DIVIDED BRITAIN AND THE ROOTS OF RACIAL DESCRIMINATION

UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH
I was reading this week’s Socialist Worker (No 2199 1 May 2010) on a 39 minutes train journey to Surrey. There were only a few other people in the compartment; one was reading a novel and another reading the free London newspaper METRO and others just chit chatting. I noticed that the man seating opposite me had stopped reading his novel and staring at me and then I realised that he was reading the front cover of Social Worker. The headline cover reads in bold letters, DIVIDED BRITAIN. I decided to move to another compartment leaving my Socialist Worker on my seat and when I looked into the compartment again the man who was staring at me was engrossed in reading my paper. One would never think that this division captured in Socialist Worker has anything to do with racism, because this is the division between the rich and the poor; The 1,000 richest people’s wealth went up by £77 billion last year whilst 21 year old Vicky Harrison committed suicide after rejection for 200 jobs. But the connection is very clear; if you are one of the 1,000 richest people in a divided Britain, you don’t like to hear of people driven to despair by your greed, so you find a scapegoat. You also prepared to pay handsomely to anyone who is prepared to do the job for you.

To understand racism of today, one has to go back and understand the origins of racism. Take this quote from the renowned and respected Prof Stephen Hawkins on the existence of aliens; “A visit from aliens would be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas which did not turn out very well with the Native Americans.” On the same note we have Nick Griffin the BNP leader promising Britain that if elected he will introduce a BNP immigration policy whereby 180,000 none white people will be paid £50,000 each every year to go and settle somewhere else so as to solve overcrowding in Britain. The question here is who is going to foot this exorbitant bill? Take Prof Hawkins statement again, he does believe that there are aliens out there ready to pounce on humans and destroy them. He also sees the connection between Columbus and these aliens. He is warning humans to prepare for invasion and a fight back for our survival. Christopher Columbus, just like his fellow pioneers are depicted in this scenario as aliens by those they invaded. Therefore, those human natives be in the Americas, in Africa, Asia etc who were invaded by these aliens had a right to fight back just as we have a right to fight back against the aliens as warned by Hawkins. I wonder what these aliens will say of us if we fight back. It is a sure case that they will stereotype us or label us with one form of barbarism or another purely for fighting back for our survival. I presume here that the end result will inevitably be the same end result as when Columbus invaded the Americas. What Prof Hawkins does not say is where these aliens will come from. But to those of us who are at risk of being invaded by these aliens, we know that aliens are those who are human in form but evil in nature, out to destroy anyone for no reason other than greed. I will elaborate this using a quote from Richard Seymour’s article in ISJ on racism:

“Racist narratives do not begin and end with the body, and the present day emphasis on cultural difference is not as anomalous as it might at first appear. ‘Race’ overlaps with a range of other discourses such as nationality and ethnicity that are not strictly to do with biological variation. The everyday language of racism draws on a “common sense”, a series of stereotypes and generalisations, about groups of people – be they a nationality, a faith group or an ethnicity. The stereotypes invariably focus on ostensible cultural traits. Ali Rattansi points out that when alleged cultural traits become stereotypes they are naturalised and made to seem inherent to the group that is so characterised. ‘Thus the supposed avaricaciousness of Jews, the alleged aggressiveness of Africans and African Americans, the criminality of the Afro-Caribbean or the slyness of Orientals become traits that are invariably attached to these groups over extremely long periods of time. It is this essentialising gesture that has become known as ‘cultural racism.’” Seymour R ISJ Spring 2010 page 71.

Nick Griffin and his Party just like Hitler and the Nazi before him are racists in the sense that they believe that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that theirs is a superior race. Sociologically, their socio-political view pertains to an attitude of institutional discrimination based on the concept of race, nothing else but race. They may use arguments from well known scientists, sociologists or even philosophers. Hence my argument that racists have some form of institutional discrimination. But let us examine these terms; sociology for instance is a study of society, it is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigations and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Science on the other hand comes from the Latin word scientia which means knowledge which in its broadest sense means any systematic knowledge- based or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. Philosophy claims to encourage critical thought and analysis and is a belief or systems of beliefs accepted as authoritative by some groups or school and generally studies general fundamental problems concerning matter such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language.

We have philosophers like Karl Marx whose understanding of this world and its contradictions has enabled other philosophers and the general population for instance to distinguish between the material world and the religious world; invaluable knowledge. I wonder what school of thought, whether in philosophy, in science or in sociology would translate our understanding of this world in its material form and argue in favour of a superior race? I therefore believe that Nick Griffin and his Party’s argument on white superiority serves two purposes, politics and economics. This ideology, like Hitler’s Nazi works in favour of them in the sense that by getting rid of others whether by extradition or mass murder they can have the resources of this world and the power to control this world to themselves, and I can easily relate such mentality to the mentality of the aliens starting off with the likes of Christopher Columbus. The world after all has got the North, South, West and East, it is not infinite and by that I mean we all have to live in one world whatever colour or shape we happen to have. Hitler was allowed to carry out mass murder using similar arguments that we encounter today, i.e. identifying a group of people, stereotyping that group of people purely to exterminate them and those who supported them. The reason that he even got recognised politically was because of the political and economical crisis that engulfed Germany in that era, which is a similar scenario that we are experiencing today. The Jews and their supporters were mass murdered by the Nazi who went on to expropriate everything that belonged to their victims.

