South. The global scene, in terms of these wars and what they have done to people’s lives, is just horrendous. I often think, here we sit, and politicians discourse about lofty ideals while we forget how people live in dire conditions in wartime zones.
Rather than resolving issues politically, countries, particularly countries in the West, are likely to be more and more involved in situations in which military intervention is regarded as justified.
BB I wanted to ask you, following up on the Brexit referendum, and these different forms of racism that you’re identifying, what is your diagnosis of the reemergence of the discourse around the Commonwealth?
AB Some people who are in favour of leaving the EU argue for the importance of the Commonwealth. They seem to assume for some reason that in the post-Brexit period, Britain will suddenly allow people from Africa and the Caribbean and India and Pakistan to enter the UK, that the doors will be open wide. The Brexit campaign has made them believe, somehow, that there is a competition between the East Europeans and people from the Commonwealth. That somehow if we didn’t have people from Eastern Europe, then we would get more people from the Commonwealth. That won’t happen.
BB It seems as though people who have been denied recognition as people who truly belong in the nation are trying to reinvigorate this discourse of empire, as if to say we have a place here that precedes that of the Eastern European migrants.
AB You are absolutely right about that – that’s true. In 2015, when Greece was in a very dire economic situation, I became very anti-EU. But on the other hand, the EU has the Social Charter,11 whereas some in Britain don’t even want to retain the Human Rights Act. I felt that because of the Social Charter, we probably needed to stay in the EU and argue for a better, more democratic EU than we have now. But the Brexit group managed to convince quite a few people that the interest of the Commonwealth would be better served if we leave. It just doesn’t make sense to me at all.
BB Can we switch tack for a moment? We wanted you to address the shift in political identification with respect to the use of the term ‘Black’.
AB There has been a splintering of the sense in which we used the term ‘Black’ from the 1970s onwards. Even in those days, in the mid 1970s, some people didn’t agree with us; they used to say, ‘Asians are not Black – they don’t look Black.’ But at the same time, there are some women today who also want to use the term ‘Black’ in the sense that we used it. When we constructed the term ‘Black’ to refer to a political colour rather than a shade of skin, it was in a context where we were working together against shared experiences of racism. There were immigration laws, for example, against which we, as Black communities mobilised across the board. So the term had a political purchase.
But nowadays, even the term ‘Asian’ has itself become fractured. When you use the term ‘Asian’, people don’t necessarily identify with that. People talk about being Muslims, or Hindus or Sikhs, so the religious identifications have become much more pronounced. The point is that unity has to be achieved through struggle and solidarity; it cannot be imposed. Because if a term doesn’t have a critical purchase, then it is probably more relevant to use a term that actually does have political resonance with a new generation of people today.
I’ve started using the American term, ‘women of colour’ or ‘people of colour’. Which is also problematic, because they used to use the term ‘coloured’ here in Britain, which was a racialised term. But people of colour has been constructed by ‘nonwhite’ groups in solidarity. And that is important.
RZ It’s interesting because religious affiliation has become much more common. This has taken place, like you’re saying, in many situations where it is your religious affiliation, even more specifically, your sect, that people are using. What do you think of that change that has happened?
AB That’s a very difficult one, isn’t it? It’s because it’s so caught up with global politics as well. We can’t talk about religion – we can talk about spiritualism. I’ve nothing against spiritualism – people can pursue their religious affiliation if they’re spiritually oriented. But religion is no longer seen as separate from the geopolitical order at the moment.
BB I think nowadays, rather than identifying people of colour by ethnicity, we are marginalised and racialised through –
AB Being called Muslim.
RZ Yes. There are certain types of racisms that have developed that are related to religion, and there are the tensions that come with building alliances along those lines. How do we nurture and build an anti-racist movement around these issues?
AB I think in terms of racism, it is quite clear. One needs to fight against Islamophobia, or any other anti-religious racism that is there. That is easier to deal with, in a way, because one takes a stand against any racism that goes around. But when I and my political allies organised in the old days, we were organising as secular groups. In a sense it was easier. But nowadays, people organise around religion; I don’t know what you do in universities now, because there are so many religious groups that are organising separately. So that the term ‘Asian’ doesn’t hold much sway – that’s what I meant earlier – because in the main, students don’t come together as Asians in universities. Rather, they come together as Sikhs or Hindus or Muslims or Arabs or other groups, Shias and Sunnis, and so on. I think I would still say we need to come together on broader platforms, on common political concerns. I personally wouldn’t organise around religion myself, unless I was oppressed on religious grounds. The key issue is one of oppression and exploitation. We know that the reality is that people do organise around religion. And given that there is an international onslaught on certain religious groups, it is understandable why they come together in the way they do. It is difficult to be sanctimonious. We must take politically thought-through positions. Because I don’t think we can have blueprints for all situations.
BB/RZ Do you think there is any political currency left in thinking about secularism as a basis for a feminist politics, or maybe a reconstructed secularism?
AB I think there is a reconstructed secularism. Because some secularists are as fanatical as the religious groups can be, at times. But a reconstructed secularism, I think, is important. I’m always told by my Muslim friends, ‘You don’t realise what it means to be Muslim today, because of all this onslaught all the time.’ My response is that there is that experiential dimension there which needs to be addressed, but it’s such a tightrope – a very tight rope indeed. You have to look at everything as it happens and say, ‘which way do I go?’ I personally think that we need secular politics, but we have to be able to take on board the reality of, for instance, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism.
BB/RZ We wanted to follow up with the concept of critical multiculturalism. Given the fragmentation of politics, that the issue of religion and religious identification has entered into the political landscape in a way that is much greater than in the eighties or nineties, does the concept of a critical multiculturalism still have relevance today?
AB Yes. Well, one of the things that I think, given what you’ve just said, is that when people criticise multiculturalism, they often fail to make a distinction between multiculturalism as cultural diversity and multiculturalism as social policy. People were often critical of the latter, because in the eighties and nineties there were policies in local authorities which were informed by multiculturalism. I think some of those policies were problematic, but not all of those policies were wrong. After all, multiculturalism emerged out of struggle; it wasn’t something that was just given to us by the state.
