I hesitate to puff my own work but my book on CRT (Harris2024) -- on Amazon -- discusses Rex and Moore and several other British studies of racism and compares them favourably with CRT. I argue against the idea that 'racism' is the key structuring variable in British social structures. Read extracts free on Amazon, please. I have also been implicated in a 'vile campaign' against Arday because I contacted him about problems in his work (in 2023) in preparation for this book. Any criticisms of CRT must be racist, these people think.
I think what grates on me most is how the ‘white’ critique has replaced that of ‘class’ in Britain. We unlike the United States hail from a class society. It was class that segregated the people of Britain. One only has to reflect on the gruelling conditions experienced by the lower classes at the height of the British Empire ,the richest country in the world. That wealth was not shared. The poor were subjected to servitude, destitution or humiliation. The reality of the workhouses as the only social support available made as dehumanising as possible. That their descendants, me and the majority of the British, are now expected to be apologetic for their white superiority is an ignorant disgrace.
Inspired by the work of Kendi and DiAngelo I have been working on my own "theorizing" in response to the assertions inherent in CRT - all in an attempt to make sense of the current madness that has become the "new normal" in the Western world. I'm calling my theory - CIT (Critical Idiocy Theory). CIT posits that any theoretical position that rests solely on "assertions" rather than "material evidence" - (excluding CIT of course) - indicates that the person holding that position is clearly - "an idiot." They don't intend to be, they may not want to be, and they are likely quite unaware that they are in fact - "an idiot." If you confront them with their "idiocy" they will most surely deny it - confirming in terms of CIT tenents - that they are clearly in fact - "idiots." Stay tuned for future posts where I will explore related topics such as - "idiot privilege" - "idiot tears" - and of course - "idiot fragility." : /
I recoil a bit at the comparison since Nowak was a victim of murder and Arday was a victim of himself. However exploitative and patronizing Arday's treatment was by others, he had agency and made choices that led to his downfall. Poor Henry was just a kid. Still, I do think the point you're making about the racial dynamics at play is compelling and urgent. The way "racist" is deployed now as a nebulous force that can be hidden anywhere, divined only by omnipotent individuals known as POC, is an incredibly dangerous phenomenon. Seems to me it has simply become a stand in for "evil" and fits neatly into our tribal and religious instincts. It's personal for me since I was labeled racist for objecting when a leader of my community summer music program said she wanted people of the appropriate race to play certain music. It was really too stupid to be believed, but the (all white!) members took her seriously and labeled me a heretic. The social repercussions have been significant, and I will never view humanity in quite the same way. I thought we had evolved and were more rational, but so much in modern life is proving that we're still the same.
Very much take your point. I’m very sorry to hear about your experience too. The reason I linked the men was about the way racial categories swallow up the individuals themselves but I certainly appreciate the differences between them. Very thoughtful comment thank you.
Yes, despite the differences, race is an important factor in both, and your point is so important and well argued. I didn't know about Race, Community and Conflict by John Rex and Robert Moore. Fascinating. It seems racism plays the same role as demonic possession or original sin in religious contexts; the suspicion that evil lurks within and must exorcized apparently runs deep in our collective psyche.
Right!? There was a social class dynamic at work in this too, similar to Susan's astute observation: "I have also seen the opposite of that in real time, incidentally, directed against the white poor, especially when they express the “wrong views”, where the cloying gaze cools and hardens into contempt." The summer music committee in my very white, rural area had very little experience with actual black people and were acting out of a kind of noblesse oblige, whereas I grew up in diverse, working class neighborhoods with black and Latino friends and classmates who I thought of as equals. My objection to the "antiracist" plan to cart in musicians of color to our town because "wouldn't it be wonderful if our children could see people of color playing their own music?" catapulted me into the poor white trash category. The hypocrisy of it all is stunning.
