There’s a lengthy and surprisingly bitter thread over at Larvatus Prodeo on two related but conceptually distinct phenomena. The first concerns cultural and racial stereotyping. The second concerns the safety advice police widely give to those who have a greater risk of being victims of crime. The post is a thoughtful one (written by regular commenter on this blog, Cast-Iron Helen).
On the first issue, Melbourne coppers gave some fairly standard safety advice, but targetted it deliberately at a specific ethnic group:
The response of the Victoria Police was to recommend that young Indians should stop talking so loudly in their own language and should not be louchely and recklessly carrying things like iPods and laptops on their daily commute. In short, pull your head in and stop flaunting your great wealth before our simple peasant folk, in case you get yourself bashed. And robbed.
On the second issue, Helen (and others) complain that the burden of public safety always seems to fall on victims of crime — most dramatically on raped women — but also on victims of muggings and other street crimes:
This reminded me of Lauredhel’s article about other victims of crime and how the use of the passive voice, and constant advice to the crime victims both actual and potential to take defensive action themselves to not get themselves raped, or get themselves robbed, makes the perpetrator invisible and takes all the light and heat off the people doing the crime.
There’s quite a bit going on here from a few different perspectives, and since I don’t have any neat solutions (rather like Legal Eagle’s last post on the anguished choices technology adds to old debates about reproductive rights), I’m going to consider a couple of things here and see what comes of it.
On stereotypes
Stereotypes are at once not very nice and potentially life-saving. They’re nasty when they let you write off whole groups of people as worse than useless based on the exaggeration of a single trait (‘Jews are money-grubbing scoundrels’). They’re damn handy, by contrast, when they let you make rapid a assessment of your circumstances (‘I’m in China, the people look Chinese, learning a few words of the local lingo is probably a good idea’).
The stereotype that Helen averts to is a bit more complex, though. It’s essentially learned, and rapidly so. Most Australians would have had (before very recent times) no fixed image of Indians (they’ve never formed a large immigrant group to these shores) apart from the wholly obvious ‘good at cricket’. It may not be pleasant to say so, but there’s no doubt that it takes two groups to make a stereotype: one group to behave in a particular way, another group to develop an — often unpleasant – idee fixe.
I’ll own up a tendency to the latter with a different ethnic group: white South Africans. It’s fair to say that before 2007, I hadn’t met a single pleasant white South African. Every time I encountered a Saffa, I seemed to encounter someone who was arrogant, rude and unwilling to give any ground to other people in conversation. Funnily enough, only one was an outright racist (querying why I was dating a black man). If the others were racist, they didn’t let that particular stereotype out of the bag. They just weren’t very nice, and I took to avoiding them. Now I knew this was an exercise in stereotyping, and I knew it was unfair, but like most people I’ve only got so much emotional energy to burn on building friendships. So I gave white South Africans a wide berth.
Does that make me a racist? If we set our condemnation of stereotyping too high, then it probably does. I sense my idee fixe at moments like the current Test series. I strongly suspect I’m enjoying Australia’s current demolition of South Africa in South Africa far more than I otherwise might. This despite the fact that quite a few members of the current South African squad aren’t white.
Have wealthy Indians — they’re the only sort studying in Australia — been acting like cockheads on public transport in Melbourne? I don’t know, I don’t live there. Helen makes the entirely appropriate point that many of the young people she sees on the trains and trams of that fine city regularly act like cockheads:
It’s about being young and silly. (Some) students travel in packs, yell to each other, and generally seek attention. They’re immature and sometimes quite irritating. Duh – they’re young! This in no way excuses crimes against them, I would have thought. The idea that Indian students are somehow “flaunting” their iPods and laptops, also, is simply racist. I see thousands of caucasians and others using their laptops and ipods, and schoolkids carrying valuable musical instruments, every day.
Has there been enough especially bad behaviour to allow the stereotyping of an entire group? Quite possibly, yes. Doesn’t excuse the stereotyping, but it also doesn’t obviate the police advice either: (‘you have become an especial target, partly because of how you look. For your own safety, you’re going to have to modify your behaviour. You’re going to have to keep your heads down’). People do form stereotypes — even very careful people, people who would otherwise prefer not to form stereotypes. The police also have to deal with the world as it is, not as it would be. The danger in writing the police advice off as racist is, I suspect, the usual danger of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
There’s also another little worm in the fruit that Helen misses, one that I saw regularly during my stint at the Home Office all those years ago.
The Melbourne copper who gave the racially charged advice pleaded that he’d been advised to do so by other people in the Indian community:
Inspector Scott Mahony complained that the police had been blamed unfairly in the story, because “members of the indian community” had complained at a public meeting that their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious.
Now I’d be willing to bet a considerable sum that the Indians who complained about their fellow Indians being loud and irritating were none of them young. Often older people (like parents) from a more socially conservative immigrant group lose the ability they had ‘in the old country’ to police young people’s behaviour. Shocked by the vision of their children coming to behave like the liberated and louche young people of the ‘new country’, they try to recruit the new country’s police forces and immigration authorities to ‘control the yoofs’. I lost count of the number of telephone calls I received from Muslim parents complaining that their daughter had run away from home with ‘that boy’, and could I please give them her address? Explaining that the way they treat their children — especially their female children — is a per se wrong is harder than it looks. It didn’t take long before what other people in the office called the ‘avoiding honour killings calls’ all got diverted to me.
Helen’s other concern is with the common tendency to direct ‘safety advice’ at victims of crime, with the implication that if the person doesn’t follow the safety advice, they are contributing to their own misfortune. This has had particular historical currency in rape cases, but is also widespread elsewhere. It’s usually of the fairly anodyne ‘don’t flaunt wealth, don’t wander around dark streets at night, don’t wear revealing clothing, don’t drink too much‘. I’ve emphasised the last one because it’s separable from the others, and can have considerable legal significance in its own right.
There are several chains of reasoning going on when a police officer gives this kind of advice, some of them logically (and morally) illegitimate, others not. There are also two sets of empirically relevant advice — one set is legal, and the other set is physical. I am both a lawyer and martial artist, so I’ll treat the issues seriatim.
On advice to avoid being a ‘victim of crime’ — the lawyer
If the State advises young women not to wear revealing clothing because it increases the chance of rape, but then prosecutes any rapists to the full extent of the law and does not allow the woman’s dress to mitigate the seriousness of the charge at trial (or any subsequant sentence), it is difficult to consider the advice sexist. The issue thus becomes an empirical one: is there any link between clothing worn and later sexual violence? The same argument applies, for example, to those men who claim, say, that they are sex addicts and unable to control themselves, and so on. The problem of sex addiction may well be genuine, but it cannot be allowed to mitigate or vitiate either the intent or the harm. Larger issues of protection (the State’s core role) are at stake.
If, however, the State allows the rapist to mitigate the seriousness of the offence by apportioning liability between the woman and her attacker for whatever reason – allowing, in effect, a crime to be treated as a tort — then its reasoning is both logically and morally illegitimate. This is, I suspect, what so angers feminists, although making a distinction between empirical facts and subsequent (not consequent) outcomes is of vital importance. Whether something causes something else is one question; whether that should be reflected in any subsequent sentence is another. Some men are undoubtedly sex addicts who respond criminally to revealing clothing. That’s unfortunate, and I feel sorry for them, but they should still be locked up for as long as those rapists who rape for reasons that can’t be medicalized.
Alcohol and vitiation of intent
Feminists (and others) need to be aware of the special role of alcohol in the criminal law. Alcohol can — if consumed in sufficient quantities — vitiate intent. This means that a drunken criminal — if he shows that he was very drunk — can reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter and rape (depending on jurisdiction) to one of the weaker versions of ‘sexual offence’. He does this by drinking such as to remove the mens rea, the intent.
A recognition that things as basic as intent and understanding can be swept away thanks to alcohol consumption applies not only to the accused. Many victims in a sexual offence matter have a very dim memory of anything that may have transpired earlier. Both the accused and victim very often do not know their own motives and actions. The court — and its jury where relevant — often have to ‘split the difference’ when it comes to returning a verdict. The fact that alcohol consumption may generate a legal margin of error should always be borne in mind.
The role of alcohol in many rape cases (and in other offences of violence) has led some feminists to propose a strict liability regime for sexual offense matters. In practice, this means that instead of the Crown having to prove the accused’s guilt, the accused must prove his innocence. An accused male in these circumstances would need to make out on the balance of probabilities that he did not engage in the impugned behaviour. Strict liability regimes currently operate in much UK anti-terror law. With these laws, when the onus is reversed, a David Hicks or his ilk must make out on the balance of probabilities that he was not a member of a listed terrorist organisation. His shield (as old as Magna Carta) is stripped away. Oxford’s Professor Colin Tapper often pointed out to me that the problem with much legislation designed to further women’s rights in criminal law was its kinship under the skin to the very worst laws designed to convict the putative ‘enemy of the state’, coupled with widespread ‘mission creep’. Strict liability regimes represent an unacceptable erosion of the right to a fair trial, yet they are nonetheless becoming increasingly common. This is not something that anyone who is remotely ‘progressive’ should be celebrating.
People often forget that historically — in both common law and civil law regimes — people have had to fight very hard to unpick the State’s power over the accused (before the 1940s, the accused was called ‘the prisoner’, even though not convicted. He was also treated accordingly, and often presented to the jury in shackles). For those whose politics differ from mine, and who want a vivid picture of what ‘putting the victim first’ looks like in practice, I can only recommend the first few chapters of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, with its chilling account of the punishment meted out to a regicide. That’s what the criminal law — at least on the Continent — used to look like. It was not pleasant. When someone is punished for a crime these days, the punishment is not for the edification of the victim, but for the protection of society. There is an often unpleasant association between ‘making the victim central to criminal punishment’ and facilitating vendetta and a desire for revenge. Now those emotions can be legitimate — but only in very small quantities.
