A young asylum seeker at Mosney Direct Provision Centre in County Meath, Ireland, waits for a decision that will define her life.

Following the Irish government’s plans to move asylum seekers from a detention centre at Mosney, a former Butlins style holiday camp, where they have, despite all the odds, made a home, Gavan Titley responds to a racist article by Ian O’Doherty of the Irish Independent. In the Irish Left Review, Titley argues that,

The genre of new realism translates the culturalist racism of the 1990s for a new era. Based on the false assumption that racism was always about biological difference, rather than a historically shifting form of thinking organised through the modern nation state that fuses biology and culture in systems of power and essential difference, new realism allows exclusion, inequality and hierarchy to be parsed through ideas of irreducible differences and exaggerated threats to our little land and its scarce resources. It frames racism as a moral criticism of ordinary people, rather than as a political critique of how power is distributed and inequality justified. It doesn’t matter if it is coded as ‘culture’, race-thinking remains constant.

Read the full article here

An article I wrote at the time of the last World Cup in 2006 which resonates with racist nationalism as it is being played with respect to this year’s championship.

What is there left to say about Zinedine Zidane’s already infamous head-butt in the last minutes of the finals of the 2006 World Cup? Articles, blogs and bar room conversation have hashed and rehashed the French captain’s act. He has been damned a traitor and hailed a hero. He has been condemned, understood and forgiven. But the symbolic impact of his charge of rage, his head ramming into the chest of the Italian Matterazzi, “like a bull” (Liberation, July 11), is yet to be fully felt in France.

Many commentators have spoken about Zidane, the son of poor Algerian immigrants from La Castellane in the council houses of Marseille’s Quartier Nord. He is said to be understated, generally humbled by his stardom, unsure of what to do with the adulation that his football prowess has earned him. It is this that endeared him to everyone in France, except of course the supporters of the Front national’s Jean-Marie Le Pen who has repeatedly condemned the make-up of France’s ethnically mixed tricolor national team. The majority even forgive him for not singing the national anthem when it is played at the beginning of matches. He has been, until Sunday’s crucial trespassing, a symbol of all that liberal France hopes for the sons and daughters of the immigrants from the quartiers difficiles (literally the “difficult neighbourhoods of the ill-famed banlieues). He was held up as an example for the kids whose dream it is to become the Zizous of the future: keeping his head down and making a positive contribution to the Republic, rather than burning its schools and jeering at its police.

As several comments on the website of the campaigning organisation, Indigènes de la République (http://www.indigenes-republique.org/) have pointed out, the French press loves to remind us of Zidane’s Algerian Muslim origins. The intimation is that had he not become a football star he could easily have participated in the rioting by black and North African youth in the suburbs of France’s cities in November 2005. His victories for France, like those of his mainly black team mates, made his Muslimness acceptable and made all of France feel a little métisse. As long as the football was on. It is clear to France’s non-white population, which includes the largest number of Muslims in any European state, that such a feeling of identification with blacks and Arabs is absent from all spheres besides football. As one online commentator put it, if Zidane and his team of blacks and beurs hadn’t led France to the World Cup finals, they could have been one of the many young men of immigrant origin with higher education qualifications working shifts as security guards or drawing the dole.

Understanding has been relatively forthcoming in Zidane’s case. Despite his bad boy behaviour, he remains a national hero and beyond his FIFA sponsored statements against racism, he toes the marketing line as the face of Adidas shampoo. But what of November’s rioters or the anti-capitalist, anti-racist activists of the controversially named Mouvement des Indigènes de la République, making reference to France’s “native” African soldiers? The first have been written off as “scum” by French interior minister and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter have been criticised for their analysis of French republican principles, such as secularism and integration, in terms of racism and neo-colonialism. Many among even the most liberal of mainstream French society lose their sense of multicultural affinity when confronted with violence or with open critique of a state constantly upheld to be the cradle of Human Rights.

