Minorities 153 Newspaper References 2400 Periodical References Minorities - Recruiting

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, April 2002 v28 i2 p327(15)

Mark Behind the window dressing: ethnic minority police perspectives on cultural diversity. Ellis Cashmore.

Abstract Bedrock assumptions about the benefits of recruiting more ethnic minority police officers and enhancing cultural diversity training for police are critically evaluated by black and Asian police officers in Britain. Neither policy finds favour among groups which articulate a previously concealed interpretation of such aims: that their value lies in presenting an outward image of action rather than furthering the public good. The research reported in this paper -- the first to have gained the cooperation of British police services -- involved unstructured interviews with officers from African Caribbean and South Asian backgrounds. The interviews took place in the 18 months following the publication of the Macpherson Report in February 1999 and reflected some of the policy recommendations made by the report, which was based on the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Interviewees analyse the two central policy directives advanced by both the Macpherson Report and the Scarman Report, which had been published 18 years before. Both policies concern the enhancement of cultural diversity as a way of combating racism. Cynically regarded in some quarters as `window dressing', the policies are not seen as helpful, nor even harmless, but as pernicious in that they contrive to give the appearance of progress, while actually achieving little. Interviews were subject to strict confidentiality and conducted in circumstances of the officers' choice in the effort to minimise any inhibitions about expressing views candidly. The officers' perspective is revealed by extensive use of verbatim quotations which drive the narrative of the article. They indicate how far the viewpoints of ethnic minority officers contrast with official policy.

KEYWORDS: ETHNIC MINORITY POLICE; LAWRENCE CASE; MACPHERSON REPORT; RECRUITMENT TARGETS; CULTURAL DIVERSITY TRAINING

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For appearances

There is widespread agreement that the composition of our police forces must reflect the make-up of the society they serve. In one important respect at least, it does not do so: in the police, as in other important areas of society, the ethnic minorities are very significantly under-represented ... vigorous action is required if the police are to become more representative of all the community they serve ... involving more black people in the police will take time.

The training of police officers must prepare them for policing a multi-racial society. Much of the evidence submitted to me has suggested that the present training arrangements are inadequate ... more attention should therefore be devoted ... to the training of police officers in, for example, an understanding of the cultural background of ethnic minority groups and in the stopping and questioning of people in the street.

While they have contemporary resonance, the above recommendations were made in 1981, by Lord Scarman in his submission to the British Parliament in the aftermath of civil unrest (1981: 122-3; 126-7). Two of the cardinal proposals of the Scarman Report were: that `vigorous action' was needed to boost the recruitment of police officers from ethnic minority backgrounds; and that specialist training designed to prepare the police `for policing a multi-racial society' should be introduced with alacrity.

Eighteen years after Scarman, a second major report, this time by Sir William Macpherson, issued another prescriptive on policing (1999). Macpherson's report was the result of an inquiry into the police's handling of the investigation into the murder of the black student, Stephen Lawrence, in London in 1993 (Cathcart 1999). Of the 70 proposals offered by Macpherson, the two that instigated the most immediate action from Britain's Home Secretary were very familiar: they were the ones that formed the cornerstone of Scarman's directives -- recruit more black and Asian officers and enhance training for what Scarman had called the `multi-racial' society, but which by the late 1990s had ingeniously become `cultural diversity'.

The two reports stood like the Pillars of Hercules in British race relations: both supported dire analyses on the character and condition of racism and of its influence on policing; both commanded the earnest attention of the nation's media; and both precipitated months of hand-wringing. The fact that Macpherson made essentially the same recommendations as Scarman suggests what little impact the original invocations had made. But reaction to the later report involved the Home Secretary's specifying `targets' for all police services, these being the numbers of ethnic minority recruits they should aim for. He also ordered the British police to fortify their training. Like Scarman before him, Macpherson identified inadequacies in police training, especially in the area known as `valuing cultural diversity'. `Racism awareness training was almost non-existent at every level', concluded Macpherson, adding that this matter should be addressed. Points 48 and 49 of the report urged:

That there should be an immediate review and revision of racism awareness training within Police Services to ensure ... that there exists a consistent strategy to deliver appropriate training within all Police Services, based upon the value of our cultural diversity.

That all police officers, including CID and civilian staff, should be trained in racism awareness and valuing cultural diversity.