This messy conundrum is at the basis of police advice to women not to drink too much in company. Drunkenness on all sides makes it much more difficult for the Crown to prosecute offences, and to work out who is responsible for what. This is very likely not fair, but to obviate it is once again to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Many people drink and subsequently behave irresponsibly, including many otherwise good people. Would-be rapists can be counted in their number. The best advice a lawyer can give a woman is to moderate her intake. If anything does go wrong, at least a conviction may be secured. Likewise, the best advice a lawyer can give to a man is also to moderate his intake: he will at least not then be accused of a crime he did not commit and then have no recollection of what went before.
On advice to avoid being a ‘victim of crime’ — the martial artist
I’m a shodan in Shotokan Karate, 6’1″ and roughly 75-80 kg depending on training levels that month. I can stop most people of either gender, regardless of how strong they are. However, in order to earn my shodan, I not only had to be able to fight well against all comers of both sexes. I needed to have considerable awareness of the very things that lead to crimes of violence, particularly against women. Here are the ‘biggies’:
1. Victims often listen to iPods/MP3 players and so have greatly reduced awareness of their environment. Do not listen to anything that will stop you from being aware of your environs. This applies to both genders equally.
2. Victims routinely get drunk such as to undermine their basic hand-eye coordination. That said, you can still get pretty tipsy under this regime: the nanny-statists who tell you never to drink forget to tell you that many people (especially women) who have a few drinks before performing a difficult task commonly outperform people who are stone-cold sober: the drink makes them more confident, but also makes their reactions sloppier. There’s also a reason why Italians and Greeks try to stuff you with lots of food before you touch the booze — it means you get the best of both worlds. Always, always, always eat heartily before going out on a big night on the town. A small amount of drink will give you confidence and even power; a large amount may well make you a victim of crime.
3. Victims are unaware of ‘false teaming’ and other giveaway ‘cues’ when it comes to violence. Typically, a male who genuinely wants to give you a hand with that heavy load of shopping asks ‘can I help you out?’ or ‘Do you need a hand?’ A false teamer says something like ‘let’s get this pile of shopping sorted’, falsely making an unearned alliance with you. The number of sexual assaults that follow shortly thereafter is simply staggering.
4. Putting oneself first has wider applications, too. There’s a reason why the airlines tell you to fit your own mask first, and any children’s masks later. On the scale of things, children are unimportant. You are what matters. If given a choice between you and your children, or you and your husband, you have a much better chance of saving them if you save yourself first. Altruism in circumstances like these is not only dumb but dangerous.
Can this advice — advice I’ve taught to hundreds of students in martial arts and self-defence classes — be interpreted as sexist? Quite possibly, yes. That said, however, there is no doubt that crime impacts disproprotionately on persons who exhibit certain behaviours (for young women, it’s associated with public drunkeness and consequent dulling of typical powers of observation). This impact may be both wrong and unfair, but it does not detract from the basic truth: until we live in a better (let alone perfect) world, some classes of people will simply have to be more careful than others.
Media titbits
The principle reason that the ladies and gentlemen of the press present victims — rather than perpetrators — first in their news stories has its origins in a desire to encourage identification with ‘normal folks’. Perhaps naively, journalists assume that our first identification is with the wronged person, even before we know who the ‘wronger’ may be. This means journalists forego the active voice beloved of most press writing and cast everything into the passive, often with a photograph of the victim on or near the front page. There’s also a desire to avoid sub judice and contempt of court behind this kind of writing: casting a sentence into the passive allows the journalist to bunt away any suggestion that any particular person is being ‘fixed’ with the crime. Most people agree that these kinds of precautions are necessary to ensure a fair trial for the accused.
Where does this leave us?
… With a realization that this stuff is complicated and difficult to elucidate. The hands we’re dealt may well be unfair, but aiming to fix all wrongs (an impossible task) should not prevent us from aiming to fix what we can. And accepting graciously that there are some things you cannot fix wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
121 Comments
Blunt comments:
- The Indian aspect is a total beat up. The police have already explained (more clearly than the links provided here) that at a meeting of members of the local Indian community some attendees made suggestions that might help to reduce the number of Indians being targeted. All of the suggestions were around reducing drawing attention to themselves or to valuable property, eg, laptops, iPods.
There was nothing racist or stupid about the suggestions. They might not be right, that is, might have nothing to do with Indians being victims of crime, but ordinary people aren’t criminologists, so their ideas will more likely be simple, perhaps unsophisticated. Of course, doesn’t mean they’re wrong though!
- WRT rape, provocative dressing and women drinking: these myths persist, despite hundreds of years of evidence that not many rapes occur that involve scantily clad and / or drunk women wantonly roaming the streets.
Rape is an opportunistic crime, which often happens in the home of the victim, or during day light hours in the most ordinary of locations.
Try telling a grandmother or young woman, asleep in their own beds, not being at all provocative, that their behavior incited some random man to break in and rape them.
That’s by way of illustration only. Please lets not all jump in with the four million and fifty different circumstances around which women can be or are raped.
Fact: most rapes are NOT of women wondering around dressed in a scanty manner in public or private. Most women who are raped are utterly sober and doing nothing at all, other than going about their daily lives.
A woman need do absolutely nothing, by way of dress or behavior, to provoke an attack.
When you are away on holidays most people take extra measures to make their homes safe cancel newspapers,get the neighbours to put the bin out …..I took the police warnings much the same way.Too simplistic?
You talk about ‘the exaggeration of a single trait (’Jews are money-grubbing scoundrels’).’
What exactly is that supposed to mean, or imply?
I agree with Caz that this story is a beat up and the usual woolly minded suspects have jumped in to give the police an undeserved kicking. If the policeman in question said something offensive then I want to hear the voices of the offended Indian community rather than the outraged moralising of a middle class white women who has merely reacted to sensationalistic media reporting.
As to the crapola about targeting the victims rather than the offenders, the police have formed a unit to target the offenders and have formed a Reference Group to liaise with the Indian community. What more can we reasonably expect of them?
Although I’ve travelled the world, I’ve only ever had my bag snatched twice – both times here in Melbourne. Because I was “at home”, I was blase. You do have to look out for yourself.
One more point, SL has provided a much more nuanced account of stereotyping than the one often presented by folk on the Left (of which I’m a disillusioned member).
I believe we are hard wired to stereotype and that we simply couldn’t function in the world without this ability, for example we need to be able to associate a big four legged beasty with a shaggy mane with danger for the purposes of self-preservation. If we attempted to engage each such beasty on an individual basis we’d soon be dinner.
Stereotyping can cause us to dehumanise and mistreat others yet it can also be a rational and self preserving behaviour in social contexts. What’s more we all do it countless times every day; a large volume of research indicates that we evaluate and judge people we do not know within seconds of meeting them.
Lefties who profess a general loathing of stereotyping would do well to engage in some serious introspection. If they do I’m sure they’ll find that their own thoughts are littered with all manner of stereotypes
I’ve edited the post in a (perhaps) vain attempt to make it clearer. On the police advice thing, Sushi Das got pretty silly in The Age (it’s an attempt to be funny that falls rather flat, but as you can see, confected outrage is catching).
I rather enjoyed Das’s piece, a bit of a hoot.
I trust that Das was taking full advantage of a silly, trite, overblown story and taking it out for nothing more than a laugh.
Interesting post, I have alway had a similar issue with this sort of advice, surely it’s good traveling advice. When abroad, I always buy the local paper and sit reading it even if don’t understand a word as it makes you look more local and less like a tourist waiting to get mugged!
I will have to make one point (in order to clarify one persistent myth floating around). In short, alcohol is hugely implicated in crime, both opportunistic crimes (of all kinds) and violent crimes (including sexual assaults). Indeed (wearing my criminal lawyer’s hat here), I’d say it constitutes its own pathology — a point I’ve also seen Peter Kemp (also a criminal lawyer) make over at LP.
In the violent matters I’ve seen, the presence of alcohol will often be 100/100, particularly for serious assaults and sexual offences. It’s also one reason why courts set a pretty high evidentiary bar for vitiation of intent due to the consumption of alcohol, and it’s also why — in no jurisdiction of which I’m aware — alcohol never mitigates at sentence.
Alcohol is far more socially destructive than cigarette smoking: no-one ever started a pub brawl or beat his wife thanks to lighting up a ciggy. It’s also almost impossible to police — we all know what a signal failure Prohibition turned out to be. That said, I have no doubt that if a reliable way of preventing people from drinking was ever discovered (and trust me, it won’t be), then crime rates would drop to almost zero almost overnight. This would particularly apply to violent crime. We’d still have loan sharks and fraudsters, alas, but the local hospital wouldn’t be stuffed full of folks who need to be stitched back together after being glassed.
That it is quite possible to negativise a positive behavioural stereotype should you so wish. Due to all sorts of historical and cultural factors, Jews have been amongst the most successful business people in European history (like Victorian Quakers, one of the main reasons they were so good at trade was that it was the only public sphere open to them — education and politics required you to be baptised Anglican in the UK until relatively recently). The Rothschilds almost single handedly created the international financial market as we know it and it was the Jewish community that set up the first system of credit-notes (copied from the Chinese) allowing international foreign exchange without having to cart gold around the continent.