What does Zidane’s head butt mean in a country struggling, and mainly failing, to understand what it means to be postcolonial? French commentary on multiculturalism, or integration as most prefer it, struggles for a route between recognising difference and stressing citizenship over community. In other words, French republican ideals dictate a strict separation between the public and private spheres. Citizens are free to observe religious or other minority allegiances at home. In public they must show no outward sign of difference, be it in dress (there is the law forbidding the wearing of religious symbols in public institutions) or speech and behaviour. In reciprocation, a system of meritocracy is promised. However, as the majority of those of non-white immigrant origin in France will attest, the system exists in name only. Those who come from low-income, marginalized neighbourhoods in the ghetto-like outer suburbs have very little chance of accessing calibre education and employment. Even when some succeed to win the highly sought-after places in elite schools and universities, rarely do they achieve the success in the job market that such qualifications would normally promise them.

While all of this is well-known, it cannot be openly admitted. French law forbids ethnic monitoring and even the discussion of difference is difficult in public discourse. Euphemisms such as “les jeunes” (the youth) are often used to mean young black and brown men. The disparity between the reality of discrimination and the discourse of liberty, equality and fraternity which continues to underpin French national myth-making is stark. If French people of immigrant background want to be called French, not Muslim or black, it is because the official discourse promises them that, due to the law of jus solis, they are nothing but citizens of the Republic. Yet despite the colour-blindness of the system, the otherness of those who are not white-skinned and of Christian origin, is constantly being reminded through the daily acts of discrimination that are a part of every “indigène’s” experience. The constant question on most of their lips is why they are forced to remind the country of the fact that they are citizens when this is all that they are officially permitted to be within a system that officially shuns difference, yet in fact reveals itself to be obsessed with it.

Like the November 2005 riots, Zidane’s head butt, very possibly in reaction to a racist comment made by his Italian opponent, was a cry of rage. While for most people, even among those who have forgiven him, his action was unprofessional and he should have remained controlled, for many brown and black French people his was the action of a man pushed one step too far. That breaking point is something that is instinctively understood by anyone who has been the victim of racial abuse. There are limits within which most are forced to operate daily for the sake of survival (it is impossible to beat up every racist taxi driver, employer or police man). But there is a moment when caution is thrown to the wind and even losing the World Cup is a fair price to pay for standing up and saying that a line has been crossed. Zinedine Zidane has been a footballing star and a working class hero. He has not struck me as either. I am neither a football fan nor was I impressed by his various endorsements of products the majority of his fans could ill-afford to buy. It is his “coup de boule” of Sunday night that drew my interest. Beyond football, Zidane is entering French history as a man who stood up to abuse. Whether or not Matterazzi’s comment was racist, the belief that it was and that Zidane refused to ignore it, will stand as a testament to what the sons and daughters of France’s immigrants must do to be recognised. Whether with fists (or heads) or, preferably, words and non-violent actions the time has come for them to be heard.

Judith Butler turning down the Civil Courage Award at the Berlin Pride June 19 2010

I must distance myself from this racist complicity

Press Release by SUSPECT on the events of the 19th June, 2010

As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.

Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’
The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch und Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme… No matter what… Worldwide and here in Berlin… This is how it’s always been and will always be.’
In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists’ Jasbir Puar’s and Amit Rai’s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster Terrorist Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies: Where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of Colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already – that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live – especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’
It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.

Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin Haritaworn, Jen Petzen, and Cengiz Barskanmaz of SUSPECT, 20 June, 2010.

SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms.

The Crises of Multiculture? (Zed Boks 2011) which I am co-writing with Gavan Titley will be prresented at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin on July 15 with a response by award-winning journalist, Gary Younge.

Across the West, something called multiculturalism is in crisis. Regarded as the failed experiment of liberal elites, commentators and politicians compete to denounce its corrosive legacies; parallel communities threatening social cohesion, enemies within cultivated by irresponsible cultural relativism, mediaeval practices subverting national ‘ways of life’ and universal values. Muslims have been the chief beneficiary of this discredited epoch; licensed by its delusions, they have been left unsupervised, and the proliferation of ghettos, extremism and illiberal excesses is the troubling result.