The injunctions shared by Scarman and Macpherson have acquired an almost canonical status: it is almost unthinkable for any politician, senior police officer, member of the clergy or any other party publicly concerned with the issues of policing and racism to query them. Ideas about cultural diversity as part of a vision of the public good were forged in the early 1980s and owed much to Scarman's inquiry. By the time of Macpherson, the ideas had made their way into the mainstream, advancing a specific conception of public morality. Between them, the reports made the desirability of more ethnic minority police and greater racism awareness or cultural diversity training appear self-evident. A question arises: what do serving black and Asian police officers in Britain think? After all, they are uniquely placed, being officers of an institution decried officially by Macpherson as racist and members of groups historically selected for unfavourable treatment by the police (a fact well- documented by several sources, for example, Cooper 1995; Fryer 1994).

The answers supplied in this article suggest that there is a broadly felt skepticism about both central directives, which have been imposed rather than explored and appraised. There is also a sense of trepidation: increased recruitment and valuing cultural diversity training, far from being the near-panaceas many accept them to be, may actually have detrimental effects. In 2000, an African Caribbean police officer, when asked to make plain his thoughts on the overall impact of the Macpherson Report, including its policy initiatives, declared to me: `It's just better for appearances.'

The remainder of the paper will concern itself with the accounts of ethnic minority police officers from three police forces in Britain: the West Midlands, which is a large service in an urban area of high ethnic minority density; Norfolk, which serves a predominantly white rural population in the east of Britain; and Derbyshire, a force in an area that comprises both urban areas with principally ethnic minority neighbourhoods, and largely white rural districts. Unstructured interviews were conducted with black and Asian officers of all ranks (though the vast majority was constables, which reflects the national situation) at venues of their own choosing. The interviews with 100 officers mixed one-on-one with focus-group formats. They were conducted by the author under conditions of strict confidentiality and tape-recorded (the tapes were later destroyed according to the agreement reached at the outset of the research).

The research project was unique in that it was the first independent research ever to gain the cooperation of British police services. It was not commissioned or funded by any organisation connected with the police or the Home Office and the report of its full findings was published by Staffordshire University Press (Cashmore 2000). The present article will distill the beliefs, opinions, analyses and critiques of the subjects in the study. As such, the accounts will be subjective: they reflect the ways in which officers themselves interpret the issues. There is no attempt to engage with the long-running arguments, particularly about racism awareness training. For this, the reader is directed to Holdaway (1996: 125-8), Oakley (1993), Solomos and Back (1996: 116-20) and Thompson (1988: 120-1, 187-8) for pre-Macpherson discussions; and Loveday (2000: 23-4) for more recent debates. These are but samples of a considerable literature on racism awareness and recruitment policies.

While previous research, including my own, has revealed the scale and nature of racism in the British police as experienced and understood by ethnic minority officers, this paper centres specifically on the perspectives of black and Asian officers on the two main policy issues raised by Macpherson; readers interested in the reasons for racism in today's police may see Bland et al. (1999), Holdaway (1996), Holdaway and Barron (1997) and, for a contrasting perspective, Cashmore (2001).

No attempt is made to quantify responses: the extracts are chosen to convey the mixture of sometimes contradictory and occasionally confused thoughts and feelings on issues that touch the lives not only of all police officers but, ultimately, of all citizens.

Myth and reality

It is not always fair to criticise a policy because of the views of a few interested parties. Yet, in the case of the police's efforts to boost the recruitment of ethnic minority candidates, special relevance should be given to the views of one group: ethnic minorities who have already been recruited. While many black and Asian police officers publicly applaud Home Office initiatives, their private thoughts are quite different. The doubts over the central policy objective concern inter alia the unstated purpose it serves: ostensibly an instrument to fight racism both in the police service and beyond, the recruitment of black and Asian officers may have other, less obvious functions, according to some officers.

A male African Caribbean officer with 16 years' service referred to `the myth' of under-recruitment, his suggestion being that a long and durable fiction had developed around what has become an inviolable policy objective.

I'm old enough to remember Scarman and I can remember all the talk at the time about how we needed more black bobbies. I can't say I joined because of the campaign after Scarman, but it was a time when they really wanted black people in the force.

`It just shows you how far we've come', observed the officer ironically. `We're still saying the same things. I think it's become a myth that recruiting more black officers is the solution to all our problems.'

The officer is far from alone in his belief that the myth perpetrated for two decades owes more to public relations than substantive attempts to change the character of the police. It was endorsed by a South Asian colleague:

We shouldn't even try to boost recruitment. Why? It will happen eventually; we'll get more black bobbies. If I was white, I'd be insulted to think so much money was being spent on trying to recruit. The posters show us like a happy family -- it's not like that. It's just better for appearances. But it won't make any difference except for the image of the police.