I think part of the problem is that the police were not especially articulate (no surprise really, given the job that they do), and they were also taken out of context. My bet is that, especially in that area, they go around telling lots of groups things they shouldn’t do for safety reasons — especially groups that might not be used to various cultural norms (like the level of crime in shitty places in Melbourne).
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I also think that LauredHel is suffering linguistic paranoia. In particular,
1) The fact that agents are dropped has nothing to do with any conspiracies against women (or whoever/whatever). This is just the way people write. For example if I do a Google search on:
“Cows are milked” I get 19,900 hits.
but
“The farmer milked the cows” I get 674.
Try typing in almost any example without an explicit agent and you’ll find a similar pattern.
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The other pattern that people complain about is the use of adjectives to describe groups (e.g., the Indian students) — but this is a natural part of speech — people simply default to certain categories unless specific info is needed. I don’t, for example, say “I work in the big ugly brown building” or “my siamese cat” because “ugly brown building” and “my cat” is enough for people to know what I am talking about. The opposite is also true. If I’m talking about a specific group or category and you need to know, then I use that information. cf. “Find the tall tough looking woman who studies law” vs. “Find the woman”.
The thing about stereotypes is that they contain a grain of truth in them (albeit sometimes a very small grain indeed). If a stereotype bore no relation to the reality, then it wouldn’t be used.
I would agree with DEM’s analysis of anti-Semitism, for example – the grain of truth is that Jews were forced into banking in Europe for lack of many other ways of making a living and they became very good at it. But this can easily be made into a negative slur, which will be believed by the ignorant because oh, look over there, there’s these rich Jews in banking.
In a sense, Conrad’s nifty little ‘passive voice’ statistic indicates that Orwell’s criticisms of our overuse of the passive voice (in Politics and the English Language) have merit. Most of the time, the active voice is clearer and easier to read…
Now just to convince people to use it more regularly…
SL
I never had no grammar teaching or nuffin’ when I was at school. I was only exposed to the passive/active voice thingy in my late 20s. Boy, did a light go on or what. I’ll now have to read Orwell.
Stereotypes can work both ways. For example, Australians can be stereotyped as burping, farting, sexist, uneducated cavepersons OR optimistic, hard-working, teamplaying, egalitarian, sunny types.
Stereotypes are an inevitability of the way our brains work. We try to make order out of chaos and data. We look for patterns, the boundaries of groups/sets, and so. I wouldn’t mind betting that if we selected a sample of 100 stereotypes, we’d find a lot more truth in them than not.
SL – most people write in the passive voice, by default (“studies have shown”). Not sure if that’s also true of speech.
I get a bit weary of being beaten up over racism or stereotyping by white / Westerners. Does anyone truly believe that the French, the Germans, the Japanese, and so on and so on, don’t have some extremely racist thoughts and a whole basket of ugly stereotypes about us?
Stereotyping is not confined to crime, and in fact is not often correct when it comes to crime. Exception: being young and male means being more likely to be the perpetrator and the victim of crime.
“the outraged moralising of a middle class white women who has merely reacted to sensationalistic media reporting.”
being beaten up over racism or stereotyping by white / Westerners.
Well, aren’t you all progressive. Pity everyone has pooh-poohed Sushi Das and denied her opinion. It looks as if you’re not willing to listen to the actual Indian woman either. So your sniffy comments about “the middle class white woman” are obviously meant to silence rather than mean anything in the context of who you listen to.
“one more point, SL has provided a much more nuanced account of stereotyping”
Hmmm … nuanced stereotyping. A contradiction in terms perhaps. Given that a stereotype involves ascribing a set of features to an entire group I would have thought the the less nuancing the better otherwise you don’t have a stereotype.
BTW with reference to SL not knowing of an Indian stereotype in this country prior to increased sub-continental immigration, there was a very popular programme on the ABC in the 70s or 80s, “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”. Perhaps a viewing is in order. Not to mention Peter Sellars
Actually some of the comments here regarding the role of the Jewish community in “international finance” demonstrate an appeal to steroetypes. The practice of Usary was outlawed by the church for much of it’s history. Jews were of course not affected by this ban and would lend money at interest. However the fact of the ban didn’t stop Christian bankers (the Fuggers for example) from lending vast sums to the likes of Phillip II (who defaulted and caused great pain to his German bankers). So I’d be a bit careful about placing the Jews at the centre of international finance.
Helen have you ever been to India?
This article is pure folderol. Hands up all those Victorians who can remember Smiling Steve Bracks. If you can remember him you can relate to his press release dated Monday, February 6, 2006. That’s not so long ago. In his press release he praised chief sleuthhound, Christine Nixon, the quintessential Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police.
Smiling Steve said Ms Nixon’s fearless style had criminals seeking counseling. He added that she had driven crime down by an unprecedented 21.5 per cent with Victoria now considered safer than at any time during the past decade.
Residential burglary had decreased by 36.8 per cent and the incidence of motor vehicle theft had been halved owing to Ms Nixon’s crime fighting abilities according to Smiling Steve. He added that crime in Victoria continued to trend downwards when compared to the national average. So what has changed in two short years? Should we arrest Ms Nixon and charge her with impersonating a crime fighter. Why not hit her with a dereliction of duty charge? Silly notions for sure.
Let me tell you about my observations of crime figures under Ms Nixon, one of the world’s most admired crime fighters. Yes, there has been an alarming spike in the number of people who double park their cars…I believe that crime has recorded an increase of 13.88 per cent. I am also disturbed at the high incidence of people who are not using adequate deodorant while riding on the Connex Rail System. The result is a pungent sour mélange of garlic, unwashed bodies, cheap Columbian tobacco and escaping three day old body gases. All of which are crimes that fit into the serious category. I’m sure it’s not the coda Ms Nixon was hoping for to mark her retirement and if her contract could be extended for two more years she would ‘massage’ the crime figures even more but alas, she’s had enough.
The streets of Melbourne are now just as safe as the streets of Sarajevo. Who do we have to thank for that?
Helen – on the contrary, I’ve already stated that I enjoyed Das’s piece, but unlike you, I’m not convinced that she was offering an opinion, rather than taking advantage of a beat-up to write a pithy piece. I think the latter opportunity was an irresistible enough motivation.
Maybe we’d all be able to treat the topic with greater depth and sincerity if the impetus for the thread wasn’t a MSM & LP knee jerk politically correct moment.
Kowtowing to poor journalism and poorer blogs (LP) does nothing for the collective intellect.
I am not surprised that the more integrated Indian community asked the police to educate recent Indian arrivals.
One of my Indian friends calls recent Indian arrivals “FOBs” (denoting Fresh Off the Boat). This is a stereotype within a minority group, if you will. It implies a lack of knowledge of Australian cultural mores (as well as a lack of fashion sense). Funnily enough she married a FOB, as she is fond of reminding him. Another mutual friend was nicknamed “FOB” affectionately – which he accepted with pride.
So there’s a complicated issue of stereotypes within groups.
I have four Indian “brothers”. When I first started dating my husband, they all had to inspect him. They warned him (in terms reflecting their varied temperaments) that if he behaved badly, they’d beat him up. Fortunately, he passed this rather intimidating test, and they haven’t had to beat him up yet. (Yes, I’m totally serious here!)
Sir Charles:
What is it with deodorant on Victorian trains? A whole heap of comments over at LP were basically complaints about people not wearing any BO killer. AFAIK, the stinky public transport prize goes to the Tube in summer, although I’m prepared to be corrected on that point…
Skepticlawyer, if you sidle up to a certain group of people who use public transport your nose will detect the smell of very strong and pungent body odor that could be subdued with the discretionary use of deodorant. These people are unfamiliar with deodorant and how to use it.
Hy-LAR-ious. Oh, my sides.
“Lil”@21: Yes.
“Stereotypes are an inevitability of the way our brains work. We try to make order out of chaos and data. We look for patterns, the boundaries of groups/sets, and so. I wouldn’t mind betting that if we selected a sample of 100 stereotypes, we’d find a lot more truth in them than not.”
I agree altho the margin is probably closer to 60/40 than 80/20.
Take common stereotypes concerning male homosexuals, eg that they are promiscuous (bad stereotype) and creative (good stereotype). These are accurate stereotypes to the extent that those two attributes are indeed more common among male homosexuals than the wider community.
L.E – which prompts me to point out: don’t we all stereotype even within our own families? How many siblings still taunt each other about imagined traits or behaviors stemming from decades ago, hey? Or one branch of the family dismisses the other with what amounts to distorted stereotyping?
There is no inherent wrong in the human propensity to stereotype, that is, there’s no moral wrong in the way the brain quickly codes and classifies “the other”. We are all hardwired to think like this and anyone who claims they don’t is a liar. It’s how we then stratify, or rank, based on stereotypes, or if we fail to proceed beyond them despite continual exposure to contrary data, that’s when serious problems arise.
Stereotyping is useful, in worst case scenario, even life saving.
S.L – I almost always have to stand on our public transport and am vertically challenged. In other words, I basically come up to everyone else’s armpits, at best. I can state, as a life time public transport user, that there are only occasional – yet strikingly memorable – trips when holding one’s breath and turning blue is an attractive alternative to using the surrounding oxygen in the usual manner.
The BO issue just isn’t that bad. But then, most of my travel is the business peak, morning & evenings, and most workers are clean and neat – they have to be, so as not to repel their colleagues. Perhaps there’s a peak BO period that I, thankfully, miss.
