Analytics Consent

We use analytics to understand better how people are using this site.

Permit Google Analytics?

Yes No
Skip to main content
Read page text
page 38
the state we’re in of race. Political economy is ignored. The confluence of racism and capitalism placed middle-class and poor blacks in different though adjacent class positions. White flight, residential segregation and deindustrialisation, along with the rise of a technology-oriented and informationbased service sector, carved seas of chronic joblessness across the American landscape. Some black middle-class families survived by either departing neighbourhoods or securing work in the public sector, including in law enforcement. Others did not. The disregard of postwar structural transformations and intra-racial differences is the book’s most profound shortcoming. Hinton leverages these harrowing tales on behalf of an imprecise, decontextualised theory of policing. In the late 1960s, crime began a nearly thirty-year surge that redefined city life. For Hinton, ‘crime’ is simply a racialised invention. Subsidised by the federal government, local police stood as faithful watchmen on the colour line, awaiting any excuse to reinforce the dictates of the racial order. ‘What mattered’, Hinton writes with astonishment, ‘was police were suddenly there.’ She cannot fathom an eminently plausible, if ordinary reason for their presence: black folks called them. Furthermore, Hinton’s own sources betray the skin-deep quality of her analysis. According to her, for example, a 1970 riot in Akron, Ohio, which erupted after police intervened in a fight between two young girls, occurred because, while the Safe Streets Act of 1968 ‘encouraged local police to initiate interactions with residents’, ‘residents did not perceive them as agents of peace and protection’. In revising this history, she ignores a key observation in one of the articles she cites. The director of the city’s Human Relations Committee pointed to a ‘paradox’: ‘Black property owners in the [Wooster Avenue district] want adequate police protection’ but when the police arrive ‘their presence often infuriates the youth’. Of course, sentiments expressed in random clippings should be taken with a pinch of salt. Fortunately, the Lemberg Center conducted a survey of riots in six cities, including Akron. Hinton has not consulted this, but the results are telling. While most blacks in the study sympathised with the L I SA DWAN IN HAPPY DAYS SAMUEL BECKETT BY TREVOR NUNN DIRECTED BY LANDMARK 60th ANNIVERSARY PRODUCTION 11 JUNE - 25 JULY Book now riversidestudios.co.uk 020 8237 1000 rioters and believed riots brought needed help, their views on crime and policing belie her foundational claims. Among black respondents in the Akron sample, housing is mentioned most often as the ‘most serious’ problem, but that is followed by crime and ‘juvenile delinquents’. When asked whether neighbourhoods needed ‘better police protection’ against ‘criminal elements’, most black respondents (nearly 80 per cent) said it was needed. Indeed, surveys conducted after the passage of the Safe Streets Act reveal that many African-Americans worried more about crime than policing. For example, according to a 1970 survey, rather than being enraged at the sight of law enforcement, residents of the predominantly African-American BedfordStuyvesant area of Brooklyn indicated that they were incensed by the absence of the police. Over 70 per cent wished the police would spend more time arresting drug dealers and nearly 60 per cent wished the police would spend more time arresting drug users. An astounding 40 per cent wished the police would spend more time ‘quieting rowdy noisy youth’, while only 11 per cent wanted the police to spend less time doing so. In the end, America on Fire makes a convincing case that we should view these ‘disturbances’ as acts of liberation rather than criminality. But while Hinton powerfully propounds this contention, she completely misses the context. Her haphazard history ignores the indigenous black construction of ‘crime’ and how this framework was deployed against urban black youths. It obscures how the evolving interaction of racism and capitalism left black beneficiaries of the civil rights movement feeling under-protected during the great crime surge and the urban black poor feeling over-policed. When the full range of available evidence is brought into focus, one is not amazed by the ‘collective’ nature of these cataclysmic events. Instead, one is struck by the evanescence of resistance from this black lumpenproletariat and its political isolation. It is no wonder today’s young activists in the movement for black lives eschew the ideological trappings of the black political establishment. But you wouldn’t understand that from this telling of an untold history. Literary Review | july 2021 36
page 39