Both officers questioned not only the validity of trying to increase ethnic minority police recruits, but of the motives behind the policy. Phrases such as `myth' and `image' betray a cynical perspective and it is one shared in many respects by a great many black and Asian officers (in this sample, a majority held reservations of some order about the policy goal). The view offered by several officers is that, having laboured since the days of Scarman in trying to increase interest from ethnic minorities, the police has failed to discover a replacement. Rather than admit the failure of every attempt to recruit blacks and Asians in any number, the police repeat its aim mantra-like.

It's a way of getting themselves off the hook ... They're [the police are] saying, `Look, if you won't come and join us, you can't keep complaining about us.' But, it's not like that. These kids out there are not impressed by posters and all that stuff, you know.

The promise to recruit more ethnic minority candidates is seen, from this perspective, as a ritualistic response, its purpose more to present the image of positive action than to effect any significant change. On this account, the aim is not harmless, but pernicious, contriving to provide the appearance of action and progress while actually achieving nothing -- apart from the image of seeking a solution to the enduring problem of racism. Many officers also hold a similarly suspicious interpretation of training initiatives, as we will see below.

Another collection of doubts concerns the practicability of recruitment goals. In the aftermath of the Macpherson Report, the Home Secretary announced that more ethnic minority officers should be resolutely pursued. The composition of every police service should accurately reflect the demography of the surrounding population. In July 1999, targets for recruitment were set and these were to be achieved within ten years (Home Office 1999). The targets were not quotas, in the North American sense: they did not carry penalties if they were not met; they were simply guidelines for recruitment rather than mandates.

The targets are a joke. They haven't a hope in hell of being met. Well, maybe in places like Cumbria or places where there are hardly any blacks. But, in places like this [West Midlands], you can forget it. We're just wasting our time.

Several officers interviewed entertained suspicions about the long-term consequences of recruiting more ethnic minorities. Two questions arise: what impact will more black officers have on the ways in which policing is conducted, and what effect will this have on the overall quality of officers in the force? A female constable answers this first question from an African Caribbean background:

I can't see the point in getting in more ethnic minorities if all they're going to be is like the station cat. That's what some of them are like; you wonder what they're doing in the police. We [ethnic minority officers] have all had this `you only got this job because you're black' at some time in our lives. But, looking at some of the recruits nowadays, you begin to wonder about it.

Another female officer, also African Caribbean, feared that any increase in the number of ethnic minority groups that came as a result of advertising campaigns would lead to more `coathangers', meaning `bobbies that have no ambition apart from doing their thirty years service and picking up their pension ... they're content to stay a constable all their life'. Her impression was that the ethnic minority officers presently in post are highly motivated, ambitious careerists: `You have to be motivated to be a bobby if you're black because you're going to have to take so much stick ... from your colleagues and civilians.'

An abiding consideration was that the difficulties encountered by ethnic minority officers have `case-hardened' them; in other words, they have become tougher, more resolute and determined to endure the racism they habitually encounter. That form of racism was not the `unwitting' institutional racism that Macpherson identified as a feature of the Metropolitan Police, but a deliberate, malicious, personal racism (Macpherson's application of the concept of institutional racism has been criticised in many quarters; see, for example, Anthias 1999; Cashmore 2001; Dennis et al. 2000; Singh 2000). Although it seemed improbable that advertising and recruitment campaigns would result in any significant increase in ethnic minority applications, some young people might be persuaded. This concerned several officers. `There aren't many of us [ethnic minority officers], but we're good professionals.' The problem, as many saw it, is that anyone who is persuaded by marketing is not going to be cut from the same cloth as officers who have endured the vexing application procedure, a frequently distressing probationary period and an initial posting that may be potentially destructive (all new officers are subject to raillery, taunting and pranks, though many black and Asian officers believe that they are forced to withstand often vicious treatment because of their ethnic identities).

One South Asian officer, himself fortified, in his estimation, by what he described as a `gruelling' first three years in the service, scoffed at the idea of advertising for new recruits:

Why? It won't achieve a thing, this targets and advertising, it won't make any difference at all. You can't force these things. The only type of people who should be in the police are those who are genuinely motivated to be a police officer. If you have to advertise to persuade them, they're not going to make good bobbies.

There are echoes of this in the view of another, this time African Caribbean officer, who poured scorn on the very principle of the policy and on its overall effects on the police service: `We can have an all-black police force and wouldn't change a thing: you'd still have racism in the police.'

