Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak have come under fire for claiming that grooming gangs “…are groups of men, almost all British Pakistani”, in addition to “political correctness” being a hindrance in targeting such individuals. [1]
But the greatest tragedy is that whenever an ignoramus attempts to racialise and generalise the acts of a few vile individuals, the precious little intellectual capital in such debates is focused towards debunking old racist stereotypes with the tedium of facts and statistics, rather than focusing on how to practically address the issue or help the victims who happen to be the most vulnerable and disenfranchised in the whole country. Who gets away scot-free when the news cycle and public discourse is dominated by people arguing about race? Those very same individuals and institutions that have been systematically and institutionally failing these young girls for decades.
This is partly why I personally don’t like debating about this in public. I find it distasteful, to say the least, that during a time in which the exploitation of vulnerable girls has come to light, we actively contribute to the racial distraction. After all, the widespread Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) of young girls (and boys) is usually invisible to the public—given the low melanin content of their usual exploiters. But we have to call out the harmful myths being actively promoted to exploit exploitation.
Don’t blame ‘political correctness’ for your failure
One of the most pernicious myths being perpetuated off the back of the exploitation of white girls by some brown men is that people allowed it to happen because of “political correctness”, or fear of being called racist. This laughably common doctrine that right-wing white people are unable to talk about Muslims has seeped into mainstream discourse—despite requiring an unforgivable degree of illiteracy, seeing as “Muslim” issues have been the staple diet of right-wing newspapers and blogs for decades.
Even if it were true, as is argued, that police and social workers have been scared to speak out against young girls being raped by brown men “for fear of being called racist”, in what universe is that logical? How does that actually make sense? Is there a force-field that suddenly comes down around a brown rapist that prevents people from stopping him carrying out his vile actions?
What this particular myth is based on is some (clearly responsible people) warning against over-emphasising the race of rapists; not allowing them to carry on raping girls. This is nothing but an excuse used by those who have been failing these girls for a long time. Whatever the case, we should refuse to be blamed for such an absurd justification.
Be careful – Muslim condemnation can make it worse
What has compounded the issue in the past is Muslims’ personal expectation for a higher degree of moral scrutiny among fellow Muslims (the feeling that, after all, even if we are not disproportionately represented in a particular crime nationally, even one Muslim involved is “one too many”). This commendable sentiment has been exploited by those pushing a racist agenda in search of sound bites from “community leaders” in a national display of self-flagellation:
“Yes! There IS a problem of Muslims raping white girls, and we have to do something about it!”
We—and those who speak on our behalf—have to be cognisant of benign statements calling for moral scrupulousness and excellence being used to further a destructive agenda to demonise us all—and distract attention away from a national problem that affects all peoples.
Follow the science
If we are to speak about this in the public domain, we should be informed first. Not by sensationalist tabloid trash, but by academic scholarship. Those who are informed by a scientific account of a particular problem are far more capable of solving it.
Of particular benefit is Dr. Ella Cockbain’s paper, Grooming and the ‘Asian sex gang predator’: the construction of a racial crime threat, [2] as well as Dr. Shamim Miah’s paper, The Groomers and the Question of Race. [3] There are also many lighter reads such as Dr. Shenaz Bunglawala’s Yes, we have a ‘Muslim Problem’, but it’s not what Kavanagh might think, [4] and Joseph Harker’s This is how racism takes root. [5]
In short, the science tells us that CSE is a widespread problem and, generally speaking, the evidence available to us suggests Muslims (or Asians for that matter), are not disproportionately represented.
If, however, you artificially limit what you are looking for, such as geographical area, modus operandi, type of victim, and so on, then there can—and does—emerge a disproportionate representation of whatever type of perpetrator you want to highlight. This is exactly what those desperate to serve the “Asian grooming gang” stereotype have been doing.
As Dr. Cockbain mentions about the history of the loosely defined “grooming” category as a racial construct:
“In fact, The Times’ figures derived from a search of press coverage from 1997 to 2011 aimed at identifying convictions involving two or more men for sexually abusing girls aged 11–16 years they had met locally, hence the ‘on-street’ in grooming. [6] These inclusion parameters have never been explained or justified, despite the questionable decision to exclude male victims wholesale. This raises the question as to whether the statistical exercise was deliberately designed to isolate evidence for a predetermined ‘Asian model’.”
In other words, it is a bit like the creation of the artificial “mugging” construct: an ill-defined term used to describe a subset of a wider crime category (theft, robbery), but only that which was carried out in the particular demographic parameters that presented the stereotypical black young man against the defenceless white old lady. This led to a litany of further problems, such as observation and confirmation bias, circular reasoning and the downplaying of similar crimes carried out under different circumstances—which could lead to an increase in the overall crime rate as you are not addressing the problem scientifically.
As Dr. Cockbain pointed out with regards to the consequences of “grooming” as an ill-defined subset of CSE:
“White co-offenders and ethnic minority victims are routinely downplayed in the insistence that this is a problem of Asian men targeting white girls. In fact, this contradicts early research findings which suggest that victim recruitment is largely opportunistic and that ethnic minority children are also abused.” [7]
The point here is obviously not to downplay the seriousness and depravity of the crime that an extremely small minority of men commit. The point here is that, if we are to talk about this publicly, or better still, if we are to try to fix this social problem, it has to be based on knowledge and empirical reality. If not, we run the risk of wandering into ambush interviews or debates with carefully crafted fallacies designed to push a racist or Islamophobic agenda.