the state we’re in vicky pryce The XX Factor The Authority Gap: Why Women are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It By Mary Ann Sieghart (Doubleday 384pp £16.99) How hard is it being a woman in the workplace? The answer is very, as Mary Ann Sieghart in this eminently readable book convincingly tells us. It seems to require a good deal of acting talent. It’s no use just following advice to behave like a man – something that itself requires quite a lot of effort. It is much more complicated than that. Women have to combine ‘confidence and warmth in exactly the right ratio for them to be taken seriously but not disliked in the process’. Not everyone manages that or can be bothered to keep it up for long, and many women opt out of the race altogether. Yet it is crucial for getting on, as the perceptions of what is acceptable in women’s behaviour are coloured by what is generally expected of them: to be soft and obedient. And what’s more, as research cited by Sieghart shows, many people still expect women to be less expert than men and resist the idea of women having authority. The adjectives generally used to describe successful and confident women tell their own story: ‘bossy’, ‘abrasive’, ‘strident’, ‘shrill’, ‘scary’, ‘cold’, ‘stern’, ‘controlling’, ‘ball-breaking’, ‘bitchy’, ‘unlikeable’, ‘pushy’. Women who are ambitious are often encouraged to try and hide it. For many, however, ambition is taken out of them at quite a young age, as they encounter their first biases at school and in the early years in work. Mothers, those from an ethnic minority and the disabled face additional biases. Not being taken seriously means that women don’t contribute as much to the economy as they should do and don’t get paid enough. This in turn means that overall prosperity suffers. Sieghart makes the case simply but strongly and comes up with great solutions, which include quotas and heavily subsidised child- care, both of which I favour. Yes, much of that has been said before. But the devastating extra element Sieghart draws out of the numerous discussions she has had with high-achieving women is that even if a woman miraculously rises to the top, the authority gap remains. It’s a common enough experience for women starting out not to be treated by men as professional equals. It happened to me when, dressed in my best dark suit, I went to join a directors’ lunch at the bank at which I was working. As I got out of the lift on the executive floor, someone approached me and asked, ‘Are you looking for the kitchens?’ But Sieghart argues that it doesn’t seem to get much better as you rise up. The book starts with the tale of Mary McAleese, president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, leading an official delegation to the Vatican. Pope John Paul II walked over to where she was standing with an outstretched hand, but approached not her but her husband and asked, ‘Would you not prefer to be President of Ireland rather than married to the President of Ireland?’ McAleese interjected, took his outstretched hand and said, ‘Let me introduce myself. I am the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, elected by the people of Ireland, whether you like it or whether you don’t.’ That was back in 1999. But in recent months we have seen another example of this. In April, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was at an official meeting in Turkey with President Erdoğan and Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. There were only two chairs in the room and these were offered to and taken by the two men. Von der Leyen was left standing and eventually had to find a seat on a side sofa, away from the centre of attention. The video of the snub went viral on social media. Von der Leyen later made an impassioned speech in the European Parliament venting her frustration and shock. She made it clear that she could not think of a reason for her treatment other than that she was female. If that can happen to von der Leyen, and on camera, it must be happening to women all over the world, and probably much of the time. Von der Leyen’s treatment is proof that the authority gap remains very real, whatever one’s seniority. This book contains some very depressing quotes from senior women, including one from the female mayor of Washington, DC, who says, ‘People don’t like women promoting themselves.’ It is of course made worse when race or religion is added into the equation. A senior African-American academic is quoted as saying that she is challenged more by her students than an equivalent white male would be and is often ignored and made to feel invisible in faculty meetings. Impostor syndrome, which often afflicts professional women, seems to stay with them all the way to the top, with women needing to do their homework more assiduously than men do to boost their confidence. Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel have both said that they overprepare in advance of meetings. And there is no limit to women’s inventiveness in the search for ways to boost their confidence, even at the top. A quote from the first ever female bishop of London says it all: ‘if it’s a tough meeting, I’ll wear red lipstick.’ july 2021 | Literary Review 37

