A Friend’s Dangerous Questions about Race No.1

I’ve altered the wording a little so people can’t go looking for it, hopefully I’ve not foxed the meaning in so doing.

A lot of you are not racist, but realise racism exists. Some of you make posts in support of BAME problems, but you’ve never talked to me about them. Why is that? If you know I experience racism, why are you surprised when I talk about it? Can you understand what it’s like to experience something all the time but to have people act surprised?

Hopefully I am long-term enough friends with this person that they can see the honesty and earnestness in my reply. I’ve decided to do it as a blog, so as to be able to tackle it in a more long-form manner, less prone to misinterpretation and with enough space to make my points in a more complete manner.

Let me break this down into sections a bit, as there’s a lot of explanation and clarity and personal experience to put into this…

Not Racist, but Know Racism Exists?

I’m not even slightly racist, but a lot of people have that impression of me – somehow – and confusingly, that seems to be because I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what race anyone is.

That used to be the goal, what people now derisively call ‘I don’t see colour’, but it has been a trial, and a lot of effort to get to a place of not giving two tugs of a dead dog’s cock what shade someone’s epidermis is.

I didn’t grow up in a city, I grew up rurally. Non-white faces are so rare out here that I can distinctly remember the first time I ever met an Indian (a Sikh, going door to door selling T-shirts after – I think – fleeing South Africa or Zimbabwe). That was a positive experience, he was a lovely guy who left a good impression.

My first experiences meeting people of other races have not been good.

My first experience meeting a black person was an horrendous bully who liked to pick on a disabled kid (who was also bloody awful the first time I met him, as it happens). My first experience meeting Asians was drug dealers selling to schoolchildren.

When I did begin to visit and stay in urban areas, my direct experience was not much better. A black man stripping an AK47 in the back of a car, drug dealers, gangs, racist abuse hurled at me for being white, racist abuse hurled at me for hanging out with blacks. Friends getting beaten up for being white in the wrong area. Romani aggressively going door to door or trying to push ‘lucky’ heather, drunk Poles and Russians starting fights.

I could go on.

Basically, it’s a fucking miracle that I’m not racist, but that’s in large part because, even fairly young, I recognised something else was going on and I saw much the same – almost identical – prejudice being directed at the poor kids. The poor kids also lashed out in much the same way, and in a similarly racist way to the BAME kids.

Huzzah for being a precociously socialist tween!

And that’s still where I’m coming from when I look at things going on.

I look at racism, which exists between all races, in all directions, and I see a lashing out because of deprivation. I can understand the rage of a black nationalist, and the rage of a white supremacist, but I believe both are misdirected and that class, not race, is far and away more important as a problem to tackle.

Solve the class/wealth issue and you solve most (not all) of the racism issues.

Of course, that may just be my old-school Socialist blinkers, but the statistics seem to confirm my suspicions.

Why do I not talk about it?

I don’t talk about these things much, save when it’s inescapable (like right now) because these discussions are destructive to friendships and many people take my second and third order thinking to be dismissive of their personal experiences and pain, rather than as an attempt to get to the root of the issue and find an actual solution.

Many of them also, knowingly or otherwise, express racist views themselves, which I find repugnant. ‘White privilege’ for example.

Others, as mentioned previously, take my personal choice to pay no attention whatsoever to race/gender/sexuality as being dismissive of their identity. Whereas it’s really me refusing to engage in identity politics, which I consider to be corrosive and divisive.

I’m also, constantly, like many other melanin-challenged people, told that it’s none of my business, to ‘shut up’, to ‘stay in my lane’ and not to ‘whitesplain’, or similar hostility. Even if I don’t WANT to shut up (after all, for social change they need to convince people like me, and a hell of a lot worse than me) this is all offputting and requires additional emotional energy.

Why get involved when you’re not wanted? When anything other than total and absolute agreement gets you thrown in with the handful of actual fascists?

