The Duke of Conceptual Architecture

So, a talk-show radio presenter in Brisbane, Michael Smith, has gone for a classic talk-show radio cheap shot and likened wearing the burqa to donning KKK robes. To many, this is wrong. But why? And what name do we give to it?

Suliman Sabdia, the president of the Islamic Council of Queensland, said this in reference to Smith:

Not racist. I don’t know the man, but certainly a bigot. You know, I think there’s a strong case for bigoted. Ignorance too. Certainly ignorance.

What Sabdia is saying is that there is something wrong with what Smith thinks and says, rather than there being something wrong with him as a person. The term racist, for Sabdia, implies something about the person, so he doesn’t feel this to be an adequate way to describe what is wrong. This appears to be so primarily because Sabdia does not know Smith. For Sabdia, you can not judge a person if you don’t know them. This leads directly and quite coherently to what he does think is wrong.

Sabdia labels Smith a bigot – someone who is intolerant of others who are different. Moreover, Sabdia implies Smith’s bigotry is caused by his ignorance. In other words, Smith is wrong in what he has said and thinks about Muslims because he does not know Muslims. If you do not know someone, you can not judge them as a person.

There are two problems with the logic, however. The first is that Smith was not necessarily judging Muslims as whole persons. One of Smith’s concerns was that burqas pose a security risk because criminals can use them as disguises to prevent identification. In fact, Smith went so far as to say that his issue was not with religion or Islam. Nevertheless, Smith did describe the wearing of the burqa in public as ‘offensive behaviour’. Putting aside for a moment the problem with identifying wearing clothes as behaviour, the fact that Smith chose to call it offensive seems to imply he is saying something about the person of those wearing burqas. That the wearing of burqas offends him and should offend others does, however, give credence to him being labelled a bigot. Here’s what Smith had to say:

I found the behaviour of those people to be offensive. And honest to god, if I’d still been a copper, I would consider charging those people with offensive behaviour.

A reasonable person would find that offensive. Anybody would. If I whacked a stocking over my dial, people would be alarmed and offended. It’s just the same with this hijab.

The fact that Smith would have done something about this ‘behaviour’, had he been in the position to, suggests intolerance. But the intolerance of Smith can only be determined against the background of other reasons. Smith can only be seen as intolerant and, therefore, bigoted if we can provide good reasons as to why he should not reject the wearing of burqas. In Australia, the legal and social norms of religious freedom provide very sound justifications for why he should not reject the wearing of burqas.

But then Smith’s seemingly valid reason for rejecting burqas because they pose a security risk comes into conflict with religious freedom. Or does it? Religions in Australia are exempt from many laws that in principle are meant to apply to everyone equally. The exemption from abiding by anti-discriminatory legislation when it comes to employment is the classic example of how religious organisations are granted certain privileges. This could easily be argued as going beyond religious freedom in a negative sense, to religious freedom in a positive sense or even state-support for religious organisations. Perhaps the most blatantly relevant example of privilege is the legal immunity granted to churches from criminal prosecution. While this has been mentioned in media reporting of child sex abuse cases, it is usually only done so in passing and not seen to be problematic. These are two very big ‘security risks’ the Australian people have lived with quite comfortably (except for those who have of course been adversely affected by it). So, the question becomes: why can’t we live with this ‘security risk’? Or, in a more fundamental sense: why must we construe the wearing of burqas in public as a security risk?

A completely unrestrained risk discourse would not stop at burqas or, as is currently the case, helmets or balaclavas. It would advocate the most stringent and obtrusive levels of surveillance. There is a cultural obstacle to what Smith is saying that went unarticulated. It is a very ethnocentric understanding of the public/private divide. In essence, Smith’s gripe is about acceptable public appearances. The limits to surveillance end where Western conventions start. For example, the wearing of clothes could conceal potentially important physical traits (e.g. tattoos or birthmarks) in a criminal investigation, yet we do not debate whether or not to wear clothes at all. Culture matters. Ignoring it is often a thinly veiled or neglectful attempt to bypass such complexities of living in a plural society. In this case, ignoring culture by elevating ‘security’ issues results in an implicit form of discrimination. Basically, Smith is echoing a sentiment that places his security (and those that think like him) above the concerns of burqa-wearers and others like them (i.e. Muslims). They are less human because they offend his sensibilities rather than posing objective threats to security. Smith, in effect, draws a circle around a community of moral equals (‘the virtuous’) on the basis of culture. It does not appear to be the case that Smith disagrees with Muslims. He just doesn’t like them. And by that I do not mean an intimate form of affection or familiarity, but an affinity. Smith can’t seem to find any sort of affinity between himself and Muslims – not even as human beings capable of acting morally (i.e. he can’t even presume or give them the benefit of the doubt that they are capable of doing the right thing). Hence, Smith does not demonstrate any respect for the dignity of Muslims.

