Multiculturalism: a philosophical dialogue posted by Richard Seymour

Simplicio: "Muslim paedophiles are preying on white girls."

Sagredo: "No, they're not. The story is rigged, based on non-random data selection and wholly invented categories designed to generate the outcome sought. If I worked by the same principles, I could prove that 100% of fraudsters are Conrad Black. More authentic research on this shows that predation on children is a national problem that culture and ethnicity does not help to explain. The overwhelming majority of child predators in the UK who are caught and convicted are white, yet there is no general rush to investigate the possible racial or cultural sources of their cold, arrogant rationalisations for torturing children. Nor is there any good evidence that the victims are selected for ethnicity, though one can always count on policemen and bourgeois politicians to claim otherwise."

Simplicio: "But are you denying that there are real antagonisms?"

Sagredo: "No, I'm saying that there's no truth behind the racist rumour that 'Muslim paedophiles are preying on white girls'."

Simplicio: "But this is a dangerous inflation of terms! You can't call it racist just because someone draws attention to real problems."

Sagredo: "But the problem as described is not the real problem, and the practise of criminalising minorities is racist."

Simplicio: "This is circular. Something is racist because you say it is racist. What this thetic presentation ignores is that the heuristic of 'race' needs to be examined far more critically than it can be by the liberal multiculturalist paradigm which always-already invests in racist ontology as the basis for its supposedly 'tolerant' praxis. This is what I was doing. Okay, I shocked you by raising the question of Muslim paedophiles. But don't idealise them! For example, did you know - I checked this, my accountant who is Italian and has Muslim neighbours told me this - that Muhammed married a nine year old? And we should acknowledge this instead of playing the stupid liberal game of disavowal."

Sagredo: "Well, here I will shock you by pointing out that Muhammed died more than a millenium ago and doesn't live in the north-east of England. The only way in which the story of Muhammed and Aisha could possibly be relevant here would be if you did in fact invest in a racist ontology of the sort that leads to young white racists chanting 'Allah is a paedo' at full volume. The question is, are the allegations concerning Muslim men being particularly likely to prey on white girls due to cultural assumptions actually true?"

Simplicio: "I am sorry to say that this is political correctness at its most boring. Your approach is to consistently shout down anyone who draws attention to a real problem as a racist, and then focus on 'facts', as if this was simply an empirical question. No. I claim it is more than that. This naive Chomskyite empiricism is not sufficient. In order to judge whether something is racist, it is necessary to do the hard theoretical work."

Sagredo: "Okay, let's do the hard theoretical work. And then we can get back to whether your allegations are actually true?"

Simplicio: "It is silly to look for truth in argumentation. Argumentation is born of discourse and ideology. Facts are stories, and no story is neutral."

Sagredo: "Fuck off."

Simplicio: "Sectarian."

(continued in comments thread below).

Labels: child abuse, children, islam, islamophobia, multiculturalism, patriarchy, racism, rape