We will return a little later to his basic point about the persistence of racism in the police regardless of the number of ethnic minority officers. For the moment, his observation on the immediate problems of recruitment campaigns should be noted. It is a view shared by a great many officers, especially those with more than five years' service: that the quality of recruits is bound to diminish. Some officers added that the already poor retention rate would also suffer. `We lose enough black bobbies already', commented one of the few senior officers in the study (a Chief Inspector):

They'll be going even faster if we're not careful ... I think there should be more ethnic minorities in the police, but we shouldn't be bending over backwards, which is what's happening now.

The views presented in this section so far have cast doubt on the validity of official policy. While their views are far from uniform, ethnic minority officers express doubts about the motive behind the `targets' policy, believing its most valuable function is in maintaining the appearance of doing something positive, while effectively continuing the same practices of the past two decades. Other concerns focused on the consequences of using campaigns specifically aimed at ethnic minorities: both their utility and effects were questioned. In particular, serving officers were apprehensive about the dilution in quality of recruits. Yet there are further criticisms of the `targets' approach and these turn on two conjectures: that there is not a problem of under-representation of ethnic minorities in the police at all; and that the police culture overpowers ethnic culture. We will move to these in the next subsection.

Black faces in uniform

Since the Scarman Report highlighted the scarcity of ethnic minority police officers, the police have variously suggested that the reasons for this may lie outside the police service itself. Factors cited include the reluctance of South Asian families to encourage their children to pursue a professional career in the police; and peer group pressure on African Caribbean youths not to join an organisation that is tantamount to an enemy. Such explanations became less plausible following Macpherson's disclosure of institutional racism in the police; this in itself can now be seen as a powerful inhibitor. Of course, black and Asian officers in the present study had managed to overcome whatever impediment there might have been to their entering the police service and, while many reflected that their families were not enthusiastic about their joining, or that friends shunned them as a result, none rated these as primary reasons. Surprisingly (to me at least), few cited racism as the main inhibition. An unusual -- and convincing -- angle was provided by an African Caribbean officer, himself a product of an inner-city estate, who maintained that the under-recruitment only appeared to have an ethnic component. As he expressed it:

The police have never recruited from these inner city estates around here. You'll never get them to join ... They just don't like the police around here. I know: I'm from around here myself, so I got it first- hand. You can't believe how much any kid has to put up with if he wants to join the police.

Pressed on his use of the word `any', he replied, `Yeah, I mean any: it don't matter what you are. Black, white, Asian, whatever. It's the place.' His point was essentially that many ethnic minorities (especially African Caribbeans and Bangladeshis) are concentrated in inner-city areas where resentment against the police is highest and resistance to joining the police is greatest.

From this vantage-point, many ethnic minorities grow up in a culture in which ambitions and values incline young people away from the police, making it extremely difficult for them even to contemplate joining. One officer, who actually did so, recounted how she had to contend with being shunned by many members of her local community, including her local church pastor. Resistance to the police is a strong and integral part of local culture in many British inner cities; attempts to change this through marketing are futile.

The officer offering the earlier view (`police have never recruited from these inner-city estates') believed that advertising and recruitment campaigns would fall on deaf ears. He also doubted whether increasing ethnic minority recruitment was a legitimate aim: `We've been going on about it for long enough, but why does everybody assume that it will make any difference at all.' He introduced a phrase that is now used by many unbelievers: `All you'll get is a few more black faces in uniform.'

Using a similar expression to make a related point, an Asian officer remarked: `All you'll do is fill the force with more black faces. Good for PR, but it won't make a scrap of difference to how police work gets done.' From this standpoint, once the police officer dons his or her uniform, he or she feels compelled to subordinate ethnic identity to professional affiliation. In other words, `the job comes first'.

In the eyes of many, this may not be a bad thing: professionalism has its own demands and, as in other professions, professional ones often eclipse others. As one officer objected: `I'm a police officer; I don't want to be known as a black police officer.' While a minority of ethnic minority officers endorse this view, the majority believe that there should be a balance of the two matrixes of ethnicity and professionalism. Within this group, many sense that professionalism overpowers ethnic affiliation, if not at first, certainly within the first two years of service. This, they contend, accounts for the poor retention rates of many police services.

There is another, more sinister dimension to this argument: if the degree of assimilation is as great as several officers suggest, is it conceivable that even ethnic minority officers could adopt the racist postures of some of their white colleagues? The question arose after an Asian officer recounted how, during his first two years on the job, he found himself following the biases of his white colleagues when it came to routine policing operations: `You soon get sucked into it. Before you know what you're doing, you're forgetting to ask the questions ... you find it easier to go along with it.'