They don’t really care about the victims
The great tragedy is that those acting like they care about the victims of CSE (or “grooming”) who attempt to racialise or perpetuate racist myths about it, are actually diverting attention away from important discussions on how to actually stop it. There is little value in highlighting the cultural idiosyncrasies of Pakistani or Muslim men—even if it does score cheap political points—when it comes to protecting potential victims of CSE, since the vast majority of men with the same cultural attitudes are law-abiding citizens.
Instead of refuting racial stereotypes, we could look into what factors contribute to even the artificially-constructed “Asian grooming gang” stereotype; for example, their over-representation in the night-time economy where some vulnerable girls in foster care are targeted, such as taxi ranks, takeaways, and so on.
The elephant in the room seems to be that the vile individuals who carry out CSE are characterised by a lifestyle far away from the same normative Islamic practises that are often the object of cries for reformation by the same Islamophobes trying to racialise CSE today. Drugs, alcohol, prostitution, premarital sex—let alone promiscuity—are all clearly and unambiguously major sins in Islam, as any primary school RE student can tell you.
Rapists have just assimilated too much
Furthermore, as many have stated already, the looking down on white working-class girls is not something these men have inherited from Pakistan—it is already widespread in some sectors of society that they have assimilated into.
In fact, the very same right-wing tabloids who are now claiming to fight for poor white girls, were judging and blaming victims of grooming years ago before the racialised construction of “on-street grooming” as an Asian phenomenon. One characteristically deplorable Daily Mail headline referred to a 12-year-old girl that was raped by more than five men and made pregnant: Pregnant girl, 12, names five lovers. [8]
The girl later described the impact of such blaming and judging from right-wing tabloids and authorities in an eye-opening BBC Panorama documentary. [9] Part of the tremendous failures of the police, local authorities and even healthcare staff in Rotherham was due to many judging the girls as “promiscuous”, not taking them seriously and generally looking down upon them. [10] Even the UK government used phrases like “child prostitute” in official government literature until 2015, when Nazir Afzal—yes, a Pakistani man—campaigned to get it removed when he was the Crown Prosecution Service’s lead on CSE. [11]
Men who carry out CSE are opportunistic predators, preying on vulnerable girls. Due to systematic, institutional failings in many parts of the country, the vulnerable girls are white and from a working-class background. Instead of giving a free pass to those who failed them (by turning them into victims of “political correctness”), the debate should be centred on how best to protect them and give them justice. We also need to throw the book at those actually involved in harming and exploiting them, not those who happen to follow the same religion or whose parents come from the same countries as theirs.
The Deputy Children’s Commissioner, Sue Berelowitz, surprised the Home Affairs Select Committee when giving evidence on CSE in 2012, by saying,
“There isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited.
“People need to lay aside their denial and face up to the fact that some truly terrible things are being done.” [12]
The sooner we realise this the sooner we can actually do something to curb this epidemic instead of distracting the public’s attention for cheap political points towards a microscopic, racialised example of a nationwide vice.
Source: Islam21c
Notes
[2] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306396813475983?platform=hootsuite
[3] http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/24223/1/115.pdf
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/how-racism-takes-root
[6] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/revealed-conspiracy-of-silence-on-uk-sex-gangs-gpg5vqsqz9h
[8] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-45198/Pregnant-girl-12-names-lovers.html
[9] https://youtu.be/Wgi4b1X2dd0
Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak have come under fire for claiming that grooming gangs “…are groups of men, almost all British Pakistani”, in addition to “political correctness” being a hindrance in targeting such individuals
And why have they come under fire? oh, right, yea, political correctness.
Cockbain, Berelowitz, all these people have, for decades, downplayed Pakistani grooming gangs.
The idea that Muslims have some special moral code that is being exploited is laughable, it is a fact that Muslim communities have been turning a blind eye to the problem, and have been doing so for decades, at least since the 70’s when not just english girls but sikhs too have been targeted
I don’t expect this comment to stay up long if it even gets past the moderator, but know that your grooming gang apologism will not win.
The bare facts are that Sunak and Braverman are playing the Islamophobia card, for a plethora of reasons.
Both come from Hindu backgrounds. However, in Braverman’s case, her mother is Hindu, her father Christian, whilst her children and husband are Jewish! Braverman herself, is an adherent of Buddhism!
Apart from Sunak’s staunch Hinduism (he is ethnically a Punjabi) his in laws benefit greatly from both the Modi and zionist regimes, (who are in turn, close allies of one another.
I distinctly remember the rabid Islamophobia of Gujerati Hindu East Africans, during the 70’s. The myth and lie of the ‘Asian’ identity was exposed during the Rushdie dispute, when ‘hindu experts’ (sic) on Islam, crawled from out of the woodwork, giving their 2 rupees worth. The 1990 Gulf war caused further rupture, with both UK Hindus and Sikhs, openly stating that they hadn’t anything in common with Muslims. Ditto with them!
The final nail in the proverbial coffin came about during the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the subsequent pogroms of Muslims in India. Over a 1000 Muslim were killed, by hindu ‘security forces’ and fanatics alike.
It is inconcevable that these 2, given their backgrounds, as well as their right wing agenda, are not Islamophobes. Priti (awful) Patel was the initiator no doubt!
During the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, the Siniti/Roma and Jews were associated with a plethora of crimes in Eastern and Central Europe. White slavery, pimping, prostitution, as well as the nascent pornographic industry, were associated with the Jews. In the case of the Siniti/Roma, many of the stigmas associated with this community, remain to this day.
The branding of a distinct group of people with crime, by European rabble rousing politicians has always led to one thing. The Nazi death camps, as well as the Soviet Gulags bear ample testimony to this.
Very good article MashaAllah.