A second problem with what Sabdia implies has more to do with our responses to the types of disrespect displayed by Smith. The logic of what Sabdia says echoes the common perception that the worst of human behaviours is cultivated by ignorance. Ignorance leads to bigotry. This could very easily be supported by what Smith himself says:

I got the fright of my life as my little girl jumped and screamed as we walked around a corner in the shops. Right in front of us is a person dressed in a full on, like a black robe or black hood, black gown, over his/her head, with a half-inch slit at the eyes, and it fair dinkum looked like a Ku Klux Klan robe, only it was all black.

The comparison to the KKK could easily be seen as the sort of ignorance about Islam that underpins bigotry: if it looks like something evil, then it probably is. Smith is taken to be a simpleton or fool who knows nothing about the world that surrounds him. He needs to be (re-)educated or he needs to go out and meet more people who are different to him. This thinking has its origins in the sort of social psychology that conceptualises familiarity and unfamiliarity only in terms of knowledge and information.¹ Another perspective is measured by social distance scales² that seek to widen the picture to include more variables with greater resolution. The problem is that many of these studies use flawed designs or ignore the significant exceptions to the rule. Robert Putnam’s most recent work on social capital bravely dealt with this issue head-on: his study showed that areas of cultural diversity have low levels of social capital. The problematic conclusion of Putnam’s work was that familiarity, knowledge and information about those different to you that comes through physical proximity and contact does not inevitably produce harmony or even connectedness. On the contrary, people’s responses can just as easily be tolerance and acceptance as it can be intolerance and rejection.³ Ignorance alone does not produce bigotry. It may be part of the problem, but it definitely can not be the focus of the solution when evidence shows that some of the most informed and knowledgeable people can be bigots.⁴

I’m not even going to deal with a psychological perspective that reduces every social problem to pathological individuals because the very many shortcomings of this perspective point to the importance of norms. Norms guide us in the way we do and say things. This, in turn, also influences what we say and do. Ignorance, wilful or otherwise, will only lead to bigotry if our norms guide us in this direction. The problem in one respect is that we have norms that are too narrow for creating solidarity and appropriate modes of interaction between strangers. What we’re often calling bigotry, racism or ignorance is one instance of such a narrowing of norms. Smith may not be the best example, but it is quite likely that he is informed by a sort of parochialism discussed elsewhere by Robert Hughes and Richard Sennett. Hughes, in The Culture of Complaint, riled against what he saw as an incessant and misdirected emphasis on rights without proper appreciation for duties and obligations. While such a framing of the problem is too simplistic for my liking, the crux of the issue is the lack of mutuality. More importantly, however, Hughes sees the problem as emerging from an increasing public expression of the need to be liked. In other words, the impersonal norms of the public sphere were being corrupted by the personal norms of intimate relations. It’s as though we should all be friends, lest we be enemies. I prefer Sennett’s explanation of this erosion of public culture through a tyranny of intimacy. Not only does the imposition of such norms in public life make the world a more bland place, it undermines autonomy. No longer are people doing what is right, but what is liked. The distinction being that the latter requires reflection, exploration and experimentation (what Sennett interestingly calls ‘play’), whereas the latter simply produces blind obedience and subservience. No society is perfect such that the status quo can go unquestioned. We need room for play. Responses that seek to celebrate diversity or denounce it both rely upon the tyranny of intimacy – that everyone ought to be friends – to achieve their ends. They ask too much of us and narrow our frame of reference for dealing with differences.

I’m not saying any of this as a way to suggest that our society does not have such room – there’s plenty. It’s just that not everyone is going to be happy with those conditions. What is equally important to a discussion about which conditions are best for living a good life is the discussion about how we go about creating such conditions. To denounce the sort of discourse exemplified by Smith as bigoted, racist or ignorant is ethically tenuous and sociologically inaccurate. It may be the case that Smith is bigoted, racist or ignorant, but denouncements merely entrench opposing perspectives in their own corner. But it also detracts from finding a solution because such labels do not capture the normative frames of reference in play – it doesn’t reflect upon the tyranny of intimacy and why this is a hindrance to creating solidarity and civility between strangers. We need to be able to disagree with each other – it’s important for social experimentation and political accountability. When intimacy occupies a central role in shaping our expectations of each other, then disagreement easily leads to disrespect via dislike. The alternative is for us to like each other which breeds blind subservience to the status quo or a meaningless celebration of otherness, both of which leave very little room for disagreement. So long as our responses to these sorts of discourses continue to rest on terms like bigot, racist and ignorant, our capacity to disagree – something vital to a good life under conditions of increasing plurality – will dwindle.

1. e.g. Allport and contact/conflict theory [↩]
2. e.g. Bogardus’ social distance scale and the many MANY variations that have followed since [↩]
3. A recent social psychological study verifying this was discussed in the NY Times off the back of Obama’s rise to the presidency. It should be noted that it is an extension of contact theory and falls prey to the same sort of criticisms and shortcomings. [↩]
4. A study by Forrest et. al. in 2004 showed that education was a significant factor, but unlikely to be strong enough to shift attitudes from intolerance to tolerance and vice versa. [↩]