As someone who was taught sociology as an under-graduate, 1969-72, the Rex and Moore book certainly featured. What I took from it at that time was that competition over scarce resources=conflict=increase in racial tensions. You offer insights on the lineage of that work which are indeed thought provoking. Importantly the key issue you raise for me is the way in which the victim is constructed/disappeared, what informs that process, and what its impact is. Individuals do make choices but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Someone said that didn't they? (Smile). I agree we certainly do seem to have lost the capacity for appreciating the complexity of the world......and that 'we' includes all of us whether 'we' like it or not! Thanks for another brave and thought provoking post Susan.
Helpful points indeed Sandra. What I was trying to argue, in part, through the Rex and Moore was: A theory that makes racism structural can paradoxically make racism seem omnipresent whilst making individual moral responsibility increasingly difficult or impossible to find… There were actually people who did things here - bad things themselves and bad things to others - not systems alone and CRT doesn’t account for this.
Yes, I agree with you on this. The disappearance of the social being (paraphrasing Rom Harre) as someone who does things, to whom things can 'just happen' and who can do things in collusion with others, is rendered absent. Too complicated for CRT I suspect.
I'm unsure whether your assertion/agreement that "...we certainly do seem to have lost the capacity for appreciating the complexity of the world......and that 'we' includes all of us whether 'we' like it or not!" is meant as irony, or as perhaps yet another example of the way in which the type of thinking behind CRT seeks to over-ride the considerations of individual cases or individual perceptions. It could also be both at the same time! Could you clarify how you intended your assertion?
You are right of course it could be both at the same time but when I was writing it I was being ironic I think! I was more reflecting the tendency for some theories to equate with belief systems......not peculiar to CRT by any means....but once a theory equates with a belief the opportunities to think otherwise diminish it seems to me.
Not sure if this helps but good to talk with you, Sandra
Surely if Rex and Moore were correct in their hypothesis, the white Rhodesian refugees would have been prioritised for social housing over earlier black arrivals from the Windrush generation? Did they even attempt to collect contrary evidence?
Exactly Daniel. That would have been a very useful falsification test. The stranger move, to me, was that the failure to prioritise newly arrived Commonwealth residents, who were legally equally “British”, could itself become evidence of a racist structure. Rex and Moore's own work was considerably more nuanced than what followed, as I say, but genealogically I think you can trace back through this and related arguments the idea of an invisible racism whose presence can be inferred from unequal outcomes (in this particular case waiting longer on a housing list) even when nothing in policies or practices would suggest this to the reasonable observer. I mean, racism as an explanation seems not to add anything that 'recent arrival' would convey. I find this more generally where 'structural racism' is asserted but what distinguishes race from any causal mechanism is never made clear.
Presumably the only solution for invisible racism is to put sociologists in charge of every government department, who with their special knowledge and insight will be able to fix problems like these before they arise.
I see a logical leap from unintended consequences (recent arrivals have fewer qualifying years for social housing) to the allegation of institutional racism (the system is designed to prevent black people gaining social housing).
Yep. Here in Rex and Moore we can actually see the "hinge" where that proposition crept in for the first time, and see the way they formulate it (and are thus able to contest it). Now, it's just black boxed.
It may be interesting to re-evaluate their theory against the settlement of Ukrainian refugees in the UK. Recent arrivals, almost all white, but very few in social housing that I noticed.
Great piece Susan! Reading this I recalled going to a philosophy conference in Oregon in which the Americans accused themselves and one another of “white supremacy” in the complacent way we Europeans at the time denounced folk as “metaphysical” and “phallogocentric” (oh, happy days!). When in my blissful ignorance of the ritual I objected to being described thus, seemingly only my Englishness spared me from being anathematised!
As someone who worked in social housing and did a sociology degree I would like to know more about what
Rex and Moore found. I always thought it was that long term residents were prioritised over immigrants regardless of time on list or housing conditions. I was working in 80s and 90s but priority was for homeless and those in overcrowded or unsuitable housing not just time on list.
The Nowak case was awful but remember the killers lied to the police. The police arrived to what they had been told was a racist assault. To not initially to believe the report would be also worrying. It reminds me of police failure to believe women reporting sexual violence. Believe the victim is a response to the justified criticism of police failures in dealing with sexual and racial assault.