This book challenges this familiar narrative of the rise and fall of multiculturalism by challenging the existence of a coherent era of ‘multiculturalism’ in the first place. Instead, what we are witnessing is not so much a rejection of multiculturalism as a rejection of lived multiculture. In documenting this mainstream racism and the anxieties that inform it, Lentin and Titley argue that the crisis is a projection of neoliberal societies’ disjunctures, a projection now obvious in fantastical discourses of integration. Combining theory with a reading of contemporary events, it examines the transnational, mediated nature of crisis, and argues that it provides activists with a chance to transcend the limitations of culturalised politics for an internationalist commitment to a resurgent anti-racism.

The upcoming book will be presented by Alana Lentin (University of Sussex/ICI) and Gavan Titley (National University of Ireland Maynooth)

Response: Gary Younge, Award-winning journalist for the Guardian and The Nation and author of Who are We – and Should it Matter in the 21st Century?

Followed by a discussion

Time: Thursday, 15 July 2010, 15:00

Location: ICI Berlin

In English

http://www.ici-berlin.org/event/2010-07-15-the-crises-of-multiculture-63/

Sorry for the silence on this site due to the birth of my daughter Noam on 27 November 2009. After a heady 4 months I am back to work.

From April to July 2010, I am on study leave from Sussex and shall be a visiting fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. If you are in Germany, please check back here soon for details of seminars and conferences I will be giving during this time in both Berlin and Bremen. I shall also be giving a seminar on 5 May 2010 at 17h00 in Paris in the seminar ‘La racialisation en question: Constructions nationales et circulations transnationales’ organised by Didier Fassin, Eric Fassin and Pap Ndiaye at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales.

During my stay in Berlin, I shall be working on a book entitled The Crises of Multiculture? which I am co-writing with Gavan Titley for Zed Books. More details of the book can soon be found on the multiculturality website.

by Sara Ahmed

Sara Ahmed

Peter Tatchell invites us to find evidence of ‘my Islamaphobia, racism or support for imperialist wars or the “war on terror”‘ in the articles that can be downloaded from his website. I would like to say that a brief glance at some of these articles shows some very serious problems in terms of the employment of racialised vocabularies for example in: Their Multiculturalism and Ours; Why has the left gone soft on human rights?; The New Dark Ages (you don’t need to read Frantz Fanon to discuss the problem with the use of the very term ‘the new dark ages’ though Fanon, as always would help) and Islamic Fundamentalism in Britain. I don’t have the time in this brief informal response for the call to respond to go through all of the problems with these pieces, for example, with how some of the critiques of ‘universal human rights’ discourse which have been an important part of LGBT, feminist, socialist as well as anti-racist histories are represented as ‘going soft’. I do intend to offer a systematic critique of some of the terms of the arguments used in due course, which I will publish where they can downloaded, in the interests of sustaining and enabling a debate. But I do want to question here how Mr Tatchell is responding to the critique, and even to the critique of the response to the critique (offered by very thoughtful and careful pieces of writing such as the one offered by Aren Aizura). Critiques of racism are reduced and misheard as personal attacks, which is what blocks a hearing of the critique. In the end, the situation becomes re-coded as a question of individual reputation and good will: we lose the chance to attend to the politics of the original critique.We need to reflect on what we are talking about when we are talking about racism. Racism in speech does not simply depend on the explicit articulation of ideas of racial superiority but often works given that such associations do not need to be made explicit. So for example politicians might use a qualifier ‘this is not a war against Islam’ and then use repeatedly terms like ‘Islamic terrorists’ which work to associate Islam with terror through the mere proximity of the words: the repetition of that proximity makes the association ‘essential’. In other words, proximities becomes attributes ( they become ‘sticky’ as I suggested in my book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion). The process of attribution is in turn bound up with the justification of action, especially in cases where actions are presented as moral whilst involving force (war on terror becomes about freedom from oppression/violence, or even liberation from the oppressors, where freedom resides here, ‘in us’, oppression resides there, ‘with them’). So some forms of violence becomes represented as intrinsic to some forms of culture, and not to others (violence ‘here’ would be individual or exceptional rather that something that can be attributed to ‘us’).

