Image: Katie Bruce
What if you had to guess what links the three people in this photo? Cousins? A budget Specsavers advert?
You probably wouldn’t guess that we were the speakers at an international conference session called ‘minorities and justice’ at Oxford University. I’m the one on the left. An all-white panel on minorities and justice.
Six months ago the Lammy Review found that Black people in the UK are four times more likely to be in prison than would be expected given their proportion of the total population. As the UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “if you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.”
Six months on and the theme of the Howard League’s bi-annual conference at Oxford University is Redesigning Justice: Promoting civil rights, trust and fairness.
According to the conference blurb, it will “shine a light on seemingly intransigent aspects of justice systems including what equality and legitimacy mean 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King and why prison is still so central to justice responses to crime.”
Bring it on. I submit my abstract and am excited when I get a place to speak. If ever there was a system in need of redesign it is the criminal justice system.
I am already at the conference when I realise that the session I’m going to be presenting in is called ‘minorities and justice’. I’m a white woman – there must be some mistake.
The programme is impressively vast, with nine parallel sessions at a time. The session in which I’m speaking appears to be one of the only ones specifically about minorities and justice, along with the final plenary session. Within different sessions individual presentations also cover issues related to the experiences of minority groups and justice, mostly from an academic perspective. Sixteen of the eighteen plenary speakers appear white.
Against my better judgement I turn up to my session ready to be the white person taking up space.
I had already thought long and hard about presenting at this conference. The most exciting developments in criminal justice in Aotearoa New Zealand, where I live, are coming from indigenous-led movements. But this is not my story to tell. I speak about the problem with reform, including the often inherent racism all in the name of good intentions.
I walk in and the other two speakers are white and so is everyone in the audience.
I can’t help but think that invoking the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination to describe your conference is inconsistent with producing an all-white panel on minorities and justice in the context of a racist criminal justice system.
The only silver lining is that there are nine parallel sessions so there are only about ten people to bear witness..
There was no elephant in the room until I put one there.
I acknowledged my identity as a white cis-gendered heterosexual woman with all the privilege that comes with that. Oh how enlightened of me. I am also Roma, a population hugely over-represented in UK prisons, but this is not something that is obvious when you meet me, so my pot of white privilege is full to the brim.
I talk about whether reform itself may be the problem. I say we should be asking, ‘justice for whom’? I mention that, however well-intentioned, reform can create, perpetuate and deepen injustice. I look at the white bodies in the audience, reflecting white bodies working in law enforcement and prisons that contain disportionate numbers of Black and Minority Ethnic bodies. The words stick in my white throat.
I leave the (tiny) audience with a couple of things to think about:
- Power – who has the power to redesign justice? Who is at this conference? Who is missing? Why are they missing?
- Action – what is the action that you are going to take to contribute to the redesign? Do you need to consider the power that you hold in defining, presenting and shaping reform?
There is too much applause. Embarrassed, I politely listen to the other two speakers talk about the experiences of Muslim men in prison and a rights perspective on queer sex in prison. Both important issues, but I can’t see past what the make-up of this session says about the conference, about criminology and about all of us who are complicit in perpetuating the injustice and the lack of voice and power that we claim to be fighting against.
In the customary discussion after the presentations, talk is turning to specific details of academic research, which frankly seems irrelevant.
“Why are we all white?” I ask. Apparently this is a new question.
In her recent book, Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race, Reni Eddo-Lodge reflects that, “The idea of white privilege forces white people who aren’t actively racist to confront their own complicity in its continued existence. White privilege is dull, grinding complacency. It is par for the course in a world in which drastic race inequality is responded to with a shoulder shrug, considered just the norm.”
White privilege is having 16 of the 18 plenary chairs and speakers just happen to be white. White privilege is not questioning why so few people affected by criminalisation and people of colour are attending a conference that costs £330 for two days at the lowest rate.
White privilege is not centring anti-racism at a conference about redesigning justice.
I wasn’t sure whether to even write this at all. There were people at that conference who do centre anti-racism in their work.
Then I thought about Gary Younge, editor-at-large of The Guardian, author and the first Black plenary speaker at the Redesigning Justice conference. He spoke about the predominantly Black children killed by guns in America, on which one of his books is based. He said, “Black people are shoved to the bottom of the pile and blamed for being there”. He said, “none of this changes unless we resist”. And: “racism is more sophisticated than it was and those fighting it must become more sophisticated”.
When I thought about writing this I thought about Reni Eddo-Lodge’s words: “White privilege manifests itself in everyone and no one. Everyone is complicit, but no one wants to take responsibility. Challenging it can have real social implications”. She also says that “seeing race is essential to changing the system.” But, of course, we have to go beyond seeing it and calling it out.
I helped to create the all-white panel by being there, being on the panel, and speaking.
At the conference I questioned what actions would come from the conference. The chair of the session said this question had never been asked at previous Howard League conferences before …
Image: Katie Bruce, pictured with Lord Victor Adebowale
A few days later I find myself in the House of Lords. I’m here to meet Lord Victor Adebowale, one of the first People’s Peers and Black member of the House of Lords. Victor was a member of the advisory panel for the Lammy Review.
Victor is as straight-talking as they come. He says, “when you talk about the criminal justice system you are talking about race”.
The Lammy Report was not created to sit and collect dust on a shelf. When David Lammy launched his report into racism in the criminal justice system he said: “Now is the time to stop talking and take action.”
It renewed my determination not to be complicit in further perpetuating the injustices in the criminal justice system.
My commitments to anti-racism:
– I will take responsibility for my own part in ensuring that the events that I attend and speak at are anti-racist.
– When I am given a platform to speak, I will recognise it as a privilege and only use it if I am the most appropriate person. I will pass on these opportunities to those who are not offered them.
– I won’t speak on behalf of other groups of people or claim to represent the worldview or experiences of others.
– I will recognise that ethnic, cultural and other groups are not homogenous so won’t ask or expect individuals to be able to speak on behalf of their entire identity group.
– I will speak about racism and I won’t leave it only to people of colour to talk about racism. Silence reinforces and perpetuates the racism systemic in our institutions, our culture and our society.
– I recognise that racism is central to the injustice in our ‘justice’ system and commit to use my platform to call it out, work to eradicate it and commit time and resources to support those most affected to speak out.
I realise all this is not enough, that it’s radically insufficient given how broken our criminal justice systems are – and how broken our societies are. I’m also open to being told that I’ve approached these issues the wrong way, or that I could frame my response better. But I think it’s time that all of us, especially people benefiting from white privilege in criminal justice, stepped up our game. Institutions like the Howard League, who have a longstanding profile, could lead the way. In fact, they’ve got no choice if they’re really committed to justice in a meaningful sense.
Dr Katie Bruce, Director of JustSpeak, a NZ movement for transformative change in criminal justice.
Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net