The racism found by MacPherson persists as shown in the Casey report.
Sociology has always had to balance agency and structure in analysis. There seems to be now a shift to minimise the role of structure and oppression to individualism. This leads to the end of class politics and feminism to be replaced with identity politics. A neoliberal move taken up by the left
I’m not at all averse to structural accounts. I use patriarchy constantly in my own work and thinking. But the theory has to fit the data, not the other way round.
For example: I find the idea of patriarchal structures convincing because of the long-established pattern of inequalities between men and women across many domains and all cultures, underpinned by practices and - still in many cases - policies that you can map. Very importantly, patriarchy is also a set of cultural practices or habits, reproduced by couples and at the individual level.
Similarly, class is a hugely important structure. Age, race, disability - all impact structurally and again are carried into individual interactions. But none of them can claim, without due evidence, to provide the primary explanation for social facts and inequality and that is the problem I have with CRT.
Regarding your point on housing, Rex and Moore in Birmingham in 1960 identified the ‘five year rule’ which entitled people to council housing but I don’t know how this changed in the 1980s and 1990s. I use this example because the ‘five year rule’ is not obviously a racist rule but it became part of their explanation for moving racism to the structural domain nevertheless - and this has since taken on a life of its own.
Is 'patriarchy' the correct word for the sexist structures of the West since the social upheavals of universal suffrage and the First World War?
It seems to me that women's disadvantage now takes place despite the wishes of fathers, rather than because of the 'rule of fathers', and that corporate and commercial interests are driving sexism in our culture.
For example, I know of no father who insisted that their daughter start an OnlyFans presence. Nor do I see any father telling their son that this is an appropriate way to exploit women.
Instead, sexism and misogyny are being transmitted memetically from male peers, forming networks of economic and political power.
It seems to me that modern feminism adopted the word 'patriarchy' because of its insistence that the Western nuclear family was the root of women's oppression. Yet male power networks that advance or reintroduce sexism are not literal families, and extended families in other cultures practice misogynistic traditions such as FGM, with other women wielding the razor.
Ironically, liberal feminism apparently has very little to say about literal patriarchies which have arrived in the West from countries such as Afghanistan or Pakistan, where an unmarried daughter can be traded for marriage to settle a dispute between men.
Thank you Daniel for a wonderfully thoughtful comment and apologies for the late reply - I've been away for a few days and tried hard not to engage with my screen for a while! However, without turning my reply into a mini-essay, which I almost could do - I think patriarchy doesn't necessarily literally refer to rule by fathers, today or ever - and certainly today power is much more diffuse. There's so much to say about this, but I would just make the brief point that fathers not wanting their daughters to start OnlyFans is not evidence of patriarchy not existing - fathers have always wanted to preserve their daughters from the eyes of other males, in a way that reflects on THEM and their family honour - ("I'll kill you if you bring dishonour on this house!") But at the same time I bet a lot of fathers visit the site themselves to look at other men's daughters and consume pornography more generally.. I'd see the much more severe literal patriarchies you mention as lying on a continuum with this, rather than as something altogether different. Though point taken about the failure of feminism to criticise the very severe forms that are institutionally enforced today.
Thanks for the reply. No doubt some men are hypocrites regarding pornography. I just don't see fathers as the primary drivers of that system.
I was recently reading about how Shulamith Firestone died alone in her apartment, and thinking about how the anti-family rhetoric of her brand of feminism served the corporations who wanted female workers far better than it served those women themselves.
I hesitate to puff my own work but my book on CRT (Harris2024) -- on Amazon -- discusses Rex and Moore and several other British studies of racism and compares them favourably with CRT. I argue against the idea that 'racism' is the key structuring variable in British social structures. Read extracts free on Amazon, please. I have also been implicated in a 'vile campaign' against Arday because I contacted him about problems in his work (in 2023) in preparation for this book. Any criticisms of CRT must be racist, these people think.