One of the hardest aspects of this process is how even languages of liberation and freedom, which we might assume to be ‘our languages’, to be oppositional, to be about challenging dominant norms and making possible new forms of flourishing, can be used in this process: freedom can be what ‘we’ have or even what we are. Other critics have pointed out how the language of freedom can be a technology for distinguishing ‘an us’ from ‘a them’: from Judith Butler, to Jasbir Puar, to Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem, the authors of the article whose passing from print we are right to mourn. When governments justify war on the grounds of freedom from oppressive gender regimes, it helps to recognise that theses justifications have a history, to refuse to hear them as in any way ‘new’. As Gayatri Spivak taught us, empire itself was justified in these terms, with a description that remains extraordinary for its precision: ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’. Homophobia too can be exercised as what ‘the others’ needs liberating from; it too can become attributed to others, and thus an attribute of others (homophobia can be seen as intrinsic to Islam but homophobia in the West would be seen as extrinsic, as an individual problem or a problem with individuals). The language of sexual freedom and sexual rights can thus be exercised as if they are political gift (imperial histories are those in which force is narrated as gift). When freedom or rights becomes a justification for war and empire, they become cultural attributes: what we have, what we give them, what we must force them to have. To become aware of this process is not to withdraw from a commitment to freedoms, but it must mean acquiring a certain caution about turning our commitments into our own attributes or even ego ideals (as if we as activists know in advance what is good or right for ourselves or for others).

I am calling for a recognition of how racism in speech can employ the languages of freedom, which conceal the violence of its mark (note the recent uses of freedom of speech to justify the freedom of some to articulate racist views, or the reduction of freedom of speech to ‘freedom to be offensive’). When we are dealing with language and power we are dealing with how power often does not reveal itself: power becomes the capacity not simply to regulate speech but to generate ideas through proximity: freedom for example is put near certain other categories, giving them both value and force. My own work on Islamaphobia for instance has looked at how ‘being hurt or offended’ by racism becomes seen as the ‘problem’ of Muslims who don’t integrate, such that Islam becomes what offends our freedom, what challenges our freedom to be offensive. None of these associations have to become articulated as a viewpoints, nothing has to be explicitly said.

It might be helpful to point out that homophobic speech can also work like this, by withdrawing from the necessity to articulate a viewpoint: for example, someone does not have to be anti-gay by saying ‘all gays are paedophiles’ or ‘all gays endanger the well-being of our children’, all they need to do is put the category of paedophilia ‘near’ to the category of homosexual to create this effect. Or note how if a lesbian or gay person is involved in child abuse, the category of lesbian or gay will be made explicit in media reporting, which becomes an implicit invitation to make queerness part of the problem of the abuse: but a heterosexual person will be involved in child abuse (much more commonly) and their heterosexuality will not be brought up in the description, which allows heterosexuality to disappear from the scene of abuse. The way in which problems are presented makes some people and not others into problems (this again involves a process of attribution: you make the attributes of x essential to the problem). A critical and complex understanding of language and power is needed to get at this mechanism. We must take the time we need to get at this.

It is my view that Mr Tatchell’s writings on Islam and multiculturalism repeat and reproduce many ‘problematic proximities’ between Islam and violence, and thus participate in the culture of Islamaphobia. It is because this culture exists that we must take care not to reproduce its effects. I refuse the call to express solidarity with such work. I would also say that the apologies given to Mr Tatchell are a symptom of the problem rather than a solution. One of the most problematic texts I have read in many years is in fact the apology produced by Raw Nerve: which helps to reveal what is going on in the situation better than anything (it not only grossly caricatures the original argument, but it actually represents those critiqued as the ones to whom we should be grateful, who should receive our thanks). Still we can do things with problems: some texts in their problematic associations can help us understand the world we are. As Audre Lorde (an early black lesbian feminist critic of racism and imperialism in both the women’s movement and in lesbian and gay politics) taught me: we need to struggle to find better ways of describing what goes on in our world, which means staying proximate to the scenes of its violence.