Sir Charles, when I was in Japan, I sat next to an old man on the bus who got up and walked away holding his nose. I was totally taken aback, but later found out that Westerners smell objectionable to some in Asia. It’s something to do with the amount of dairy products Westerners eat. The Viet Cong said that they could smell the Yanks from a mile off for this reason.
I’m wary of being too judgmental as a result. Although it is hard if your nose is stuck in someone’s armpit.
It’s just as bad, however, if the person has over-applied perfume / deoderant / after shave. When I was pregnant with my daughter, this guy sat next to me on the train. He must have bathed in his after shave. It was practically palpable. I almost puked on his lap – it really didn’t agree with my very sensitive nose.
Caz – very true re families. Even though my son is only 4 months old, he’s quite different to my daughter (and it’s not just because he’s a boy). He is much calmer and more settled than she is, and he was that way in my womb. The stereotypes are already forming.
I suppose the point is that stereotyping is a natural tendency of the human brain, and that it is not necessarily negative.
That being said, I think it is really important not to just accept stereotypes at face value, and not to prejudge someone just because they belong to a particular group.
“That being said, I think it is really important not to just accept stereotypes at face value, and not to prejudge someone just because they belong to a particular group.”
Exactly, LE.
“AFAIK, the stinky public transport prize goes to the Tube in summer”
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My feeling is that some places in the tropics such as HK in summer are worse, even with things airconditioned to the standard 2c. Given that this is a thread about racism, I’ll just yell (in Cantonese if I could, but I can’t — a language people speak at an even higher level than Indians) that white people in HK, who are almost always vastly overweight (thanks to being fed too much by their Phillipino servants) are really bad offenders. Being overweight in 90% humidity and 33 degrees makes you smell really bad. Perhaps if they ate more fish sauce and garlic like the Chinese people, it would overpower the BO.
Ah, see, I’m almost inclined to disagree about “prejudging”, seeing as we all do it in any case, it’s instinctive, embedded. No way around it. But humans, unlike other animals, are able to control their instincts, so our intellectual challenge is to acknowledge our initial bias (if one exists) and to be vigilantly and genuinely open to real data after that point.
But let’s not forget that we have no obligation to like everyone, even if we do manage to by-pass our internally wired stereotypes. Some people suck, just because they do.
And many people smell bad, apparently.
Ahh yes, Cantonese — the language that my Mandarin-speaking friends describe as ‘an explosion in a spring factory’.
I once had a contract publishing job for 12 months where I was the only English speaker in an entirely Mandarin-speaking office. By year’s end my Mandarin was actually pretty good — it’s quite an easy language to speak. Then someone introduced me to the concept of Cantonese. Four tones (Mandarin) I can handle. If you listen carefully, you’ll pick up the differences and avoid referring to your mother as a female dog and other ‘niceties’. Nine tones (Cantonese), however, is extremely hard on the ear.
I agree with Caz about working on avoiding the sillier stereotyping, which is why I wrote about how uncomfortable stereotyping South Africans made me feel (on which point I note the natural order of things has been restored, Australia having cleaned up the Saffas in the 2nd Test). That said, there were an awful lot of unlikeable South Africans about, and keeping the casual stereotyping in its box was starting to get bloody difficult. I suspect, too, that people are more willing to accept my account of South Africans because the Saffas giving me the irrits were white.
I’ve got one close friend who’s formed similar views of Aborigines, and who pointed out to me that my partner was the first ‘pleasant Aborigine’ she’d ever met. And when I first introduced the two of them, I could see how wary she was being around him. She reacted like me with my stereotyping of South Africans, except she can’t discuss it easily with anyone other than very close friends — somehow it’s more okay to stereotype certain groups of white people than it is with certain (perhaps all) groups of black people. Logically, of course, this is just silly, but that doesn’t make it any less awkward.
More okay to stereotype certain groups of white people?
Yes, it is, excellent point to raise!
Although I would extend that to any and all white groups.
Exhibit A: the blog “Stuff White People Like”.
He even got a book deal, didn’t he?
Can’t imagine global adulation and a book deal for anyone writing a blog on “Stuff Black People Like”.
SL@37 said “Mandarin… quite an easy language to speak”.
Lucky you. Ability to deal with tonal languages appears to be genetic, with the gene frequency low in ethnic groups that have a long history of NOT using a tonal language.
# “Ma” (flat) = Mother
# “mâ” (rising/falling) = horse
# “má” (rising) = hemp
# “mà” (falling) = swearing/scolding
# ma chi ma ai ma ma
Mother is swearing at the horse because it ate the hemp.
And half of the “ma”s have the same graphical root see here for image of the phrase.
As to the general issue on stereotyping (and I /did/ enjoy Das’ article), if you take it out of an ethnic and age context and you’ll see how useful it is: Two spare seats on a train… one next to a guy in a tie holding a pack of “WhiteOx” tobacco, and the other a yoof in a death-metal T-shirt. Which do you take? Or do you stand?
(Yes, hypothetical… there are no spare seats on Connex trains)
Dave – I would be prevented from sitting next to either man, since both (regardless of girth) would take up the entire seat, legs akimbo as if still in recovery from an especially painful vasectomy.
And history Patrick B. I highly recommend Niall Ferguson’s latest The Ascent of Money. The only more revolutionary contribution to business you could identify is probably the development of double-entry bookkeeping, for which we must thank the Medicis.
That’s the problem with stereotypes. If they weren’t based on a certain amount of fact, they wouldn’t exist!
Both of which were produced by Britain where there WERE several large Asian migrations, both from Uganda and various sites on the sub-continent. Australia had no native ‘Indian’ stereotype because it had no corresponding surge in migration from that area, instead they developed a ‘Chinese’ stereotype because this was the corresponding migrancy pattern down under.
“and who pointed out to me that my partner was the first ‘pleasant Aborigine’ she’d ever met”
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This is a really interesting point — there is some really recent research looking at stereotyping and getting to know people of whose group you had negative stereotypes about (I think most has been done using faces and looking at whether people associate them with negative words — I’m not sure the research has hit the “real world” yet). What you find is that a very small amount of simple exposure basically eliminates the effect of the negative associations. Thus it appears it is very quick for people to treat members of a group as individuals rather than their stereotype in certain situations (like knowing who the person actually is or just having some familiarity with them).
SL – I’m a white South African! Hehe. Well, I was born in Cape Town. Maybe you need to refine your discrimination to ensure that you distinguish between the Afrikaners and the English-speaking South Africans?
Argh, and I broke the formatting.
All of this reminds me of the debate about profiling – where do you all stand on that issue? Is it ok to say that statistically more persons of Middle Eastern descent have been involved in terorrism so therefore it is ok to target them at airports?
I tend to think the price you pay in terms of undermining the notion of equality under the law is greater than the statistical benefits you might obtain by targeting your searches. There is something reassuring to me about a society which blindly searches both a young arab man and a white 80 year old grandmother without drawing a distinction. And I would hope that when that arab man sees the same thing, he will feel reassured that he is still a part of the same society as the old woman.
Conrad – yes, given the right circumstance, people are quick to treat members of a group as individuals rather than their stereotype, but in real life, don’t people also file that person away as “the exception” to the stereotype? Ditto the next person, and the next? The stereotype doesn’t necessarily shift, is all I’m suggesting.
Paul – you present a good example and point, but what about the habit of newspapers not publishing racial details of a suspect being sought by police, even when the police have specified that information? How do you feel about being told that a violent person is in your suburb, but not told what he looks like, because it would be dreadfully un-PC to specify race?
Or what about matters of health, where everyone is told they’re equally at risk for some ailment, even though it’s blatantly untrue? At what point do people then ignore all messages because the source has lost all legitimacy and credibility?
Legal Eagle, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. I had a conversation with a taxi driver who said that Europeans do emit a certain odor.
“There is something reassuring to me about a society which blindly searches both a young arab man and a white 80 year old grandmother without drawing a distinction. ”
LOL.
Presumably if a serial murderer killed 10 women in your neighbourhood you’d want the police to refrain from profiling and add at least one token 80 year old women to the list of suspects. You’d appoint a Diversity Ombudsman to ensure the list of suspects and the time allocated to investigating each suspect reflects the ethnic, gender and SES diversity of the community as elucidated by the annual diversity community workshop.
It’s this sort of thinking that makes me one very disillusioned lefty.
The problem in melbourne isn’t just about apologising for racist ar*eholes.
And really, I catch crowded trains every day, and Indians are nowhere near the top of the inconsiderate list. Seriously, it’s a pile of crap. But that’s aside from the point I’m getting frothy about.
The big FFS from my point of view, one which you as a libertarian should identify with, is the whole apologia for violent thugs who choose to behave violently.
We are suffering a surplus of weasel crap here in Victoria which I can translate for you all…
Indians behaving differently causes offence = violent scumbags found an excuse to act violently.
Alcohol problem spurs safety concerns in the city = violent scumbags got a couple of drinks into themselves and chose to act violently.
Late night bars may be linked to a rise in violence = about 7 well known problem bars, basically attracting too many violent thugs, all in the regal triangle (haven’t heard that one? I made it up – King, Queen and Crown) aren’t touched so we try closing small bars up the other end of town instead.
And so it goes.
How about a little agency and responsibility returned to the people who do this stuff? If someone is a nasty vicious racist who targets peaceful, polite innocuous Indian students with the same hatred that fueled kristalnacht or the anti-Chinese pogroms in Jakarta, or the skinheads of yore, then call them that.
If they had 4 beers then decided to bash someone random, it’s not the alcohol. Not even after 10 beers. They are a violent thug.