Excellent Dave and I will read with great interest thank you. Thank you for your work and for sharing this
I think what grates on me most is how the ‘white’ critique has replaced that of ‘class’ in Britain. We unlike the United States hail from a class society. It was class that segregated the people of Britain. One only has to reflect on the gruelling conditions experienced by the lower classes at the height of the British Empire ,the richest country in the world. That wealth was not shared. The poor were subjected to servitude, destitution or humiliation. The reality of the workhouses as the only social support available made as dehumanising as possible. That their descendants, me and the majority of the British, are now expected to be apologetic for their white superiority is an ignorant disgrace.
Amen
Inspired by the work of Kendi and DiAngelo I have been working on my own "theorizing" in response to the assertions inherent in CRT - all in an attempt to make sense of the current madness that has become the "new normal" in the Western world. I'm calling my theory - CIT (Critical Idiocy Theory). CIT posits that any theoretical position that rests solely on "assertions" rather than "material evidence" - (excluding CIT of course) - indicates that the person holding that position is clearly - "an idiot." They don't intend to be, they may not want to be, and they are likely quite unaware that they are in fact - "an idiot." If you confront them with their "idiocy" they will most surely deny it - confirming in terms of CIT tenents - that they are clearly in fact - "idiots." Stay tuned for future posts where I will explore related topics such as - "idiot privilege" - "idiot tears" - and of course - "idiot fragility." : /
Well done, Gary!
(P.S. You have a typo in there — it’s “tenets”, not “tenants”.)
Thanks Lisa!
I recoil a bit at the comparison since Nowak was a victim of murder and Arday was a victim of himself. However exploitative and patronizing Arday's treatment was by others, he had agency and made choices that led to his downfall. Poor Henry was just a kid. Still, I do think the point you're making about the racial dynamics at play is compelling and urgent. The way "racist" is deployed now as a nebulous force that can be hidden anywhere, divined only by omnipotent individuals known as POC, is an incredibly dangerous phenomenon. Seems to me it has simply become a stand in for "evil" and fits neatly into our tribal and religious instincts. It's personal for me since I was labeled racist for objecting when a leader of my community summer music program said she wanted people of the appropriate race to play certain music. It was really too stupid to be believed, but the (all white!) members took her seriously and labeled me a heretic. The social repercussions have been significant, and I will never view humanity in quite the same way. I thought we had evolved and were more rational, but so much in modern life is proving that we're still the same.
Very much take your point. I’m very sorry to hear about your experience too. The reason I linked the men was about the way racial categories swallow up the individuals themselves but I certainly appreciate the differences between them. Very thoughtful comment thank you.
Yes, despite the differences, race is an important factor in both, and your point is so important and well argued. I didn't know about Race, Community and Conflict by John Rex and Robert Moore. Fascinating. It seems racism plays the same role as demonic possession or original sin in religious contexts; the suspicion that evil lurks within and must exorcized apparently runs deep in our collective psyche.
I guess the Asian classical music prodigy will no longer be allowed to play anything by Mozart, then.
ah but no…
Right!? There was a social class dynamic at work in this too, similar to Susan's astute observation: "I have also seen the opposite of that in real time, incidentally, directed against the white poor, especially when they express the “wrong views”, where the cloying gaze cools and hardens into contempt." The summer music committee in my very white, rural area had very little experience with actual black people and were acting out of a kind of noblesse oblige, whereas I grew up in diverse, working class neighborhoods with black and Latino friends and classmates who I thought of as equals. My objection to the "antiracist" plan to cart in musicians of color to our town because "wouldn't it be wonderful if our children could see people of color playing their own music?" catapulted me into the poor white trash category. The hypocrisy of it all is stunning.