This comment has echoes with that of another (previously quoted) officer who, when asked whether more black and Asian officers would eventually change the character of the police service, answered:

Not at all: it's just an assumption that, if we get more black officers, it will be OK. But, why? It won't achieve a thing. Just let it happen. You can't force these things ... We can have an all-black police force and it wouldn't change a thing: you'd still have racism in the police.

Even if current government policy unexpectedly (in their eyes) yielded more recruits, will more black and Asian officers diversify the police's workforce in any but a superficial sense? The conclusions reached by many in the study may be paraphrased crudely as this: `being in the police whitens you'. This may be an overstatement, but there is too much truth concealed within it to be totally dismissed. We know from an assortment of police studies in both the United States and Britain that being in the police service involves one in an assimilation process: values, attitudes and perspectives of a police culture are gradually absorbed as new recruits gain more experience in the ranks (cf. Cashmore 1991; Dulaney 1996; Holdaway and Barron 1997; Skogan et al. 1999). The danger, as many ethnic minority officers see it, is that each step through the ranks increases the distance of the officer from his or her ethnic background. `It only leads to tokenism: a few black people at the top won't change anything', one officer concluded.

The government's faltering policy of aiming at target numbers of ethnic minority police recruits is, on the account presented here, flawed in the extreme. While several officers in this study queried the motives and the real -- as opposed to `official' -- rationale behind the campaign, others criticised the operation's effects.

Even if those targets were to be reached -- and few believed they would -- the outcomes may not be welcome. Many officers in the research expect a dilution of quality of professional officers and assimilation into the dominant police culture of lore. In the next subsection, police training in racism awareness and cultural diversity will be subject to similarly critical attention.

Devaluing cultural diversity

In the Home Secretary's àction plan' in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (Macpherson 1999: 26-7) -- entitled `Training -- racism awareness and valuing cultural diversity' -- the Home Secretary proposed àn immediate review and revision of racism awareness training within Police Services to ensure', among other things, that standards of training àims and objectives' should be published and regular monitoring of training `to test both implementation and achievement' should be introduced, but without questioning the validity of such training. (1)

Ethnic minority officers have become increasingly aware of the limitations of what was once called `racism awareness' and is now called `valuing cultural diversity' training, especially since the Lawrence case, which effectively undermined any suppositions that progress had been achieved through training over the past 20 years. It is all but impossible to assess exactly what racism awareness, cultural diversity and analogous forms of training have cost the police and, by implication, the taxpayer. The figure is almost certainly measurable in hundreds of millions of pounds. The return makes this seem poor value.

In this section, I will present and interpret ethnic minority officers' assessments of the diversity, or related, training that all of them have undergone. The most striking characteristic of their evaluations is the conclusion that diversity training has an extremely modest capacity for instigating desirable change. Some believe it has little or no purpose and should be dropped completely.

Following the outbreaks of violence in many English cities in the early 1980s, the Scarman Report identified inadequacies in police training. Insufficient attention had been given to what was variously called racism awareness, race relations or multi-racial training. Training designed to equip police officers with background knowledge of cultural differences, to sensitise them to the beliefs and customs of ethnic minorities and to alert them to the most appropriate ways of policing areas of dense ethnic minority populations was introduced. While reiterations of the need to review valuing cultural diversity and related training programmes have become familiar police responses to virtually any incident involving an ethnic issue, there has been an absence of critical evaluation of the rationale or effectiveness of such training. Even the most critical of the post-Lawrence period reports, based on research commissioned by the public services union Unison and derived from black people's responses to a questionnaire, concluded that anti-racist, racism awareness or valuing cultural diversity training had failed, but placed its faith in university training as an alternative (Unison 1999).

The question emerging from the present research is whether ethnic minority officers think training is the most appropriate and effective way of preparing officers. Officers' criticisms of racism awareness and associated forms of training relate to their effectiveness, focus and philosophy.

An African Caribbean officer, who had been in the service for over 15 years, believed that he was in a strong position to reflect on diversity training; he couched his analysis in terms of a question-and-answer: `We've had, how many years -- almost 20? -- of this kind of stuff [diversity training] and what have we got to show for it? The Stephen Lawrence case.' He went on to argue that diversity training (this phrase will be used generically from this point) had no place in today's police service: `At some point you've got to put your hands up ... it doesn't work. It's a waste of all of our time. We could spend the money and the time on better things.' Another officer concurred, `There's been no reduction of racism in the force [since the introduction of diversity training] ... but those who were PCs when I did my training are inspectors and above, now.'

Few officers in the study could offer a succinct description of diversity training's focus. One officer believed that the scope of such training, as he identified it, was not wide enough:

One of the things I thought when I did the training was that it taught you about racism when dealing with the public, but it didn't deal with the racism in the police itself. It [diversity training] has got to confront this.

