In Britain’s degraded politics, fighting racism has become a cynical game
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Gary Younge is incandescent with rage at the responses to the racist abuse heaped on Diane Abbott by Frank Hester.
It is, says Younge, “worth spending time on is an exploration of how this incident goes beyond one rich man and the spineless leader he bankrolls, to the racial degradation of our discourse, the instrumentalisation of our grievances and the utter contempt for our intelligence.”
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Fri 15 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
In Britain’s degraded politics, fighting racism has become a cynical game
This goes far beyond a Tory donor’s racist comments about Diane Abbott, and Labour’s opportunistic response
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I expect this will be Younge’s last Guardian article after which he’s likely to be cast out, like cartoonist Steve Bell was, for upsetting their readers’ delicate sensibilities.
But bravo and maximum respect to Gary for this splendid broadside!
A good article part from Younge’s attack on Abbott’s ‘appalling letter’, as like many he strips it of the context. We’ve been through this before and also about David Miller – it hinges on what racism is sociologically and what the article and research says that Diane was responding to.
Briefly, British Jews do not suffer from structural/institutional racism. Diane was wrong though about travellers but no one on the right cares at all for them, or for people of colour; they are only interested in weaponisation of fake antisemitism because this is about attacking the left.
Gary Younge writes
“Last year she sent an appalling letter to the Observer claiming that “Irish, Jewish and Traveller people” do not suffer racism “all their lives”.
Perhaps Younge is contractually obliged to write this by the Guardian but it is wrong, wrong, wrong!
It is wrong as a summary of Diane Abbott’s sentiments. It is intellectually wrong in its assumptions about anti-Semitism and its overall place within West-European religious sectarianism. Part of the reason we have a subjective historical narrative about anti-Semitism – instead of a popular broader class and sectarian based analysis – is that Western Jews had access to a written tradition. This is juxtaposed against the lesser status of oral histories of Black and indigenous people who as Benjamin Zephaniah has long pointed out, have been stripped of their languages, culture and social systems. See by comparison how long it has taken and how late racism has been acknowledged as structural and historical phenomenon (yet now conceptually under attack by elites). The word racism only started to become concrete in regular usage by the end of the 1970s – people previously struggled with the usage of ‘bigotry’ or ‘racialism’.
Lastly this is wrong because it plays down the significance of light/dark western hierarchies, and preferment under the slavery/colonialism gravy-train on the basis of this. Even now the public use of image search engines will confirm the horrendous skin injuries incurred by Black people attempting to bleach themselves white because they internalised this hierarchy. The Aspen Institute offers organisations training on anti-racism providing a definition of ‘Structural Racism’ that makes this hierarchy clear.
“…dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.”
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/docs/rcc/RCC-Structural-Racism-Glossary.pdf
Don’t think Gary is a full time Guardian writer any more. But what is the point of springing to Abbott’s defence over Hester’s dangerous racism and by condemning her at the same time over remarks she made on travellers. It’s a yes,but moment. Focus for goodness sake. The timing could not have been better for this sting op. during a week shaped by messaging around ‘extremism.’ Some people out there actually believe it when we all know extremism lies with No 10, on the Tory front bench in the corridors of power and on the far right. And typical of Tory venality, they make Hester an NHS data TPP millionaire and he gives them £10 -16 million.Tories have turned GB into a potholed sewer of hatred and the laughing stock of Europe.