As someone who was taught sociology as an under-graduate, 1969-72, the Rex and Moore book certainly featured. What I took from it at that time was that competition over scarce resources=conflict=increase in racial tensions. You offer insights on the lineage of that work which are indeed thought provoking. Importantly the key issue you raise for me is the way in which the victim is constructed/disappeared, what informs that process, and what its impact is. Individuals do make choices but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Someone said that didn't they? (Smile). I agree we certainly do seem to have lost the capacity for appreciating the complexity of the world......and that 'we' includes all of us whether 'we' like it or not! Thanks for another brave and thought provoking post Susan.
Helpful points indeed Sandra. What I was trying to argue, in part, through the Rex and Moore was: A theory that makes racism structural can paradoxically make racism seem omnipresent whilst making individual moral responsibility increasingly difficult or impossible to find… There were actually people who did things here - bad things themselves and bad things to others - not systems alone and CRT doesn’t account for this.
Yes, I agree with you on this. The disappearance of the social being (paraphrasing Rom Harre) as someone who does things, to whom things can 'just happen' and who can do things in collusion with others, is rendered absent. Too complicated for CRT I suspect.
I'm unsure whether your assertion/agreement that "...we certainly do seem to have lost the capacity for appreciating the complexity of the world......and that 'we' includes all of us whether 'we' like it or not!" is meant as irony, or as perhaps yet another example of the way in which the type of thinking behind CRT seeks to over-ride the considerations of individual cases or individual perceptions. It could also be both at the same time! Could you clarify how you intended your assertion?
Good question Steve.
You are right of course it could be both at the same time but when I was writing it I was being ironic I think! I was more reflecting the tendency for some theories to equate with belief systems......not peculiar to CRT by any means....but once a theory equates with a belief the opportunities to think otherwise diminish it seems to me.
Not sure if this helps but good to talk with you, Sandra
Yes, that clarifies in the way i suspected you intended it, thanks.
This is beautifully written, thank you.
Surely if Rex and Moore were correct in their hypothesis, the white Rhodesian refugees would have been prioritised for social housing over earlier black arrivals from the Windrush generation? Did they even attempt to collect contrary evidence?
Exactly Daniel. That would have been a very useful falsification test. The stranger move, to me, was that the failure to prioritise newly arrived Commonwealth residents, who were legally equally “British”, could itself become evidence of a racist structure. Rex and Moore's own work was considerably more nuanced than what followed, as I say, but genealogically I think you can trace back through this and related arguments the idea of an invisible racism whose presence can be inferred from unequal outcomes (in this particular case waiting longer on a housing list) even when nothing in policies or practices would suggest this to the reasonable observer. I mean, racism as an explanation seems not to add anything that 'recent arrival' would convey. I find this more generally where 'structural racism' is asserted but what distinguishes race from any causal mechanism is never made clear.
Presumably the only solution for invisible racism is to put sociologists in charge of every government department, who with their special knowledge and insight will be able to fix problems like these before they arise.
I see a logical leap from unintended consequences (recent arrivals have fewer qualifying years for social housing) to the allegation of institutional racism (the system is designed to prevent black people gaining social housing).
Yep. Here in Rex and Moore we can actually see the "hinge" where that proposition crept in for the first time, and see the way they formulate it (and are thus able to contest it). Now, it's just black boxed.
It may be interesting to re-evaluate their theory against the settlement of Ukrainian refugees in the UK. Recent arrivals, almost all white, but very few in social housing that I noticed.
Great piece Susan! Reading this I recalled going to a philosophy conference in Oregon in which the Americans accused themselves and one another of “white supremacy” in the complacent way we Europeans at the time denounced folk as “metaphysical” and “phallogocentric” (oh, happy days!). When in my blissful ignorance of the ritual I objected to being described thus, seemingly only my Englishness spared me from being anathematised!
As someone who worked in social housing and did a sociology degree I would like to know more about what
Rex and Moore found. I always thought it was that long term residents were prioritised over immigrants regardless of time on list or housing conditions. I was working in 80s and 90s but priority was for homeless and those in overcrowded or unsuitable housing not just time on list.