The allegation is clear: by focusing on issues external to the police, diversity training deflects attention away from what several officers see as a form of racism that makes a deeper impact on their lives: the racism of fellow officers.

Another officer asked the question: `What is this training supposed to do? Make us aware of other cultures? Because if it is then they need some new trainers.' Reminded that awareness of various cultures might only be one focus of diversity training, the officer responded: `I couldn't see what else was going on. That's all they were doing. Tell you the truth, I felt patronised by the whole thing.' Related to this were the thoughts of another officer who emphasised that:

The people who are getting the training are the wrong ones. Senior officers are the ones who have the racist views. They're the dinosaurs of the police service. They're the ones who need re-training.

An African Caribbean officer thought training was too narrow in its focus:

The emphasis is on race relations in dealing with the public. [The training] doesn't look at racism in the police. It needs to confront the nature of racism in the police and elsewhere.

The third cluster of criticisms concerned what might be termed the philosophy of diversity training. One officer expressed his thoughts on this: `You have to accept that everybody -- and I mean ethnic minorities and whites -- have prejudices. But you don't, or shouldn't, allow them to come into your police operations.' The officer referred to a tension in diversity training, a tension that can be summed up in two options. Should training be geared to changing the individual completely, introducing changes in heart and mind so that the trainee is a consummate professional free of any prejudices? Or, should training confine itself to instigating changes in behaviour only, compelling changes in the officer's actions during the course of police duty?

Ì know that I've got colleagues who are out-and-out racists', commented one officer who took an unusually lenient attitude towards them. Ì almost know what they're thinking', he reasoned, citing a form of `radar' that he believed many ethnic minority officers possess when dealing with their colleagues. Yet, interestingly, he thought they were still `decent bobbies' and `they get on with the job': Ì wouldn't want them sacked because they have racist views.' While this officer was not talking directly about diversity training, his views provide an endorsement of sorts for the second of the above philosophies: changing police officers' on-the-job behaviour, rather than the whole person.

Many colleagues would disagree. The opposite view comes from one such colleague: `There's no place in the police service for people who think like that. They have to go, plain and simple.'

If the object of diversity training is to contain racism and ensure it does not manifest itself in the working environment, then it is failing. Since the Macpherson Report, several other well-publicised cases have underlined the fact that racism of some kind endures in the British police. If, on the other hand, diversity training is aimed at changing the person, then it may still be failing, according to some ethnic minority officers; though there is no way of knowing. It is conceivable that many officers who have undergone diversity training may secretly harbour racist views but are aware that those views should not be allowed to affect their practical police duties. As one officer put it, `They leave their racism at home when they come to work.'

But, as another officer suggests, thoughts and beliefs cannot be dissociated from work-related action: `One follows the other.' In other words, if training can affect an officer's on-job performance, then the visible results of this may force him or her to change their beliefs. This is an honourable philosophy, though not a feasible one, if the views of officers in this study are to be accepted. `The training seemed a bit naive to me', one officer reflected, adding that she felt `you can't change a whole person in half a day or however long you get'.

As an example of what this officer has in mind, the stated aim of one diversity training programme was `to create an opportunity for individuals to gain ownership of values and behaviour, facilitate the required shift in (self-) awareness and translate this into external delivery'. This is taken from a paper prepared by the Principal of Phoenix Human Relations, a company that designs and delivers diversity training. The title of the paper illustrates the aspiration, `Winning hearts and minds: humanistic approaches to changing values, attitudes and behaviour' (Douglas 2000: 3). One officer was of the firm opinion that training cannot, in practical terms, aspire to such ideals:

Attitude, mentality, mindset; it's still there. Training won't remove that ... They should design training to ensure high standards of efficiency and professionalism; and that means non-confrontational training, i.e. we accept everybody has prejudices, but you won't allow them to surface in your police work.

Faced with such criticisms from its own officers and compelling evidence that it is ineffective, why does the police service persist in contracting private companies to develop and deliver training programmes? One officer offered an answer of sorts:

I think that this kind of training is all the police can think of when ... something like the Lawrence case blows up. It's like they [the police] have to show that they're doing something and all they can think of is, like `we're going to spend a few more million on diversity training'. It's window dressing, really.