If there’s a good explanation based on some part of their brain that’s been fried by terrible life experiences, then, ok, let’s be rational. Instead of the 10 years in gaol I’d otherwise give them, they can go be treated somewhere until certified as safe.
But currently nothing serious at all is being done about them. And it makes me, a citizen here with small kids to think of, frankly sick.
PS post more on the shotokan, very interesting aside… currently, for reasons relating to the above, researching options for arts of the defensive kind…
Armagny@48 said: researching options for arts of the defensive kind…
A friend of mine who did martial arts said the only one for me was aikido because the basic theory was that you couldn’t attack, but relied on the forward movement of an attacker taking them off balance, and aims to control an agressor without causing them injury.
This might make aikido competitions weird (if not downright hypocritical), unless you got tae-kwon-do types to be the attackers.
Hmm, is racial profiling racist…? My standard joke is that if the problem was serial arson the authorities would be pulling in Zoroastrians, but then I can say that with the comfort of a non-Muslim who doesn’t have to put up with the additional aggravation. Prior to September 11th the racial profiling “hot button” in the UK was the use of stop and search powers by the Metropolitan Police in London being overused against the black community. The then commissioner got howled down when he pointed out that this might have something to do with figures that showed two thirds of reported street crime at the time was being committed by, umm, members of the black community.
Racial profiling should have nothing to do with establishing individual guilt (no return to “innocent until proven irish” kind of thinking) as people can only be held accountable in the law for their own actions, but I’m not sure it’s unreasonable to use it as a way to target detailed investigations more efficiently. If a bomb has gone off on a train and your three suspects are a Muslim guy from Bradford, a Basque Spaniard and a former Provo from Northern Ireland you don’t just scoop up the guy from Bradford because he has a big fat beard and a shaved head and let the other two go … but that doesn’t mean you can’t START by interrogating him first. Depends greatly on the bombing location.
I actually do believe there is a line over which we should tread very hesitantly indeed when moving towards a purely statistical approach. As stated, it is not that I am saying that it wouldn’t be more effective in some situations, I am saying that it creates a strong perception of inequality before the law and a divisive notion that it is “them” who are trying to harm “us”.
In addition, it arguably amounts to collective punishment against every member of that racial group for the crimes of a few. Or does every Arab man deserve to be treated like a possible/likely terrorist every time he goes out in public from now on? Because racial profiling will definitely help to enforce that attitude.
Hell, why not take it to extremes? DNA test everyone, record everything they say and do, build a complete racial/psychological/biological profile of them, track their every movement, match to statistics of past crimes, and apply whenever a crime is committed… You’d definitely solve more crimes, but would it be worth it?
Furthermore, racial profiling is particularly unacceptable in my view when it is done in the course of security theatre, which a great deal of airport security and similar appears to be.
No, if there’s been an actual crime I expect the police to do their best to solve it logically.
But if we’re harassing civilians on the way into an airport or train station in the name of ‘security’, I strongly believe that it is crucial for the continuation of liberal democracy that we do not exempt certain groups on the basis of race or gender. If we’re going to make a show out of invading civil liberties for the sake of ‘security’, we should also make a show out of showing that all people are presumed to be equal in our society.
As the jurisprudes who read this blog would no doubt have noted, most of my views on stereotypes (and why I don’t think they’re racist — or at least not very often) come from this book, by one of my tutors from the BCL last year. I don’t agree with everything Prof Schauer says, but he certainly helps to clean up the rather woolly thinking that surrounds this topic.
No I can’t agree with you, Paul. Let me give another example. Say an unaccompanied child has to be seated on a commercial plane and their are two seats available- one next to a man and one next to a woman. Where should the child be seated? I would say next to the woman because we know that on average men are more of a threat to children than women.
I share Paul’s dis-ease with ‘racial profiling’ when it is used preventatively ie. predicting possible future behaviour when nothing has actually happened but then I’m VERY unhappy with any kind of legal involvement or government policy that’s pre-emptive. It is a delicate matter of balancing personal liberty with public safety and very difficult to establish a common standard, when reactions are liable to vary from person to person. I personally value civil liberties more and am willing to live with a higher personal risk in order to maintain them for everyone regardless of race or creed etc BUT, I say that as someone living in a overwhelmingly white area with little daily contact with ethnic minorities and less perceived danger as a possible target (I’m not in London). If I were living in the north of England very close to large Asian populations, my perception of likely personal risk would probably be very different.
Birdie Num Num. Oooohh, de elephants.
mel
I’d say that gay stereotype had a lot of currency in the 1970s/1980s. A subsequent conscious reaction against that stereotype makes it less truthful in 2008.
Ah yes the moral pyrotechnics of “middle class white ladies” on the leftist blogosphere is a sight for sore eyes. One has to take a bath after reading that LP thread. These Dorrie Evans’ of the Left really need to get a job.
Caz
Reading that LP thread, I thought “classical Stuff White People Like”. Telling other white people how racist they are, and how those other whites should be more like themselves.
Deus
It is a delicate matter of balancing personal liberty with public safety and very difficult to establish a common standard
Sometimes not at all delicate. Exhibit A: the over the top security at airports, whether it be searches or carrying liquids, is a blunt instrument that won’t save a life, ever. It’s not intended to either, it’s manipulation of perceptions, a PR exercise, if you like, in which civil liberties, or at least the right to go about your daily business, is impinged upon for every individual so as to create fear.
Of course, there are exceptions, for example, anyone who has ever watch “Border Patrol” can figure out very quickly that pretty much anyone can be a drug smuggler, there is no profile at all, zip. Everyone is rightly a suspect. With terrorism though, not so much.
John – indeedy do.
White Middle Class Ladies to White Working Class Bogans: “You’re doing it wrong”!
I meant difficult to balance the vast difference in individual level of “risk averseness” to establish a community-wide standard of acceptable restrictions. Agreed that airport checks are meant mainly for PR purposes to make passengers feel more secure rather than being genuinely discouraging on potential attackers. On the plus side, at least this is one area where ‘racial profiling’ doesn’t come into it – EVERY passenger is subject to the same checks and restrictions, not just those suspected of being Muslim. Tom Shakespeare, who is an academic and columnist for the BBC disability website “Ouch” wrote an interesting post a while back about the weaponisation potential of mobility aids which tend to be ignored at airport security (with a bit of imagination you could probably disguise a pipe-bomb in a pair of aluminium elbow crutches for example).
My personal bug-bear is Section 44:
Liberty go on to explain your rights here but don’t mention that in most cases, if you don’t voluntarily give the police the information they ask for, you’re likely to be threatened with arrest.
There really does seem to be something rotten with the state of policing in Victoria — you’re one of dozens who’ve complained about it. Often it’s been full on ‘Laura Norder’ types, but hearing the same thing from libertarians and lefties as well leads me to believe that there is (a) a serious street crime problem and (b) the police don’t seem to know what to do about it.
As Mercurius pointed out on the LP thread, prisons are a damned useful thing when it comes to reducing violent crime (indeed, the link between tough sentencing regimes and reduced crime rates is now watertight). Of course, liberal abortion laws are even better. Put the two together and crime finishes up permanently on the back foot.
Skepticlawyer, as you stated a stereotype is as much about the person forming the stereotype as the person the stereotype is about.
As an example, if I want to convince myself that white Australians are a coarse bunch of foul-mouthed drunken bogans totally lacking in class and culture, I can find plenty of evidence to support that. I would just need to get on the train and head down the Frankston line (sorry, Melbourne in-joke there). However, I could also find plenty of evidence to show that white Australians are very much the opposite.
It all depends on my personal agenda.
Indians are either rude and obnoxious, or polite and friendly, or whatever you decide they are in your mind.
However I’m not sure which Australia you’re living in where Indians have never formed a large immigrant group. Indians and Sri Lankans have been here in significant numbers for decades. They perhaps haven’t made a major impression because they have caused comparatively little trouble. But if you live in Melbourne and have ever seen a doctor, been to a university campus, purchased petrol or hopped in a taxi, you will meet Indians.
Euroasian – you left off 7-11 stores!
There’s an entire sub-species of Indian families running 7-II (and IGA) stores across the whole of Melbourne.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that …
S.K – street crime in Melbourne is pretty much out of hand, and no, the police and pollies don’t seem to have much of a clue.
The ‘yooph’ of today seem hell bent on binge drinking and bashing the hell out of each other – or anyone who happens to be standing about the place.
Headlines only tell us about deaths or serious punch-ups, but not all the scuffles that end in hospitalizations. People being glassed in the face is, apparently, a popular recreational activity.
Hmmm – that should have been “S.L” – keep getting the letters wrong.
And the Indian-run combo spices/vegetables/incense/fcraft/clothing/video stores. They’re the best.
Despite all the problems, I believe the opposite about the policing in Victoria — it’s generally quite reasonable, and crime in Victoria has reduced like everywhere else over the past decade with increasing employment (too bad that’s over!).
I think the real problem is that you heavy crime in a rather small number of places which are now all under camera (which doesn’t stop it), so you end up seeing it all on TV, and so the perception is different to the reality — young males have always created a reasonable amount of violence against each other, but now we just see it more.
Glad someone said that Conrad. AFAIK crime, and statistics show this, is not on the increase in Australian cities, though it has long been a function of authoritarian and right-wing politics to say that it is and highlight this myth as a distraction from the much more serious criminal depredations of the state and the corporate world.
And a highly policed state with stiff sentencing programs has little positive impact on crime rates, as even a cursory look at the state of play in the USA demonstratres.
