Race causes an initial confusion

Race causes an initial confusion

By Lindsay Mackie
Wednesday 14 June 1978
guardian.co.uk

The man who answered "human race" when asked to what race he belonged would get short shrift at West End Central police station, London. For there human classifications have achieved an elaborate formality, as a bemused magistrate heard yesterday.

Giving evidence in a begging case at Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court, WPC Linda Nicholls said that she saw the defendant stop an IC1 in the street. What, enquired the magistrate, Mr St John Harmsworth, was an IC1? Amid laughter the WPC explained that it was part of a code: "An IC1 is a white man, an IC2 is an Italian, and an IC3 is a West Indian." When WPC Nicholls reverted later in the evidence to more traditional language and said that the defendant had also stopped an Italian, the magistrate, warming to the theme translated: "An IC2".

Police language has long been famous for its cumbersome style, although on this occasion the WPC did not resort to the time-honoured "proceeding in a northerly direction". But the magistrates' court did not hear the half of it.

The Metropolitan Police are addicted to codes. Yesterday a police spokesman explained that police stations themselves are referred to in code. Thus West End Central, in copperese, is CD, Paddington Green is DD, and Kingston upon Thames is actually VD.

Coding of humans is a more sensitive matter and, although no one appears to have told West End Central - sorry, CD - about the change, Scotland Yard, which started to classify arrests in racial groups in 1975, dropped the RC (standing for race code) more than a year ago and replaced it by a system of "Identi-Coding" on a one to six scale.

It is difficult to encompass the world with six groups but the Metropolitan Police assign "white-skinned European types - English, Scottish, Welsh, Scandinavian and Russian" to IC1; "dark-skinned European types - Sardinian, Spanish, Italian" to IC2; "Negroid types - Caribbean, West Indian, African, Nigerian" to IC3; Indians and Pakistanis to IC4; "Chinese, Japanese, Mongolians, Siamese" to IC5; and "Arabians, Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans and North Africans" to IC6.

A spokesman at West End Central was unable to explain why WPC Nichols found it necessary to race-code a victim rather than a suspect but he did say that the police used their "own internal language". He would not give examples because they might be controversial. The police are not alone in their difficulties. The Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys has not yet devised a question which has been accepted by everyone on how to ask people about their ethnic origins for the 1981 census.

http://century.guardian.co.uk/1970-1979/Story/0,6051,106880,00.html

Special thanks to Black Wanderer: http://www.ligali.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2763&st=80#entry43139
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THE
HOLY BOOK OF RACIAL GOVERNMENT

Source: http://www.education.gov.uk/escs-isb/standardslibrary/a0077051/ethnicity-data-standard