Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook by John
Rex and Robert Moore (Institute of Race Relations/OUP 50s)
Prejudice is real
DONALD G. MACRAE
Our sociological knowledge about our society is based on a paradox. Money and men are available for research into social problems but not into the normality of daily life. Even that is not quite true: only certain items of daily life—being very old, being young, being poor (but not being rich), being delinquent (but only sometimes being sinful) and so on—provide problems that are accredited, r.•cognised by Panorama (a sort of accolade for any problem) or by the People (which is not).
The consequence of this is that, when even a body so level-headed and useful as the Insti- tute of Race Relations engages in an enter- prise like its Survey of Race Relations in Britain which commissioned this book, one cannot always tell how much that it finds is specific to minority or immigrant groups, is novel, or is in fact much like a slice of the experience of any people who are not immi- grants but who are comparatively poor and uprooted. We do not have the facts about England. Nor do we have the concepts, the analytical apparatus and the techniques for finding out nearly highly enough developed. The foundations, universities and so on are most unwilling to pay for fundamental social research. The consequences are a lack of per- spective and a penumbra of doubt.
This sounds very cold. Prejudice is ugly and can be dangerous. Discrimination—and in housing this book illuminates it—is vile. The worst conditions of any rich society are always peculiarly distressing just because the society is rich. Birmingham is the second city of Britain in size; the urban complex to which it belongs is normally prosperous; it is a waste land of the senses and the spirit.
But conditions in Sparkbrook, as it is de- scribed in these pages, don't sound nearly as bad as conditions in, say, North Kensington, or Glasgow, or St Helens. The photographs bear this out. Sparkbrook is a 'twilight zone'; that is, it is growing old, it decays, it is in multi-occupa- tion, it is where newcomers settle and are the tenants of those landlords who underpin the housing of the local authorities and the mort- gaged world. Its inhabitants are Irish, English, Indian, Pakistani and tinkers (also Irish, but in their life-styles nomads, pariah folk, Toyn- bee's 'external proletariat' come to town). As I said, there is discrimination. There is, I suspect, also a general social indifference for which the West Midlands are notorious. Whether this is a deserved notoriety, I do not know.
Historically, for a long time England has been a melting-pot. Flemings, Huguenots, Scots, Jews, Irish, Lithuanians, Cypriots, and so on, have been coming to England. They have main- tained links with their origins, including a considerable cash outflow. They have relied on extended family links when they could. They have bunched together for protection, mutual understanding, aggression and economic advantage. Sometimes religion has preserved them and they have become segmentary com- munities in Britain. They have—least perhaps the Irish--been upwardly socially mobile over t‘so or three generations.
How different is the situation today for the West Indian, physically recognisable, but in cultural background English, for the Sikh whose bond with the larger social structure is pri- marily the cash nexus, and for all the others studied in these pages? We are not told. This is a book without historical depth. We are, however, told a great deal else: prejudice is real, but not apparently very deep, the edu- cational problem seems to be more intract- able than the housing question, the waste of life is real and continuous. But the feel, the sensation of all this for the immigrants and their hosts—however willing—does not come through.
This is a pity. Professor Rex is well known as a social theorist, but the theoretical intro- duction, except for its use of market models, is curiously irrelevant to what follows. Mr Moore is a sensitive student of the sociology of religion, especially of immigrant sects. Here none of this comes through. The research tech- niques employed are pretty standard and, no doubt, OK, but they are getting a bit stereo- typed by now. I opened the book, fascinated by the subject and ready to admire the work of its authors. Frankly, I don't think I have learned much some 300 pages later.
On the other hand, two things must be said. Already Race, Community and Conflict has attracted some valuable public attention. Secondly, although the book has not been wel- come to everyone in Birmingham, it must be of great practical use to local and voluntary officials and concerned citizens. This is no small value. And in the wider context of the Survey of Race Relations it may make a clearer, deeper imprint.
But until we know more of Britain and have a better sociological context in which to set our knowledge, we will not fully be able to judge these sad matters. On the face of it, 1 am still surprised that the social facts and social relations of recent immigrants are not worse.
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