I also don’t talk about it, because I don’t think it’s the real source of the problem. I see it, as I mentioned, as primarily a class/wealth issue and so long as we don’t tackle that (and in a race neutral way) this will all continue to fester.

Fixating on race, and terminology like ‘white privilege’ is regressive, not progressive.

Thought experiment.

Imagine a hugely deprived area, no jobs, little opportunity, poor access to education. Poor blacks, poor whites, poor hispanics, poor everyone. Then you parachute in a bunch of grants and money for BAME citizens in the area, but not the poor whites.

What sort of effect do you think that will have on that community? What sort of attitudes do you think will become prevalent in that poor white community? What sort of politics and prejudice might take root there and what kind of politicians and groups might capitalise on that?

What’s been happening? Why do we have Trump and Bojo? Why have the far right, despite still being relatively tiny, made such inroads?

Why are you surprised by racism?

I’m not, save that I almost never encounter it any more (at least from white people towards BAME people, not so much vice versa).

I used to, certainly. I recall kids (who, to be fair, didn’t know better at the time) singing racist songs in the playground.

There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, so send the bastards back.

Not so much any more.

I do encounter anti-white racism near constantly across social media and in meatspace. Largely uncommented, unpunished, without pushback. It’s not the only form of acceptable bigotry I encounter, but it is a big one.

This is another arena in which the far-right is making inroads. If racism’s not OK, it’s not OK. Full stop. It shouldn’t be any more acceptable, in even a more minor form, against white people than it should be against BAME, but some have even sought to redefine the meaning of racism to exclude their own bigotry.

That’s a breathtaking violation of principle.

Hypocrisy has always been something of a personal bugbear, and it’s intensely distressing to see people who should know better, indulging in racism.

That’s not progress.

Can you understand what it’s like to experience something constantly, but have people be surprised?

I’d, frankly, love to have people be surprised rather than hostile.

Try discussing men’s issues.

Try to bring up that 3/4 of the homeless are men, 40% of IPV victims, or the lack of male mental health specialists and provision, the lack of male primary teachers, the sentencing gap, the life expectancy gap, male genital mutilation…

Surprise would be a welcome alternative to dismissal, accusations of misogyny, inceldom and so on.

These are all much bigger issues in the UK, and even the US, than racism is. Same with class issues, but the left has forgotten its class-oriented roots, demonised the working class and nobody cares about men.

The men’s issues are in large part class issues as well (men are more likely to be impoverished), but nobody really talks about the class issues. Corbyn for all his old Labour pageantry seemed to end up captured by identity politics and wokescolding the working class and, well, look what (predictably) happened.

So yeah, I understand, but even when it comes to the men’s issues I care about (having been on the sharp end) I see those issues in broader, deeper terms of class and wealth.

I don’t think you can solve racism with more racism (or any other *ism with more of the same *ism), and so I choose to live my life with as little regard for these things as is humanly possible, and to try and find actual solutions.

This leads to no end of hatred and heartache, weirdly.

I think race issues are primarily class issues, and some societies tend to conflate the two. America particularly. I look at the way council estate hoodies are treated, and the way tower-block black youths are treated and stereotyped, and there’s virtually no difference.

It’s class.

I have a friend from Guyana, and from what she has related to me Guyanese society demonstrates this confusion and conflation even more than American society.

The way she tells it Guyanese society is extremely ‘colourist’, with lighter skin being associated with the middle and upper classes and darker skin being associated with the lower classes.

This is, of course, nonsense these days. It’s a holdover from colonial times and the settlement there of whites and south asians as well as west indians, but it shows how even without the presence of whites in any significant number, people end up conflating race and class.

Of course, she, as a Canadian ex-pat of mixed heritage causes enormous confusion both in Canada and in Guyana because she doesn’t ‘fit’ either set of preconceptions.

It’s class.

Playing the race game, playing the intersectional oppression olympics only serves to divide and conquer.

I’m not OK with that.