The US is the most litigious society with the highest per capita prison population and stiffest criminal penalties in the world and yet it is one of if not the most violent, crime-ridden countries on the planet.
This is simply empirically false. Crime rates are low across nearly all developed countries, and have been dropping like a stone since (roughly) 1993. The tightest criminological link is between low crime rates and liberal abortion laws, but harsh prison sentencing regimes play a significant part. Ireland — with its illiberal abortion laws — has the highest crime rates in the EU. Every other country is about the same, and about the same as the US, allowing for minor regional variations (London has more knife crime, Germany has more gun crime; the Netherlands has stuff all crime thanks to liberal drug laws etc).
The US has lower overall crime rates than the UK, principally because very few burglaries/home invasions in the US are ‘hot’ — that is, they do not take place when the householder is at home. By contrast, the majority of home invasions and burglaries in the UK are ‘hot’, leading to confrontations between homeowners and criminals. There’s a serious argument that this is because US robbers fear an armed homeowner, although I’m not fully persuaded of the tightness of the causative link.
Relevant papers on the abortion issue are Levitt & Donohue, ‘The impact of legalized abortion on crime’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001) 379 and Levitt, ‘Understanding why crime fell in the 1990s: Four factors that explain the decline and six that do not’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (2004) 163. If you’re really interested in this topic, then raid the back of the most recent edition of Freakonomics for a mass of very detailed research you can read at your leisure.
Briefly, a booming economy, ‘broken windows’ policing, tough/liberal gun-control laws and the death penalty have a ‘statistically insignificant’ effect on crime. Liberal drug laws, tough sentencing regimes and more police have a statistically significant effect on crime — contributing to drops in the crime rate wherever they’ve been introduced.
But the big one is abortion. Legalise abortion (and make your legal abortion laws very liberal, as they are across the US thanks to a constitutional ruling), and the drop will be dramatic — depending on location, roughly 50-60% of the crime rate drop can be attributed to abortion. The only thing is, you’ll have to wait roughly 15-18 years for the crime rate to nosedive.
Various people have tried to punch holes in Levitt’s work — the lefties have tried to attack his work on prisons, and the righties his work on abortion. I read both the original studies and the various attacks and wrote my BCL Criminology paper on the debate. The attackers do not come off very well, and — in recent times — have been reduced to attacking economists qua economists, viz ‘well, we know why your discipline gets called ‘the Dismal Science, don’t we?’.
I posted two links for info – seem to have gone to the bin.
Hey Posey – I rescued ‘em from the bin, but I think they’re attached to the wrong post…shall I move them?
thanks LE, but they were on the US crime and prison profile, right? Were in response to SL’s comment above.
Can we do that? I’ve often wanted to shift a comment from one post to another, but I don’t think WordPress allows it. We used to have the same problem at Catallaxy — inevitably the commenter would say ‘wrong thread, please move’, but we never could. Memo to WordPress — it would be a nice feature!
BTW, the two wiki links (which have inexplicably turned up on DEM’s G20 thread) — once you get past the initial axe-grinding of someone who clearly doesn’t like the US — bear out Levitt’s research. Watching the crime rate across the developed world nose-dive post 1991 (or 1993) is very impressive, although some more recent data would be nice. And yes, the US locks many people up — no argument from me there. Their prison system can reasonably be described as ‘draconian’. It is also effective. It is not pleasant to admit this, particularly if you have a humane view of the possibilities for rehabilitation, but if criminological debate is to progress (and here I’m simply paraphrasing my own scholarship), then the efficacy of harsh sentencing regimes in the reduction of crime needs to be acknowledged.
Levitt and Donohue point out (quite accurately) that there are a large number of criminologists living in cloud-cuckoo-land on this point; there is even a (still relatively popular) movement for the abolition of prisons. It represents one of the best examples of woolly-headed progressivism and serious numerical illiteracy I’ve ever seen. Here’s Levitt:
Importantly, Levitt acknowledges the nastiness of using prisons to fix what is in reality a much larger social problem (greatly exacerbated, at least in the US, by the ‘War on Drugs’):
Posey – let’s not forget the combo small grocery/milk bar come Internet cafe tucked out the back.
Conrad – actually I read the other day that there will be / should be an inquiry into Vic crime stats as they’re not being captured and reported with anything resembling good or best practice, if recorded & reported at all. This, despite the multi-million dollar software. In other words, it seems that our crime stats are all a tad smoke & mirrors. Certainly based purely on weekend crime in the CBD, the numbers reported should be going up, up, up, up – no one disputes the escalation of violent street crimes.
It very genuinely is not a matter of perception, go and ask the police, go and ask ambulance officers, go and ask the emergency rooms at hospitals. They’re not making this stuff up. It is entirely unrelated to street-cams. Hundreds of people experience violent crime each week, most of it doesn’t get a mention in any news medium, otherwise there’d be no time to report on anything else.
In addition, violence perpetrated by young women has also increased quite astonishingly. (Yes, hear my moral indignation!) Again, this is not a media beat up, it’s real.
Posey – crime rates across America, particularly murder and violent crimes, have PLUMMETED during the last 20 years, it’s a remarkable success story in many regards. The irony is that many states are now looking to reduce their budgets by letting criminals out early so as to reduce size and cost of their prison populations. The irony being that heavy policing and tough penalties seem to have played a significant role in the precipitous decline, at least of the worst type of crimes. This is not my own opinion. I regularly read a few US papers online and this is current stuff. Of course, the drop in crime rates (that I just noticed SL has already addressed) was a declared success some years ago now, and has remained that way.
Posey – comment is under G20 post here – don’t know quite how it ended up there? Anyway, I don’t know how to move it to this post, so I’ll just direct people to it!!!
“Conrad – actually I read the other day that there will be / should be an inquiry into Vic crime stats as they’re not being captured and reported with anything resembling good or best practice, if recorded & reported at all”
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I’ve no doubt that’s true. It’s just that I don’t think that’s a new novel or novel thing — there has always been under-reporting of crime and I can’t see why the Vic police would be any worse than before (were they super before?). As for the CBD (in fact certain areas in the CBD) — maybe crime is going up (or maybe it’s not — there have been problems around King street for decades), but that’s just a hotspot that is not really related to where most people live or do stuff. If you don’t go there at 2am like 99.99% of people, you won’t experience that level of crime. In addition, other areas that were traditional hotspots (e.g., St Kilda), seem to have gotten somewhat better.
Conrad, you’re right about St Kilda. Whereas the city seems to have gotten worse – or maybe I’ve just gotten older and wiser? It horrifies me that I used to walk all over the place on my own at all times of the night.
As I have always said, the best way to reduce crime is compulsory retroactive abortions. Also, the koreans own all the bread shops! Damn fine buns too!
Conrad – true about the statistics, but my point is that they spent millions to address the problem with the implementation of beaut new IT solutions. As always, humans still manage to subvert the processes.
Curious perspective about violent crime: if I’m not exposed to it or don’t experience it, I’m OK Jack? I’m never in the CBD after midnight, so no, I guess it doesn’t matter to me at all how many young folk end up with facial scars or brain damage from being beaten up. However, the cost to society is significant: policing, legal, health, disabilities, the affect on families, unemployment, etc. It’s not a nil cost game just because I don’t see it or experience it, otherwise you’d be right, I could ignore and not give a rat’s …
On that front though, I have noticed over the last five years or so that generalized aggression – in daylight, during business hours – in the CBD is far more prevalent on the streets. I still wonder around the city without much of a care, except for reminding myself to keep my handbag safe, and yet, there have been disconcerting displays of aggression (individuals, not groups) when I have been concerned about my safety or those around me. Random stuff, outbursts, kicking of public property, yelling at strangers, thumping the air menacingly, deliberately ‘walking’ into people. I know that sounds trivial, but it isn’t, and these aren’t behaviors that I would have witnessed in earlier years.
It’s a whole new level of bravado and lack of civility, if nothing else.
This Pew Centre report is interesting and provides even more detail on the US in relation to SL’s and Caz’s points which have been very informative, thanks.
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912
If, as is indicated, a large proportion of the growth in the US prison population comes from the conviction of illegal immigrants and drug offenders, the two ever increasing biggies, then it doesn’t really make sense that official records say that crime rates have fallen or that harsh penalties have acted as a social deterrent. Nor does it make sense to say that more effective policing methods have been such overwhelming contributing factors in the fall in crime rates.
Not mentioned so far either (or in the Pew Report) is the extent to which US prisons have become dumping grounds for people who have no other way of being watched or supervised and who have become a perceived danger to the broader society because of the lack of social supports for them by way of employment, health care, social security, etc.
And, presumably, these privately-run institutions which incarcerate so many people whose labour is then sold to other private corporations, have a vested interest in maintaining a high imprisonment rate too.
Finally, I also think that crime, or convictable crime, must necessarily be fairly narrowly defined in all this. And I wonder to what extent too does a reduction in arrests and prosecutions in the target or favoured areas mentioned reside in the conniving of police forces and their symbiotic relationship with those whom they predominantly target.
Seen the HBO series, The Wire?
Does that make me a racist?
No that makes you racialist. Racism is a philosophy that holds one ethnic group superior and/or legitimizes the dehumanization of others. But ethnicity isn’t just a matter of slightly different appearance. Indians for example do talk loudly. That is louder than Anglo-Saxon cultures generally tolerate. Why? Well firstly Anglo-Saxons are amongst the quietest spoken people. (except at football matches)
Indians also talk on the mobiles all the time and in inappropriate places. One of my bugbears when they first started coming here was sharing a library zone with them. If an Indian man was nearby, I’d bet green money that within 10 minutes he’d be yakking away at the top of his voice. I had one guy use the adjacent desk as a fucking office!! Ihave to do a lot of work in libraries and it shits me.