I am aware that if there is any response to my comments it is likely that it will be to expose their error. But even if that is the case, its worth putting these words down. We all need to get words out there, words that attempt to offer new descriptions, to give us the possibility of imagining new worlds. Words can be offered as signs of hope: they get passed around; they can become lines that connect us, in the political struggle for other worlds.

I am reprinting the excellent response to the censorship of Out of Place, a book edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake on the interconnections between queerness and raciality.  As you will read, the book contains an article, ‘Gay Imperialism’, which critiques what Jasbir Puar for example has termed ‘homonationalism’ and the participation by some gay rights and feminist activists in the perpetuation of Islamophobia through the ‘war on terror’ logic.

The book will not be republished due to an attack by the gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, who has claimed that he is defamed by the article. The article and the book are an excellent critique of the ways in which discourses of liberation have been subverted in the service of power.

Please read this critique and spread it widely. An interesting comment on his piece and on Peter Tatchell’s stance by Sara Ahmed, author of much interesting work on racism, Islamophobia and ‘diversity’ can be read here.

Read on for Aizura’s article…

Over the last few years a number of timely publications have illuminated the connections between gender and sexuality, the War on Terror and racialisation. One of these is Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake and published by Raw Nerve Books in 2008. An edited collection examining intersections between race and sexuality in the United Kingdom, Out of Place joins Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages as a key contribution to this debate. Alongside other contributions in Out of Place, the
chapter “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the War on Terror”, by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem pointed to the continuing deployment of queerness as a symbol of “freedom” to rationalise the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and future wars in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to rationalise restrictive and racist immigration policies in “Western” or “liberal” nations. “Gay Imperialism” uses the work of activist Peter Tatchell, founder of Outrage!, as an example of how white gay activists can become complicit with this agenda by painting Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynist, and appointing themselves as the saviours of non-white queers.

On September 7th, Raw Nerve Books declared Out of Place to be out of print, removed it from circulation and sale, and issued an online apology to Peter Tatchell. Presumably this is the result of threats of legal action by Tatchell and Outrage!. The apology quotes its own publication to apologise for what it accepts as defamatory statements and misrepresentation of Tatchell and Outrage! by Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem. These include:
a) that Tatchell is “Islamaphobic” and “part of the Islamaphobia industry”
b) that Tatchell is “racist”
c) that Tatchell “sling[s] mud onto Muslim communities”

As one sees if one reads “Gay Imperialism”, these so-called accusations are all taken grossly out of context and reduce the complexity of Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem’s argument. The apology continues by obsequiously praising Tatchell and Outrage!’s “anti-racist” work, and making further accusations against a number of African LGBT activists, who had refused to work with Tatchell precisely because of his paternalistic attitude, and who are cited in “Gay Imperialism”.

It seems likely that Tatchell’s lawyers presented Raw Nerve with an already-written apology and asked them to sign and publish it. Tatchell is notoriously litigious. He is equally notorious for staging highly publicised, “one man” actions that appear to have just as much to do with his public image as a gay celebrity activist as any political work. However, Tatchell himself is not important here. What is important is
that this critique is evidently so threatening to Tatchell and to the book’s publishers that it must be removed from circulation, and the authors must be condemned as liars.

This incident proves something about how difficult it is to do anti-racist work. Pointing out racism, no matter how carefully we might phrase it and no matter which arguments we have about the use of the word ‘racism’, is often perceived as a personal and individual affront. Those so accused often appear to find it wounding or traumatic — psychically wounding, but more importantly, wounding to their public image. “How dare you accuse me of racism? I am not racist; I have lots of friends who are people of color!” goes the cliched defensive response we are all familiar with. This way, the person or organisation critiqued can escape engaging with the content of the critique and put the burden of proof back on the person who raised the issue. It is not coincidental that the person making a critique of racism is often non-white, deploying old colonial stereotypes that people of colour are untrustworthy ingrates who don’t know what’s good for them. This problem of white, “well-intentioned” activists ignoring or actively silencing the desires of the people they profess to help in order to maintain the myth of their own generous self-sacrifice is endemic to many struggles: feminist anti-”trafficking” activism; indigenous land and rights struggles; migration activism; the backlash against the wearing of hijab by Muslim women in France and elsewhere, and on and on. The only way it might ever stop is for its perpetrators to acknowledge their role.

