Language doesn’t need slurs to be hateful. Many racial insults are the terms of an older, explicit racism; the sort of racist speech that still exists but seems to be an artefact of older generations or rural areas. Most of us at university don’t see that sort of racism in our day-to-day lives. On campus, and in the peer-groups of young professionals, racism has undergone pseudo-intellectualisation and a new language of racism is emerging.
In the wake of the March 22 London Attack, I saw a lot of speculation about the ethnicity of the attacker. Was he another Muslim (read: does he look like he’s from the Middle East)? Was he a madman? Even, was he ‘multicultural’? In post-Brexit Britain, as in Trump’s America, nationalism and white supremacy are more commonly visible. I don’t know if these sentiments have proliferated, but I do know that people are less afraid to espouse them. In our generation, these views are sneaking in more quietly and less offensively than before. When I saw Facebook posts suggesting that the attacker was ‘multicultural’ I almost let it slide. However, I quickly realised that it was a pejorative twist on a word otherwise associated with positive values. Now ‘multicultural’ is used to mean ‘non-white, suspected immigrant, suspected Muslim’. It’s a turn back towards a time when the Irish and the Italians, among others, weren’t even considered to be ‘properly white’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean); they were Other.
‘Multicultural’ is being used as a word to ‘other’ people. Labelling someone as multicultural creates a divide, however small, between them and us. Nobody is multicultural; they just bring a different culture with them at a different social scale. Everyone is many-cultured; when a Wellingtonian comes to Dunedin, they bring their interpretation of New Zealand’s national culture with them. Accounting for different subcultures, differences in education, faith, and whatever else, two people of the same nation and ethnicity may well share very little – yet I don’t see that scenario being the thing which ‘multicultural’ is being used to describe. Instead it’s increasingly used in a derogatory sense. Said haughtily, “Those multiculturals.”
Racism isn’t just the KKK, Britain First, National Front, or the domain of slack-jawed, mouth-breathers in wife-beaters. Racism and bigotry only require one of two things: that a person is ill informed or that a person is hateful. Just because it’s highbrow doesn’t mean it isn’t racist. Heidegger was a Nazi. Milo Yiannopolous, well argued and intelligent as he can sometimes be, makes his living on the backs of people who accept the word of whoever sounds the most confident and smart. When presented with facts, we need to press on and discover what is being expressed in plain English. Facts and ideas should be stated fearlessly, without dressing, and be able to stand up to scrutiny.
Pseudo-intellectualisation is displayed every time someone hides behind the statement “It’s just the facts”, as if they are absolved of personal biases. It is right and proper and absolutely vital that countries have open discussions about what values they espouse, how they propagate those values, and how they safeguard those values. But we should put these conversations into their proper context. You must be able to say more than just the facts: you must be able to talk about why those facts are relevant, what their proper context is, and what questions they answer. Data becomes information when it is contextualised. If you aren’t expressing an argument supported by facts, then you’re expressing your own sentiments and hiding behind data. There is a huge difference.