That said most of the dudes were polite and rung out and I’ve noticed they’ve stopped doing it. They’ve learned the local ways and good on ‘em. Considering the decline in standards of courtesy in Melbourne they can be forgiven.
So the Indian stereotype applies. They weren’t being impolite they were just acting in accordance with their own norms of speaking volume.
Stuff like this does lead to a certain amount of ethnic tension because one group bothers another by a conflict of customs. It can be negotiated.
Understanding the strife that Indians endure in places like Sunshine Vic (the most ironically named place on the planet) needs recourse to another ethic stereotype – the Lumpen Aussie piece of human scrap in the unwashed adidas gear for whom violence and excrutiating diction is, for some reason, deemed a virtuous way of life. They don’t have iPods and laptops. Their parents generally spend their money on drugs.
Sad but true – some of us haven’t gotten too far since getting off the Alexander. Indians climb down off a plane and ten minutes later they’ve done better. That breeds resentment and the hopeless and ignorant know only one way of expressing themselves.
And now should I’ll go over to LP and get called a racist I’m sure.
By the way everyone is a racialist.
And if it is true that the prisons are being used to mop up some of the surplus labour population of the US, then we can presumably expect to see conviction and imprisonment rates rise in the coming period as the US economy nosedives.
Yeah it happened in the ’30s. And some of the sentences were ridiculous.
I’ve noticed this as well, first in the UK, later in Australia. Especially the deliberate walking into other people, a sort of pedestrian road rage writ large. I’ve had it done to me in Oxford, although I’m wary of extrapolating from pedestrian (and road) aggro in Oxford — much of the aggro here is directed towards students (‘gownies’) from long-term non-university residents (‘townies’) and is both hundreds of years old and partially class-inflected. The townies also have no idea what to do if the student they hassle (a) gives as good as they get and (b) has an Australian accent. Australian accents are a reasonable substitute for South Central LA around here. I’ve often wondered: why are we so scary? It can’t all be down to our cricketers, surely…
You’re emulating the World Series mayor and getting correlation and causation mixed up again. Most of the drug offenders locked up in US prisons are non-violent and black. Indeed, this is one of the most powerful arguments in favour of legalization. However, to the extent that there is a link between drug offences and violent offences, prison is an effective way of ensuring that violent offenders are kept off the streets. The same logic applies to illegal immigrants.
I should mention that independent of arguments about violent criminality, there are profound and very serious economic arguments in favour of completely turning the low-skill immigration tap off, particularly in times of recession, and any state that doesn’t do this (whether in the name of woolly-headed multiculturalism or a desire to depress wages, usually a bit of both) is behaving incredibly stupidly.
Of course, libertarians argue that you could use all those prison places to lock up real criminals if you legalized drugs (and so drain the violent crime away without the expense of building more prisons), but this argument doesn’t seem to make much headway with the powers that be, in large part because they have enacted their moral opposition to drug use into law. As I’ve argued extensively elsewhere, it is not possible to incorporate morality into law, even if you can prove the normative correctness of the morality in question. The morality has to apply to the citizenry independently of the law.
Adrien @ 84: Fair enough. I think it’s important to be able to talk about feeling some loss at new groups bringing their particular public habits into a pre-constituted social space. Without a measured language for expressing that sense of loss – whether it be of peace in formerly peaceful places, or of orderly and predictable patterns of pedestrian movement, or whatever – there will only be resentment leading god knows where politically.
I think both honesty and forebearance are virtues. Some on the left only want to reward a commitment to a seemingly limitless forebearance, and have less interest in honesty when it doesn’t reflect a similar commitment.
Posey – it does make sense to state, with absolute authority, that the US crime rates have fallen dramatically.
Didn’t New York alone have a couple of THOUSAND murders each year even 10 or 15 years ago? (Sorry, to lazy to go find the figures.) That’s now down to a few hundred … again, don’t quote me. Ditto across the whole of the US.
The murder rate in the US has hugely decreased. I don’t think it’s because medicine has become better at treating gunshot and knife wounds either.
This isn’t cherry picking on the stats, you have to be mindful of the multifaceted picture.
Eg, three strikes and you’re IN, which a few states introduced years ago, has also contributed to the growth in the prison population.
Caz, how many Jane and John Does are there in annually in the US? No, I don’t know exactly but there are 1000s.
Crime conviction statistics are not an accurate measure of the actual incidence of crime, are they?
Posey – no, quite right with that, and it has always been the case that crime of all kind is unreported and many criminals never go to jail, despite being charged. Eg, only a tiny fraction of rapes are reported, with an even tinier fraction of rapists ever being convicted and jailed.
Nonetheless, tens of thousands of murders didn’t vanish because of under-reporting and more effective ways to hide the bodies!
Caz, there are effective ways to hide bodies, like on building sites, in tips, rivers, frozen in fridges or melted with acid. And where would police procedurals and shows like ‘The Sopranos’ be if they weren’t so often centred round the chance discovery of a body that a murderer had attempted to hide, or looking for a missing person who is never found. Jeezus!
On the illegal immigration front, a guaranteed, legislated, livable minimum wage in the US would arguably limit the attractiveness of the US to illegal immigrants and give low-skilled citizens more incentive to take on the available work they don’t bother with because they’re less desperate than Mexicans, Salvadorans, Paraguayans to take on hard, godawful work for absolutely pitiful pay, hours, and conditions.
SL says:
“As I’ve argued extensively elsewhere, it is not possible to incorporate morality into law, even if you can prove the normative correctness of the morality in question. The morality has to apply to the citizenry independently of the law.”
Actually this is not entirely correct as on more practical moral issues (eg “is it ok to drink and drive?”, “is it ok to smoke in a restaurant?”) large shifts in public attitudes have occurred AFTER legislative changes on these initiatives. In such circumstances culture and morality do indeed follow the law.
My point is well documented and watertight IMO. See for example the lit review in this BMJ document (you’ll need to register) – http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/13/1/87
Adrien
On yapping loudly in public libraries, I think you might be indulging in a bit of confirmation bias; it’s a generational thing, more than ethnicity. They all do it – crackers, curry-munchers, Yids, towelheads, abos, gooks, eskimoes, poms, frogs, krauts, jigaboos.
Just point to the inevitable sign that has a drawing of a mobile phone with a red line through it, and shout, “Shut the Fuck Up”! Always works for me.
Klaus K
Oh FFS. Dude, you have GOT to stop mainlining that shit they’re selling you in Cultistudies seminars.
Hmmm, no, can’t find any ‘Cultistudies’ in there, sorry. There’s one anthropologist, but I doubt you could name him.
You’ve managed to include Aborigines twice, JG. Was that deliberate?
We don’t do PC around here, but we do like civility. It would be appreciated if you kept that in mind.
Shorter Klaus in plain, unpretentious English: people should be able to object to behaviour they consider abnormal without being labelled bigots.
Klaus – I think it’s important to be able to talk about feeling some loss at new groups bringing their particular public habits into a pre-constituted social space. Without a measured language for expressing that sense of loss – whether it be of peace in formerly peaceful places, or of orderly and predictable patterns of pedestrian movement, or whatever – there will only be resentment leading god knows where politically.
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What you mean is it’s okay to expect visitors to conform to local norms of courtesy. I don’t accept that it’s a loss. It’s not lost just damaged. Libraries and similar spaces are one of those few places where we can, should and need to expect silence or close enough.
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Otherwise they cease to function as such.
it’s a generational thing, more than ethnicity. They all do it – crackers, curry-munchers, Yids, towelheads, abos, gooks, eskimoes, poms, frogs, krauts, jigaboos.
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Just point to the inevitable sign that has a drawing of a mobile phone with a red line through it, and shout, “Shut the Fuck Up”! Always works for me.
John would you stop adhering to the nauseating and sterile politically language.
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It is a generational thing. In fact I’ve just told a pseudo Gen Y dickhead (who evidently thinks he discovered the Velvet Underground) to shut up. It didn’t work. I’m seriously thinking of killing the shit’s phone when I get off.
It’d also a cultural thing. Older Indians have spoken on the phone. They are apologetic. The younger generation are really really bad. Last night some kid threw a coke bottle at a guy’s car windscreen for a lark.
But oops the guy was a local mafiosi.
“What you mean is it’s okay to expect visitors to conform to local norms of courtesy.”
Not exactly. Even having to defend and reestablish the ‘norm’ means some aspect of it, at an everyday level, is lost. Something else might be gained, eventually.
It’s not an unfamiliar problem: we have generational precedents, but also conventions for telling those damned kids to shut up.
And yes, Posey, that’s part of what I’m suggesting.
Example: my local public library is pretty much lost forever to me, but it continues to function as a library for a lot of people who don’t share my expectations or want to do what I want to do in libraries. I’ve definitely lost something, but it still functions as a kind of library. There are more people in it now then when I used to visit and it was actually useful to me.
it still functions as a kind of library.
Yeah if a child care centre is a kind of library.
In my opinion what should lost with people who can’t tell the difference between a library and McDonald’s is people who can’t tell the difference between a library and McDonald’s.
As in: Get lost!
Even having to defend and reestablish the ‘norm’ means some aspect of it, at an everyday level, is lost. Something else might be gained, eventually.
