Race Relations and the Area Constable
| Published date | 01 January 1971 |
| Date | 01 January 1971 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7104400102 |
| Author | Michael Banton |
| Subject Matter | Article |
MICHAEL
BANTON,
J.P.,
Ph.D.,
D.Se.
Professor
of
Sociology,
University
of
Bristol
RA~E
RELATIONS
AND
THE
AREA
~ONSTABLE
Racial divisions within the population, and the reactions they
provoke, pose many problems for the British Police Service.
It
is
now a matter of urgency that these problems be identified as closely
as possible. Though they share some common elements, many of
them will require separate analysis. In the first place come questions
of
police training at a variety of levels; these can be divided into the
transmission of information and the education of attitudes, both of
which need to be supplemented by checks upon the effectiveness of
different training methods. In the second place is the study of the
relevant social needs of the various minorities. This will have to take
account of differences between first and second generations, for the
latter are in important respects different from their parents. Indeed,
now more than ever, is it misleading to represent British race rela-
tions in terms of immigration problems. In the third place can be
listed the question of seeing that racial minorities are represented
within the Police Service and that coloured officers are accepted by
their colleagues.
John R. Lambert's new book, Crime, Police, and Race Relations:
a study in Birmingham (Oxford University Press for the Institute of
Race Relations, 1970, 336pp., £3) is an admirable stimulus to thought
on many of these questions though it will be possible here to com-
ment on only a few of them.
Race relations are not distinct from other kinds of social relations.
To understand the relationship between the policeman and the
coloured citizen it is necessary first to understand the exceedingly
complex relationship between the policeman and the ordinary
citizen. The next step is to take note of the way the ordinary relation-
ship is modified if the citizen is coloured. The most obvious kinds of
modification arise because the coloured citizen may have had to
grapple with problems that the white citizen usually escapes; the
coloured citizen may come to the police-citizenship relationship
with distinctive expectations of it while the policeman may have a
different attitude towards him. We are already on dangerous ground
in speaking of
"the"
coloured citizen when the different coloured
minorities differ from each other often as much as they differ from
the English. Terence Morris, indeed, remarks in his foreword to
Lambert's book that "the Asians when brushing with the police
January 1971 5
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