The Nowak case was awful but remember the killers lied to the police. The police arrived to what they had been told was a racist assault. To not initially to believe the report would be also worrying. It reminds me of police failure to believe women reporting sexual violence. Believe the victim is a response to the justified criticism of police failures in dealing with sexual and racial assault.
The racism found by MacPherson persists as shown in the Casey report.
Sociology has always had to balance agency and structure in analysis. There seems to be now a shift to minimise the role of structure and oppression to individualism. This leads to the end of class politics and feminism to be replaced with identity politics. A neoliberal move taken up by the left
I’m not at all averse to structural accounts. I use patriarchy constantly in my own work and thinking. But the theory has to fit the data, not the other way round.
For example: I find the idea of patriarchal structures convincing because of the long-established pattern of inequalities between men and women across many domains and all cultures, underpinned by practices and - still in many cases - policies that you can map. Very importantly, patriarchy is also a set of cultural practices or habits, reproduced by couples and at the individual level.
Similarly, class is a hugely important structure. Age, race, disability - all impact structurally and again are carried into individual interactions. But none of them can claim, without due evidence, to provide the primary explanation for social facts and inequality and that is the problem I have with CRT.
Regarding your point on housing, Rex and Moore in Birmingham in 1960 identified the ‘five year rule’ which entitled people to council housing but I don’t know how this changed in the 1980s and 1990s. I use this example because the ‘five year rule’ is not obviously a racist rule but it became part of their explanation for moving racism to the structural domain nevertheless - and this has since taken on a life of its own.
Is 'patriarchy' the correct word for the sexist structures of the West since the social upheavals of universal suffrage and the First World War?
It seems to me that women's disadvantage now takes place despite the wishes of fathers, rather than because of the 'rule of fathers', and that corporate and commercial interests are driving sexism in our culture.
For example, I know of no father who insisted that their daughter start an OnlyFans presence. Nor do I see any father telling their son that this is an appropriate way to exploit women.
Instead, sexism and misogyny are being transmitted memetically from male peers, forming networks of economic and political power.
It seems to me that modern feminism adopted the word 'patriarchy' because of its insistence that the Western nuclear family was the root of women's oppression. Yet male power networks that advance or reintroduce sexism are not literal families, and extended families in other cultures practice misogynistic traditions such as FGM, with other women wielding the razor.
Ironically, liberal feminism apparently has very little to say about literal patriarchies which have arrived in the West from countries such as Afghanistan or Pakistan, where an unmarried daughter can be traded for marriage to settle a dispute between men.
Thank you Daniel for a wonderfully thoughtful comment and apologies for the late reply - I've been away for a few days and tried hard not to engage with my screen for a while! However, without turning my reply into a mini-essay, which I almost could do - I think patriarchy doesn't necessarily literally refer to rule by fathers, today or ever - and certainly today power is much more diffuse. There's so much to say about this, but I would just make the brief point that fathers not wanting their daughters to start OnlyFans is not evidence of patriarchy not existing - fathers have always wanted to preserve their daughters from the eyes of other males, in a way that reflects on THEM and their family honour - ("I'll kill you if you bring dishonour on this house!") But at the same time I bet a lot of fathers visit the site themselves to look at other men's daughters and consume pornography more generally.. I'd see the much more severe literal patriarchies you mention as lying on a continuum with this, rather than as something altogether different. Though point taken about the failure of feminism to criticise the very severe forms that are institutionally enforced today.
Thanks for the reply. No doubt some men are hypocrites regarding pornography. I just don't see fathers as the primary drivers of that system.
I was recently reading about how Shulamith Firestone died alone in her apartment, and thinking about how the anti-family rhetoric of her brand of feminism served the corporations who wanted female workers far better than it served those women themselves.
Yes exactly. Hester Eisenstein writes about that: how useful feminism was for global capitalism. Uggh
In Henry Nowak's case the police officers should not have been dismissive when Nowak said that he had been stabbed and could not breathe.
True, but 'believe the victim' presumes we know who the victim is, based on self-declaration alone.
Where else are they supposed to start?
With the facts, and with open minds.