Page Text

View plaintext

the state we’re in

vicky pryce

The XX Factor The Authority Gap: Why Women are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men,

and What We Can Do About It

By Mary Ann Sieghart

(Doubleday 384pp £16.99)

How hard is it being a woman in the workplace? The answer is very, as Mary Ann Sieghart in this eminently readable book convincingly tells us. It seems to require a good deal of acting talent. It’s no use just following advice to behave like a man – something that itself requires quite a lot of effort. It is much more complicated than that. Women have to combine ‘confidence and warmth in exactly the right ratio for them to be taken seriously but not disliked in the process’. Not everyone manages that or can be bothered to keep it up for long, and many women opt out of the race altogether. Yet it is crucial for getting on, as the perceptions of what is acceptable in women’s behaviour are coloured by what is generally expected of them: to be soft and obedient. And what’s more, as research cited by Sieghart shows, many people still expect women to be less expert than men and resist the idea of women having authority.

The adjectives generally used to describe successful and confident women tell their own story: ‘bossy’, ‘abrasive’, ‘strident’, ‘shrill’, ‘scary’, ‘cold’, ‘stern’, ‘controlling’, ‘ball-breaking’, ‘bitchy’, ‘unlikeable’, ‘pushy’. Women who are ambitious are often encouraged to try and hide it. For many, however, ambition is taken out of them at quite a young age, as they encounter their first biases at school and in the early years in work. Mothers, those from an ethnic minority and the disabled face additional biases.

Not being taken seriously means that women don’t contribute as much to the economy as they should do and don’t get paid enough. This in turn means that overall prosperity suffers. Sieghart makes the case simply but strongly and comes up with great solutions, which include quotas and heavily subsidised child- care, both of which I favour. Yes, much of that has been said before. But the devastating extra element Sieghart draws out of the numerous discussions she has had with high-achieving women is that even if a woman miraculously rises to the top, the authority gap remains.

It’s a common enough experience for women starting out not to be treated by men as professional equals. It happened to me when, dressed in my best dark suit, I went to join a directors’ lunch at the bank at which I was working. As I got out of the lift on the executive floor, someone approached me and asked, ‘Are you looking for the kitchens?’ But Sieghart argues that it doesn’t seem to get much better as you rise up. The book starts with the tale of Mary McAleese, president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, leading an official delegation to the Vatican. Pope John Paul II walked over to where she was standing with an outstretched hand, but approached not her but her husband and asked, ‘Would you not prefer to be President of Ireland rather than married to the President of Ireland?’ McAleese interjected, took his outstretched hand and said, ‘Let me introduce myself. I am the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, elected by the people of Ireland, whether you like it or whether you don’t.’

That was back in 1999. But in recent months we have seen another example of this. In April, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was at an official meeting in Turkey with President Erdoğan and Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. There were only two chairs in the room and these were offered to and taken by the two men. Von der Leyen was left standing and eventually had to find a seat on a side sofa, away from the centre of attention. The video of the snub went viral on social media. Von der Leyen later made an impassioned speech in the European Parliament venting her frustration and shock. She made it clear that she could not think of a reason for her treatment other than that she was female.

If that can happen to von der Leyen, and on camera, it must be happening to women all over the world, and probably much of the time. Von der Leyen’s treatment is proof that the authority gap remains very real, whatever one’s seniority. This book contains some very depressing quotes from senior women, including one from the female mayor of Washington, DC, who says, ‘People don’t like women promoting themselves.’ It is of course made worse when race or religion is added into the equation. A senior African-American academic is quoted as saying that she is challenged more by her students than an equivalent white male would be and is often

ignored and made to feel invisible in faculty meetings. Impostor syndrome, which often afflicts professional women, seems to stay with them all the way to the top, with women needing to do their homework more assiduously than men do to boost their confidence. Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel have both said that they overprepare in advance of meetings. And there is no limit to women’s inventiveness in the search for ways to boost their confidence, even at the top. A quote from the first ever female bishop of London says it all: ‘if it’s a tough meeting, I’ll wear red lipstick.’

july 2021 | Literary Review 37

Read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content