world, primates which have been badly treated and are in need of care and attention. Since 1987 the rescue centre has assisted very many governments to stop the smuggling of primates from the wild. At the Centre, refugees of this illegal trade as well as those that have suffered abuse or neglect are rehabilitated into natural living groups. They are kept in various very large compounds where they can, as far as possible, be given a natural habitat whilst also being looked after by the staff. Of course, living in a natural habitat also means living as part of a tribe, with the inevitable jostling for status within that group and so the occasional ‘disputes’ between members. It also means that different species and different tribes within each species need to be kept separate from each other. Not to do so would certainly mean conflict. But of course, we too are primates and subject to similar social pressures as our cousins. And so we tend to look after our own family as a priority and then will look after other members of our tribe. We too jostle for status and look suspiciously at the people of other tribes. Quite what a tribe of humans is nowadays though is difficult to work out. Our ancestors would have socialised with relatively few people, whereas now we think it normal to live in a town, one with many thousands of people. It seems that our understanding of ‘our tribe’ has had to expand. Or perhaps not. It may be instead that we recognise our tribe in a different way. Maybe it exists instead in those organisations to which we belong in some sense, whether through work, leisure or religion. Maybe we do not now identify our tribe with those sharing the equivalent of the same cave system or the same patch of forest with us. Belonging to more than one organisation means that we can even belong to more than one tribe. Organisations provide us with faces which we recognise and which in turn can recognise us and so confer on us some degree of status – if only that which exists by virtue of being recognised rather than being unknown. And we all desire some degree of status. Like our primate cousins, we look for status within our group although, unlike the average monkey, we don't like to be too obvious about it. Those seeking status as politicians, for example, tend to portray it as a wish to serve the community. Now most of us don’t have what we might call public status, but not to have any status would mean that we were people to be ignored. And that would hurt. As a partner in a firm of solicitors, I had the status which that afforded but can now only cling on to its memory, perhaps bolstered slightly by my new role as an essayist and writer of occasionally published letters – and of course the reflected glory of having an actual Professor as my Italian teacher! By the same token, however, organisations to which we do not belong can be, or can appear to be, exclusive. And this can cause problems. Having looked from the inside of religion outwards, it makes little difference to me if there is a group of people taking advantage of their particular religion to form their own tribe. I can see, however, that it could cause a feeling of resentment, particularly amongst those not very attached to a religion as such - those who see Christianity as more a historical background to our community than an actual religion. The complaint has been that immigrants come here, set up their temples and do not engage with the rest of us. They even go to their temples regularly rather than copying the WFH (worship from home) habits of apathetic Christians. The description of this by Reform UK is - ‘Multiculturalism has led to the growth of separate communities that risk nurturing extremism and the rejection of our way of life. Christian values are under threat.’ My own religion, however, rejected ‘our way of life’, although if you had seen me you would not have known of that rejection. As we walk down the street, the vast majority of people we see we do not know, or know anything about and we’re not concerned by it. Someone with the wrong skin colour or wearing Arabic style clothes whom we don’t know, however, lies in a hinterland. We do not know him, but at the same time we feel that we know a lot about him and we feel that he is certainly not likely to be a part of our tribe. Which causes unease, prejudice, and can justify racism in some people’s minds. There are of course at least two different types of racism. The first derived from what used to be considered ‘the science of race’. In times past when explorers found other types of people living in remote parts of the world, there was a wish to work out how that had happened. After all, surely God had created man in his own image and yet here were people who looked very different. Had God in fact created different types of people for different areas of the world? Various parts of Genesis are somewhat ambiguous and so it was thought by some to be possible. After all, Caan, having killed his only brother, Able, said to God: “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” But who would that be? His Father or mother? His yet to be born younger brother, Seth? Or perhaps those other ‘races’. There was accordingly much ‘scientific’ study of the supposed differences between the ‘races’ – mainly involving skull measurements. And so the idea of Polygenism – multiple human origins rather than the single origin of monogenism - became popular. It became even more popular when it was realised that it could be used as a justification for considering people from other areas to be less intelligent or incapable of being civilised. This meant that they could and should be controlled by the superior Europeans. All of this nonsense has now been confined to history by actual genetic science, but its influence still lives on in the wilfully prejudiced. And particularly in certain parts of America, where the good old boys like to cling on to the past. But then, secondly, there is the tribally-based prejudice against people, those who can be identified as of a different tribe because they are of a different colour or culture. This has not been helped by government action or, rather, inaction. For decades, manifestos have promised lower immigration even while it increased and while refusing to allow enough houses and infrastructure to be built because of Nimbyism. And so we have a return of the simple racism of the 1960s. This I suspect is what motivates the majority of the rioters on our streets. Encouraged by Mr Farage, they say that they want their country back. Although granted the influx of people over the millennia from all over the continent it would be rather difficult to pin down precisely who ‘they’ are. We are all a mixture of the many ethnic origins, languages and cultures of our forebears. Should we throw out all the descendents of the Norman invaders? Chuck out the Anglo-Saxons because they’re too Norse? But despite its being logically incoherent, it seems to be a simple truth to many that we have accepted far too many immigrants and that those here have chosen not to integrate. And this, despite the very mixed ethnic profile of our very successful Olympic medallists, all proudly wrapping themselves in the Union Jack and crying when the National Anthem is played. And, somewhat ironically, there is a significant difficulty in even trying to integrate with the rest of society if that attempt is itself met with the barrier created by racial prejudice. Paul Buckingham 5 August 2024 |
|
|