Meanwhile a really amazing book is being censored. The authors of the chapter and the editors of Out of Place are unable to comment due to UK libel law. It’s unlikely that Raw Nerve will reissue the book, even if the editors wanted this. Meanwhile the authors’ reputations are themselves besmirched. There are several things you can do about this situation:

1. Circulate this and your own commentary among your friends, companeros, colleagues.
2. Circulate “Gay Imperialism” — a PDF is online here

Please pass this around, respond, send it to other listservs and read the other statements written about the censorship of Out of Place:

“Out of Place, Out of Print: On the Censorship of the First Queerness/Raciality Collection in Britain” by Johanna Rothe, Monthly Review,
“On the Censorship of ‘Gay Imperialism’ and Out of Place”, X:Talk website

Aren Aizura is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Gender Studies of Indiana University, Bloomington.

Nick Griffin was right about one thing: Churchill would have felt at home in the BNP.

The appearance of Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nartional Party, on BBC Question Time on October 22, 2009 has led to massive debate across the UK. Those in favour of freedom of speech advocated for Griffin to be allowed on the programme in the interests of exposing him. Those opposing said that there should be no platform for fascists and that Griffin and the BNP would only benefit from the publicity, no matter what was actually debated. I agree with the latter position and have always done so. Rare words of sense were written by Gary Younge in the Guardian reminding us that the other panelists, in particular Jack Straw, as the representative of New Labour is as guilty (if not more so) of encouraging racism in Britain as Griffin, especially considering Straw’s incendiary 2007 remarks on the niqab and the direct link between this and rising Islamophobia.

The panelists on Question Time were literally falling over themselves to show themselves to be tolerant and non-racist in the face of Griffin’s blatant racism. However, the mechanisms they chose to do this by resorted to the tried and tested recourse to patriotism (critiqued by Paul Gilroy in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack with regards the Anti-Nazi Leagues in 1987).Griffin was asked to comment on his statement that “If Churchill were alive today, his own place would be in the British National Party.” This led to outrage expressed by the other panelists who accused the BNP of hijacking Churchill as its own. But the uncomfortable truth is that Griffin is right: if Churchill were alive he would share the beliefs of the BNP because he did so in his day. It is a delusion to think that Britain fought the Second World War because it oposed racism. Churchill, in particular, was a eugenicist, having drafted the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, the only law on eugenics to be passed through the British parliament (albeit never out into effect).

Griffin said on Question Time that “Churchill in his younger days was extremely critical of fundamentalist Islam.” Whereas it may not have been called that in Churchill’s day, according to winstonchurchill.org:

Churchill’s view was reinforced by his experiences as a young British officer serving, and fighting, in Arab and Muslim lands, and in South Africa. Like most of his contemporaries, family and friends, he regarded races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race. As a young politician in Britain entering Parliament in 1901, Churchill saw what were then known as the “feeble-minded” and the “insane” as a threat to the prosperity, vigour and virility of British society.

“The improvement of the British breed is my aim in life,” Winston Churchill wrote to his cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. A fuller account of his abhorrent beliefs can be read here.

Suffice is to conclude that a reversion to British patriotism and dubious figures such as Churchill as a means of tackling the abhorrence of the far-right has and will never be sufficient. Having been said, it is hardly surprising that this – along with blatant anti-immigration one-upmanship – was the only tactic employed by the Griffin pathetic QT co-panelists (with the exception of the only non-politican, Bonnie Greer).

As Klein notes in conclusion, the right in the US has already decided that Obama is a ‘reverse racist’ that wants to use public finance to redirect funds directly to minorities and away from whites. Nothing could be further from the truth, but,

No matter how race-neutral Obama tries to be, his actions will be viewed by a large part of the country through the lens of its racial obsessions. So, since even his most modest, Band-Aid measures are going to be greeted as if he is waging a full-on race war, Obama has little to lose by using this brief political window actually to heal a few of the country’s racial wounds.

Read the whole article here