We really aren’t that racist.
What matters most to most people is figuring out how to be decent humans and get along with everyone. That doesn’t mean that racism and all the other dreadful behaviours aren’t out there – they are, and they’re deadly – but out and about amongst people, you don’t see much of that “hate” we hear about. You see fears and embarrassments and misunderstandings that, with a bit of community effort, could be cleared up, and superficial rants bored people indulge in in passing when they’ve just read a stoke-it-up newspaper or listened to a BBC news report.
Who are the evil racists?
It’s not us.
Racism is systemic – it’s built into our establishment, and it’s maintained by politicians.
It’s always been the politicians. Racism didn’t really get going in this country, other than the lack-of-knowledge kind, until politicians mobilized to defend the rich-people empire, and businesses and properties in the US and the surrounding territories that were running on slave power. They couldn’t maintain and defend all that without convincing the people back home that colonized peoples and slaves were something other than poor unfortunate humans who’d been kidnapped and were being mistreated beyond all possible bounds of decency.
Where’s the worst racism we’ve seen in recent years? Who hounded a startling number of Black and Jewish socialists out of the Labour Party? Labour MPs.
Who tried to persuade us all that the outpouring of grief and anger over the carnage in Gaza was a “hate campaign”? All kinds of MPs.
Who keeps trying to win elections by stoking racism? Any would-be MPs who don’t have a good, people-friendly manifesto to run on.
Racialization
Sometimes known as “othering”, it’s how unscrupulous politicians capitalize on a natural human instinct — actually, an instinct most animals have — to be aware of, and cautious of, “difference”. Who’s the outsider? Are they dangerous? — Those are survival questions but let’s face it, having a different skin colour, or the features of a particular ancestral group of humans, doesn’t really make someone dangerously different. It’s just a marker politicians can use when they want to point to someone and shout “enemy! Danger! Vote for me, I’ll protect you!”
Diversity and inclusion
Those are buzz words, PR campaigns. Take a colour-chart to the Tories current cabinet and by the rules of “diversity and inclusion” you’d think they were the best anti-racists going. Ho ho.
Oh – what happened last night?
When there’s an overnight feed on the BBC, I got take a look. It’s about the only time I do look at mainstream news these days but if parliament’s been in action overnight, you tend to think something’s happened.
Well I suppose something did happen – they’ve finally put the racist solution to refugee build-up into law. Except that, says the BBC, “after two years of legal battles and political wrangling” they’re actually no-where near getting a plane off to Rwanda.
Most people know that the crisis in immigration is not made of a massive wave of asylum seekers. Yes, the world is teeming with people on the move in our times. That’s because the wealthy have got a lot of wars on, and wars are the prime cause of refugees. But it’s not the number of refugees that’s creating a crisis in the UK just now. “The refugee crisis” is the same as all the other queues and build ups we see across our services — in this case, it’s the government’s inability to process those making asylum applications. Sunak doesn’t appear to have tried very hard to hide that. He even says, quoted in the BBC’s overnight coverage, “but we have always been clear that processing will take time.”
I suppose the one thing we can be thankful for is that this appears to be a piece of electioneering to rally the racist minority who might actually vote Tory, and the reason we should be thankful for that is that grandstanding election promises are not necessarily carried out. Let’s hope this piece of pointless cruelty is one of those.
Labour are out to win that same minority. Here’s their latest shot…
…Don’t be fooled by racists. Avoid voting for mainstream political parties.
Quite frankly, I’d advise caution even with the little parties. The Greens have hounded out more than a few of their minorities members, and vast numbers of their women, because Green Party Policy is more important to them than issues of racism or sexism.
In the meantime, if you want to do something right now for the people living in terror that Sunak’s publicity piece will end up sending them to Rwanda. go find Care4Calais. They have lots of projects to help and protect the refugees of war and other politicians’ crises. Here’s a screenshot of the latest…
Next, let’s get the racists out of our government. Go talk to the independent candidates where you are. make sure they’re standing because they have some actual, useful ideas they want to bring into politics. If they do, they’re less likely to come up with rubbish strategies like victimizing minorities. Ask them what they think about asylum seekers, what they think about Palestine, about systemic racism, and about women’s rights or disability rights. If they can answer in decent human terms on those issues, it’s probably safe to vote for them.
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 