Conclusion: looking to the future

Before drawing to a conclusion, it is wise to guard against generalisation. There is no single ethnic minority experience, view or perspective, nor, for that matter, future. The group conveniently labelled ethnic minority or `minority-ethnic' police officers differs widely in terms of cultural and geographical backgrounds, work experiences and prospects. There are few unambiguous verdicts of the `agree' or `disagree' kind and I have deliberately chosen not to include percentages, which would have created the appearance of sureness in thought: the officers interviewed were less than certain in their responses: scepticism is born of doubt not certainty. There is sufficient doubt about the topics discussed to justify enlightened debate on policies that have been pushed through as if with unequivocal agreement from the nation.

Ethnic minority officers' opinions differ sharply and views are varied. Yet all see the world through the prism of the police service and all, in some way, contend with the reality of racism. Even that small minority of officers who claim not to have encountered racism first-hand remain aware of its presence in the police service. This fact alone affects the experience of every ethnic minority officer in the British police. The Lawrence case confirmed that racism of some form is an inescapable fact of policing. So when it comes to formulating policies and initiatives designed to ameliorate racism, it seems logical to engage those who are affected; this means not only civilians, but officers who, in many senses, face the prongs of racism in and out of the force.

The aim of this narrative has been to disclose the reasoning of black and Asian officers on issues that will inevitably affect the British police -- and that, of course, means them. If there are conclusive statements to be drawn they would seem to point in the direction of what Scarman, in 1981, described and, indeed, dismissed as `reverse discrimination'. So doubtful are ethnic minority officers that recruitment can be boosted through traditional methods that it would seem only some form of affirmative action can deliver the kinds of result demanded by the Home Secretary (a policy evaluated in Cashmore 2000). The even greater doubts about the efficacy of diversity training lead logically to the conclusion that such training should be terminated. After 20 years of such training, it is perhaps time to consider alternative methods of preparing the police for what Scarman called the `multi-racial society'. The present methods have signally failed.

The purpose of this article has been to reveal rather than direct. Yet a careful scrutiny of government policies makes it hard to discover why they have been advanced without the consideration of police officers themselves. The 19 years that separated Scarman and Macpherson witnessed many changes; these changes are not satisfactorily reflected in the latter's recommendations. The predictable lack of imagination in proposing new directions is the result of a failure to examine the validity of policies that failed to produce benefits in the 1980s and will surely fail in the twenty-first century. Such a view is captured by an African Caribbean officer, who was largely in sympathy with government strategies and applauded targeted recruitment, while drawing short of actually committing herself. She believed that there was either an unwillingness or an inability to address the questions being asked in her quarter. Despite this, she continued to traipse through a procedure that, in her eyes, had become no more than a ritual.

I'm often asked to go on recruiting campaigns and things, but I'm not interested: I just want to be a police officer. If I'm talking to a young black person who's thinking of joining the force, I'd tell her straight and I wouldn't say you're going to change anything.

How, then, is change to come? There are, of course, no easy solutions, but I would suggest two possible directions.

While only one officer in the entire study actually uttered the word `tokenism', the concept deserves some consideration in the context of this conclusion. Tokenism is said to `describe a social situation where blacks, or other people of color, are utilized for "display" purposes', according to James Jennings (1996: 362). Jennings elaborates:

Tokenism is a way of neutralizing efforts to integrate fully and institutionalize the presence of blacks and other people of color into social and cultural settings where whites continue to have all the power to make and carry out important decisions (Jennings 1996: 363).

Establishing a presence for ethnic minority people in the British police force will not necessarily advance the interests of ethnic minorities. An Asian officer reflected on how he was advised by a senior colleague, also Asian, not to apply for promotion to sergeant: `He said he felt so isolated when he got promoted; he was the only Asian, you see.'

Ethnic minority officers agree that, while under-recruitment remains stubbornly resistant to many of the initiatives that have been introduced over the years, tangible changes could be effected by enhancing the opportunities available to serving officers from ethnic minority backgrounds. This may take the form of accelerated promotion schemes, or fast-tracking. Any discussion of such a policy must start with a warning: a great many ethnic minority officers resent allegations that they have benefited from political changes. Yet, there is a widespread recognition that more ethnic officers in senior positions will have a positive impact on the police service. The problem is how to get them there; as an Asian officer put it:

It's certainly an interesting way of looking at the situation. The only reason I don't like the idea is that it would create so many barriers. Fellow officers already think we're only in the job because we're Asians; so, if we were senior officers, well ...

The present findings suggest that there is a growing awareness among ethnic minority officers that a new and perhaps provocative departure from existing policy must be made. A new policy should take into consideration the possibility that the appointment of more senior ethnic minority officers might affect the character, composition and standing of the police service more significantly than any previous initiative.