Dude consider the concept of the swinging pendulum which obtains throughout history. We swing from, say, the too strict (c. 1950) to the too sloppy (now). When one extreme is realized we start going back.
Sure things change. But courtesy and discipline ebbs and flows. If there is no move to reinstate courtesy then you eventually get primates acting entirely in consistence with their natures, as in badly.
Come out on a Friday night in Melbourne. The kids sound like they belong is a zoo – literally. And they behave that way too. The city smells like a urinal.
What of course happens, and is happening, is that the tendency to despise our own vulgarian natures obtains and people start acting courteously as a matter of elite pride. To separate themselves from the great clot of brain-dead apes that constitutes the proletarian stew we laughingly call society*. The wannabe monkeys begin to see as something they don’t have and move to acquire it through greed for status rather than any inherent grace.
The pendulum swingeth back.
Thing is my ranting at Gen Y are almost as applicable to Gen X or the boomers. They’re just part of an arc that results of the tendency to liberal parentage. It starts with the beneficial departure from child-rearing as repression and absolute obedience and unfortunately goes so far as to indulge random psychopathy, ignorance, laziness – well, y’know, spoilt brats.
*Deliberate use of patrician prose designed to offend egalitarian sensibilities rather than any expression of actual snobbery.
I don’t buy your historical model, in part because it’s never as simple as a dialectic of civilisation and barbarity within a homogeneous population. There are forces of pluralisation, homogenisation and of all other kinds.
BTW in case it was missed, my point way back there was that I agree with you about acknowledging resentment, and about copping to ‘racialism’ (or whatever you want to call it).
It’s not an historical model rally Klaus. It’s just a way of describing the ebb and flow of standards. Take literacy. In the late 18th century an educated person would be able to say ‘I love you’ in many and varied different ways.
Now we’ve got: I luv U. The reasons I won’t go into. Take science. Up ’til the 5th century or thereabout there was steady progress in the field of astronomy. Then it stopped (for some strange reason)
A thousand years later it started again. Science v dictatorial religion/entrenched and immobile hierarchies. These ‘pendulum swings’ are observable throughout history. They are not a model but a way of describing fluctuations – a mere metaphor.
Homogenisation and diversification: another observable pendulum.
It would need to lot’s of simultaneous pendulums at different social levels. But I can see the value in the metaphor as presented. It’s certainly a lovely way to get your head around historical forces.
Racialism is a pretty standard term – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racialism
The resentment breeds racialism not the reverse. It’s just that in the atmospheres attendant to modern day serious discussion one cannot even discuss race without being accused of racism. That is not only a kind of mind control it ironically breeds actual violent ethnic antipathy.
or ‘lots’ even…
Yes, that’s why we need a language to express resentment – and also to hear resentment, even to the point of it becoming racialised.
It would need to lot’s of simultaneous pendulums at different social levels.
Yeah pretty much. If you tried to assess all history according to this metaphor you’d have to imagine a vast chamber full of clocks of various sizes and shapes set to different times and chronological cycles.
Eventually you’d just get a cacophony. Which is pretty much what all human history is.
I’d be totally with you on the vast chamber full of clocks thing, but for some reason it made me think of Keating…
Adrien: you gotta read “A Single Man” by Christopher Isherwood – if you haven’t.
While I’m back here I’ll provide a quote from the BMJ article cited by me at #94
“Previous studies have shown public opinion changes after public health laws, including seat belt use, drunk driving, and smoke-free dining, took effect. ”
The law doesn’t seem to change attitudes on the BIG moral issues like the death penalty, homosexuality, abortion etc… but the empirical evidence unequivocally demonstrates that public health laws change attitudes and community norms in numerous areas. Thus the statement “it is not possible to incorporate morality into law” is empirically false.
Mel, calling laws imposing seat-belt use ‘moral laws’ risks stretching the concept to the point of meaninglessness, which is why I didn’t respond earlier. Here’s some discussion on this point from some recent work I’ve been doing (I really do need to start making proper use of SSRN, but anyways…).
Raz’s strong account of autonomy coupled with his support for paternalism means that he needs to have very good arguments as to why an autonomous individual should accept state authority, especially if that state authority is to be manifested in paternalistic law. Superficially, it may seem enough merely to recruit Gerald Dworkin’s conception – it is clear that there is a strong family resemblance between the two. However, Raz needs to develop an unusually strong account of authority in part because he is not just defending the state’s ability to make political choices on behalf of its citizens, but moral ones. Moral autonomy – at least since Kant, and probably before – has always had a harder edge to it than political autonomy. People are supposed to be authors of their own moral principles. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine true moral choice without seeing the chooser as necessarily autonomous.
If I seem to be engaging in hairsplitting when drawing a distinction between political autonomy and moral autonomy, recall the simple positivist truism that much law has little or no moral content – the Highway Code, the Tax Act, the Corporations Law. This is not to suggest that these laws cannot be the objects of sharply divided public debate. It is, however, unlikely to be moral debate. Contrast these with the laws that Raz would need in order to ‘permit and even require governments to create morally valuable opportunities, and eliminate repugnant ones’. This is even more the case when one considers Raz’s arguments against the possibility of simply ‘incorporating’ morality into law. The argument goes like this: morality applies to citizens independently of the law; it does not depend on law for its efficacy. Murder rates, for example, are low in developed countries because most people think that murder is morally wrong, not because the state has made a law against murder. The law, as such, only applies to outliers. Law works at the margins, not at the centre of social obligation. Supporting Raz’s concerns with incorporation, there are also serious empirical arguments as to whether the state can ‘legislate morality’ without a majority of the governed accepting the moral content of the law in question independent of its enactment.
Something of this is captured in the anguished realization among anti-abortion campaigners in the US that they are not going to win the legal argument. Even in the reddest of red states – South Dakota – a 2008 referendum (held at the same time as the presidential election, with its historically high turnout) to ban abortion failed at the polls. Here is P. J. O’Rourke on the washup:
The law has in many ways been forced to extend wide leeway on both abortion and infanticide due to the absence of consistent moral convictions on the issue outside the law. What happened to the UK’s infanticide laws is instructive here, as it illustrates what happens to a moral law when there is little social consensus behind the morality in the law. The common law – with its fealty to juries – has always had to be sensitive to their verdicts, which have never been patriarchal in the way many people assume:
What is important to remember here is that the juries that forced this change to UK law were comprised entirely of males — at that point women could not serve. Both anti and pro abortion advocates are dealing with very old and entrenched cultural and moral attitudes to life and its relative ‘worth’ in their attempt to change attitudes to abortion.
I’ll also add that drink-driving and seatbelt laws require very considerable numbers of police (or a great deal of expensive technology) for their enforcement. One of Raz’s points about law generally is that an unsupported law (which could be wholly moral in content, like abortion, partially moral in content, like rules controlling advertising standards, or wholly non-moral in content, like the Highway Code) requires a lot of policing. There’s a reason why there’s a lot more police patrolling the roads than there are police with the time to attend at your house after a break-in. Now I’m not saying that this means all or most of the Highway Code should be swept away — it may well survive the most rigorous CBA — but the fact that it soaks up so much police time and resources is instructive.
As to whether laws can change people’s behaviour — of course they can. We wouldn’t have lawyers if this part of the law didn’t work, or only worked sometimes. Well designed laws can do amazing things. That’s why we enact them. However, even ‘best practice’ laws don’t seem to be able to save enacted morality without some other pretty vital components in the mix (like independent support outside of the law).
“Mel, calling laws imposing seat-belt use ‘moral laws’ risks stretching the concept to the point of meaninglessness … ”
I imagine most people would not have difficulty labeling a parent who repeatedly failed to properly restrain an infant in a car guilty of a moral lapse.
Also most people today would regard someone who lights up a ciggie in a restaurant as rude and selfish, or in other words unethical, again without equivocation.
Ample empirical evidence supports both my above points.
You are using an absurdly restrictive definition of morality in order to make a libertarian point about the law. That is the way ideology works and we are all guilty of it I’m afraid ….
Of course. Most people accept that to a large degree, parents are morally — and sometimes legally — responsible for their children, especially infant children.
What about an adult who repeatedly failed to restrain himself with a seatbelt? Where is the moral lapse then? Now, I don’t like to get didactic, but this is no more a libertarian point than arguing in favour of Rudd’s stimulus package is a libertarian point (as you’ve probably guessed, I’m against). If I make a libertarian point, you will know about it. I’ve never been coy about my political leanings. This is simply one of the best established findings in all jurisprudence: for the record, Joseph Raz is a left social democrat. He isn’t making this argument because it helps his politics. He’s making it because there’s a mountain of evidence for it.
Now, I really must go and sort out my tutoring out, so I shan’t be around for a good bit.
SL
Hmmm…just did a quick count and could find only one mention of Aborigines, not two; but quite a few of honkeys. Has yet ANOTHER cultural/ethnic/racial quota been set? I wish someone would cc. those quota-update emails to me.
The other thing peculiar to Indians in Australia, is that they are overwhelmingly upper middle to upper class Indians. The White Middle Class Left Ladies (WMCLL) would do well to be advised that many of these Indians would consider them – quite rightly – to be White Trash.
You should always try and blend in. Local paper, ipod, put the tourist book and maps away. Buy a book in the language of the place you’re visiting even if you can’t read it. Don’t pin a little flag on your lapel with your country of orgin on unless you really want to get mugged!
I think that you should just follow simple rules. Make sure you don’t take risks, go in pairs, don’t get out a map, don’t look lost.
I happened to me once when I was lost in LA thankfully I had my two year son with me in a push chair and I think that helped!!
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