Racism – truly the personal is political
JVL Introduction
In the light of current discussions, we are pleased to publish this moving and powerful piece by Gavin Lewis from January this year. Here he describes, with remarkable calm, some of the dreadful experiences he has had just because he is a Black person in Britain. He places his own experiences firmly and proportionately within the political environment now and in the past.
He also writes about what is happening to Muslim people in the UK today and the experiences for Jewish people and the “antisemitism crisis”. He also notes that, as Black people were more likely to be working class, despite the racism, he had been able, as an adult, to benefit from generic policies designed to support working class people, eg unemployment benefit, evening classes, free higher education and maintenance grants and from an NHS before it started to be destroyed. Much of this has been reduced or lost altogether. Hence we would argue that the fight against austerity is part of the fight against racism and part of our being stronger together.
And, as part of that fight against austerity and racism, we must ask in whose interests does such a blind spot prevail in Britain regarding the reality of racism. It is especially marked with this government and, shamefully, also the Leadership of the so called Opposition Labour Party. As Gary Younge has pointed out, Britain likes to teach about its role in the abolition of slavery rather than its absolutely central role in the Slave Trade; this is the cosy image Britons like to have, conveniently forgetting, for example, that compensation was paid to those who enslaved people rather than the people who had been enslaved.
This article was originally published by Arena Online on Thu 26 Jan 2023. Read the original here.
Pressure: A personal reflection on British and Western Establishment Racism
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Thank you. Much of what is said in this article shocks me to the core and amazes me – yet I grew up in a sleepy market town which – unusually? – had large numbers of Polish and Afro-Caribbean residents.
I was never aware of any racism or institutional racism then. It NOW strikes me as odd and ugly there were no Black and few Polish students in my grammar school and I never saw any Black faces in “my” part of town. How can we get to understand each others’ lives and experiences if we don’t even attend the same schools and live in the same places?
Brilliant article.
Brilliant article, articulating a lifetime of racist experience within a political framework.
Thank you for a powerful and thought-provoking article.
We can all learn lessons here.
Very good article about the everyday racism experienced as a result of carrying one’s identity on one skin colour. In the 1980’s I remember being warned by the organisers of an ANL rally I attended in West Bromwich (known for its racism), that when I left the rally I should remove any visible signs, badges etc that I’d been on the rally to reduce the risk of being attacked by racists. I still remember my thoughts about that warning – that as a white person I didn’t have to worry about removing my skin colour – it sticks with me.
LIving in frontline Handsworth Birmingham for many years and working with black communities there I have come across dozens of examples of everyday racism . And being in a relationship with a black person, some of these have been personally close to me – e.g. partners being stopped and searched in the street just for walking, or being repeatedly stopped and asked to “produce” because he drove a BMW (where did he get it from?). Once I returned home from a weekend away to find my house broken into by police because they said they were “worried about me”, despite living on my own with no history of domestic violence, illness or risk – an obvoius lie and probably a combination the house previous owners being black, and my still retained married surname was African .
Then there was my British born Nigerian friend with PHD from a UK University being asked at a job interview whether she would be able to cope with writing and reading English.
And when as manager of a family centre in West Brom I had to deal with the racism of a staff member accusing the relatives of a South Asian staff member of stealing family centre property during an open day – with absolutely no proof or evidence.
All of these prejudices, discrimination and racism made doubly easy by visibility of skin colour.
I could go on…..
This is not to say that other groups whose identities are not so easily physically identifiable have an easy time of it. e.g. The prejudice againt the Irish community in BIrmingham after the pub bombings led to some of my friends commenting that the best way to stay safe was not to talk or just lose the accent, and the discrimination of traveller children in some of the schools I did project work with was was very evident. The shape and nature of different racisms is complex issue and the nature of the racist behaviour reflects that. It’s just that for white-skinned racialised groups it is easier to hide one’s identity on an everyday basis. .
The David Baddiel story is really instructive. His view is amplified because he is a “star” (not that funny in my view). Likewise a few years ago I watched Melanie Phillips and Maureen Lipman in an hour long talk on anti-semitism spouting the same inaccurate clichés…two privileged women who appeared to have no real feelings or understanding of Palestinian people, but could fill a large hall in London and reach a vast audience on BBC. (not sure now which channel it was on). It is so easy if you are a celebrity to spout rubbish.
This is a testimony that shames the dominant white culture in Britain, and highlights how the demise of the Labour Party as we knew it has reduced the mitigation, such as there was, of the worst of racism’s impacts on black, brown, and ethnic minority Britons. And it is a very useful contextualisation of Diane Abbott’s faux pas, together with contrasting the way Anti semitism has come to be treated in the current public discourse.
Further reading of the later chapters of Peter Osborne’s “The Fate of Abraham” (he exposes for example, the truth about the Birmingham schools ‘Trojan Horse’ affair) shows how Islamophobia is increasingly a focus of endemic establishment and main stream media racism.
Of course we can see how the Anti Semitism furore in the Labour Party plays along with these currents, and how its rightward lurch has hobbled it as a countervailing force. Simply put, the Labour Party is now the Tory Party, and the Tory party is the BNP.
The nexus of an effective anti racism in Britain has now surely to consolidate beyond two party politics and have true multi racial solidarity and expression in grass roots campaigns of striking NHS and other workers, trades unions, the Green Party, BLM, Anti-apartheid campaigns, JJP, Muslim solidarity organisations and the like.
I never watched Baddiel and so didn’t know at the time about his racist send-up of Jason Lee. I also never knew he’d made repeated vile homophobic “jokes” about Marc Almond, as reported in today’s Guardian, which Almond is still very angry about, rightly seeing them as an attack on all gay people. For most public figures, this racism and homophobia would have ended their careers, but Baddiel clearly does too much good work serving the interests of the ruling class.
As others have said, this is a brilliant article, how Black Racism, in almost every sphere of life made the lives of the Black population about as horrible as life could be.
It describes the many varying ways Racism is carried out and how much of it stems from the people in power.
I grew up in London in the 50s and 60s, as kids we only knew one black person, he would walk down our street, say hello, talk to us about the news of the day, he was always happy and would wave to us as he went on his way. When the black people from the Caribbean started arriving in London, many went to live in Brixton. I used to walk through Brixton to the roller skating rink and see the odd group of black lads out on the streets, I would wave to them and they’d wave back, one evening, one asked me where I was going, I told him I was going skating, I never felt uncomfortable or uneasy, they were friendly. As I grew up and started hearing about racist attacks, I always knew it wouldn’t have been the black lads instigating the fights. I grew up hating racists with a vengeance and still do today.