To avoid the confusion with the affirmative action policies of the USA, which provide for positive discrimination in recruitment, I propose the term accelerated action. The programme advocated here provides for a dedicated fast-track scheme for serving officers from ethnic minority backgrounds. The Home Office already runs an Accelerated Promotion Scheme for Graduates (APSG) that enables `graduates, graduate career changers and finalists from any degree discipline' to progress rapidly through the ranks. After undergoing probationary training, candidates undertake specialist Accelerated Promotion Courses (APCs) and are given operational experience sufficient for them to pass promotion examinations. The emphasis on the APSG is on self-development and management skills. Successful candidates can expect to take the Inspector's promotion examination within their first three years and remain strong contenders for further promotions. The programme proposed resembles this scheme, though candidates would be drawn from ethnic minority groups and would hold either degrees or equivalent experience.

The expectation is that a policy which pushes for a greater number of senior officers from ethnic minorities will have three significant consequences:

* It will demonstrate to prospective recruits from ethnic minorities that advancement to the highest levels of the police hierarchy is possible and that the rewards of a professional career are equally available to all groups, regardless of ethnic affiliation.

* It will increase the visibility of ethnic minorities in the police service and particularly the visibility of senior ethnic minority officers in the popular media.

* It will increase the resentment of white officers who will not be able to take advantage of such a scheme.

It is expected that the favourable outcomes of the first two of these considerations will outweigh the unfavourable effect of the third.

The other alternative to training which I propose here revolves around the creation of a national template for beneficial policing: a model, guide, or reference source that will influence or govern future action. Instances of appropriate and helpful policing would be collected and distributed nationwide to all serving officers. These would include exemplary instances of policing, particularly in situations in which ethnic minority officers or civilians are involved in some way.

Police services would be invited to submit cases or examples of what they consider to be excellent or valuable policing; these would be based on real events and details would be conveyed to a central office responsible for collating and monitoring the information as well as understanding the human rights implications of policing. The details would be stored and coded so that they build cumulatively into a source of reference that can be accessed by all services. The central office would be charged with the duty of disseminating models of beneficial policing to all officers. This could be done via email, the internet -- the police has its own intranet -- or more traditional methods, such as posting on notice boards. Every officer of whatever rank would be personally responsible for acquainting him or herself with the template on a month-by-month basis. Officers would also be invited to ask specific questions as and when they arrive, perhaps along the lines of a net search page.

This approach has the advantage of situating models of desirable policing in actual working practices rather than the classroom. The instances of police action that contribute toward the template would be more relevant and meaningful to serving officers, who would be invited to respond with comments and queries, perhaps comparing their own experiences with those of other officers. The office responsible for monitoring and disseminating the information on the template would be staffed by serving officers and human resources personnel, the ultimate decision on whether an instance is admitted to the template being the product of consultation rather than the decision of one person. It is expected that the National Black Police Association (NBPA) and the Lesbian and Gay Police Association (LAGPA) would be involved in the development of the template.

In recent years, policing has accentuated the importance of self-briefing, officers taking responsibility for acquainting themselves with new developments and innovations. There is a similar emphasis in the concept of sector policing in which small groups of officers (between two and five) are responsible for given areas or sectors. Officers are also bound to monitor their own professional and personal development, which is formally reviewed every year. The alternative to diversity training advanced here is perfectly consistent with this emphasis: officers are required to familiarise themselves rather than receiving information in classroom situations.

Beneficial policing has several advantages over conventional training:

* It is based on real-life experience rather than abstraction.

* It involves officers actively, placing the onus on them both to review and critically reflect on their own behaviour and that of others.

* It builds dynamically, continually changing to reflect changes in social contexts and responding to those changes.

* It is predicated on what might be called a democratic pedagogy, i.e. there is no instructor or leader, as the `lessons' derive from the work experiences of all officers.

* It is able to make use of new information technologies currently being used in educational institutions. * It is less expensive.

The most searching question raised by ethnic minority officers in this research concerns central policy objectives that have been uncritically accepted since 1981 and are now almost sacrosanct. Promoting ethnic minority recruitment has been upgraded from being a desirable policy outcome to a priority and the launch of yet another advertising-based recruitment campaign in August 2001 exposed once more the dearth of imagination at the Home Office. Few outsiders have ventured to condemn the Home Office's aims or its methods of achieving them. But, as this article discloses, the view from ethnic minority officers themselves is less categorical.

(1) See www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/area/racef.htm

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Ellis Cashmore is Professor of Culture, Media and Sport in the School of Health, Staffordshire University.

Address for correspondence:

School of Health Staffordshire University Staffordshire ST18 0AD UK

E-mail: [email protected]

Article A87017626

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