Going back to Richard’s quote, he breaks down the racist stereotype notably with reference to the Jews, Africans and Orientals. There is no mention anywhere of any other racist stereotype with relation to political and economical segregation that I know of. My guess therefore is that it is this white race that gave birth to racism because it sees it fit to racially stereotype other human beingS so as to segregate them politically, economically and socially. But this racial stereotype of all other races by the white superior race is not meant to benefit the ordinary person as evident by the number of poor whites all around the world. What has enabled me to understand the root cause of racism was going back in history. Prof Hawkins has made reference to Columbus and relates his invasion of the Americas as that of aliens coming to invade us on earth. When I go back to my history lesson under apartheid, not only were we taught about great explorers but we were made to even sing in praise of their bravery. One song I recall very well was in praise of Vasco da Gama for discovering the sea route to India, via the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. This is the kind of institutionalisation of racism and the white superiority that makes even those racially discriminated accept their fate. There are many brave explorers of the 14th century who made wonderful discoveries of the world and the reason why they were successful is because they were able to make connections with the indigenous people and this quote about Vasco da Gama is proof to that:

“The ships rounded the Cape on November 22. The expedition stopped on the East African coast, broke up the store ship, and reached Mozambique on Mar. 2, 1498. There they were assumed to be Muslims, and the sultan of Mozambique supplied them with pilots, who guided them on their journey northward. They stopped in Mombasa and Malindi before sailing to the east.”

This does not show white superiority, it shows the hospitality and kindness from the indigenous people that these explorers enjoyed in their quest to conquer the world. Take this scenario then and apply it to the Americas, the Orientals and other racially stereotyped race. This is evident of how Europeans exploited the hospitality and kindness of their hosts and treated those they encountered en route as nothing but guides and I believe where they met resistance they came to conclude that it was because the natives were savages and barbarians. It is not surprising therefore that colonization followed with European countries ripping each other apart fighting for control of countries which had kind and hospitable indigenous people living in them for centuries. For such kind of a mentality, there is no other way to convince oneself and others other than institutionalization. Someone calls you an aggressive barbarian and a savage with a gun to your head; you have no choice but give in and surrender your power to him or her. Someone strips you of all your possession including your land, leaves you no choice but to beg and scavenge. Someone kills your family, your people and subdue you and mentally torture you, you succumb to mental illness. But when an opportunity arises and you stand up for yourself, you have no choice but to fight to death. That is not savage barbarism or aggression. It is what a self respecting and decent human being will do. I have no doubt that this is how racism was born, not only to control the minds of indigenous people, but to make it legal to steal, kill and enslave them .

We are in the 21st century now and colonies have liberated themselves from their colonizers, but what is evident is that institutionalization did a great job both for the racists and the racially discriminated. The majority of liberated colonies still depend on their colonizers for governance both politically and economically. Those who break away resort to dictatorship to subdue their own people for power as they become crippled economically either through sanctions or bad debt. From personal experience, some of those white people who have broken away from the institutionalized racist stereotype against those of different colour still do succumb to what I call ‘elusive racism’ when they feel threatened. It is more evident now for those like me for the simple reason that we live in a divided Britain. On one hand we have a handful of people making millions out of the majority of us disregard the colour. Some where in the middle there are those who have no millions of pounds stashed away but are comfortable enough to enjoy the luxuries of this world, down the ladder there are those like me with a fairly reasonable income to have a decent roof over their heads and at the bottom there are those with absolutely nothing. They have either lost their jobs or their houses or if they have jobs they earn next to nothing. It is not the 1,000 with billions whose racism is evident. Instead it is those who feel that their livelihood is being threatened, but don’t know who to fight against or if they do know, they have no courage to fight the culprits because life seems to be always easy for those who prefer a lazy lifestyle. It is for this reason that I have found myself like many other people of my colour on several occasions being made a scapegoat or victimised by those who stand shoulder to shoulder with me fighting against the BNP. This kind of racism is benign from the perpetrators point of view because he/she has a false clear conscience of being anti racists in public. But to someone on the receiving end what is evident is that such behaviour is malignant like a silent tumor because anyone who takes a path of scapegoat using stereotype, colour, culture, religion or beliefs when threatened is no different from any other racist. Racial discrimination is not a solution to anyone’s problems except for the with billions of pounds. In reality, most people know that it is not migrants who employ themselves in the UK, it is not migrants who pay themselves lower wages and it is not migrants who cause the economic crisis, yet as of recent we have some on the left who stand shoulder to shoulder with us on marches against racists calling for British jobs for British people. This is pure racism and stinking hypocrisy.

I am completely useless on history, on politics and on economics. But what I know is that there is a layer of people who fuel this kind of racist hatred, either for political reason, to make money out of it, or because they are so institutionalized that they believe that they are rightfully superior to other people. Which ever way I look it, what ever drives racists has its roots in the history that brought about colonization. If these racists are allowed to be part of the mainstream politics, what will stop them from repeating what the Nazi did? Surely if it is politics that drives racists, they will fight for extraditing anyone who is not their colour. If it is economical, they will slaughter those they despise and their supporters so as to steal from them like the Nazi and Hitler did. Just like the explorers they will then try to subdue and annihilate anyone in this world who they deem to be inferior to them. But it is very unlikely that this sort of history can be repeated. What is likely though is that if racists and racism is not challenged there will be many people who lose their lives for simply being the wrong colour and being at the wrong place at the wrong time as we have witnessed in the past years. The death of young Steven Lawrence is what woke me up to the evilness of those with a racist mind. But there are many others as well, young and old of all colours who have been victims of this alien ideology.

We can all be reassured because many people are waking up to the evils of racism and are challenging main stream politicians and the BNP alike. This is certainly going to be an ongoing battle for quite some time and our main weapon as anti racists is to take these racist scum bags head on and challenge their ideology. But for me, there is an added challenge, i.e. challenging the elusive racists. I deliberately use the word elusive here because such people are able to fool everyone else apart from their victim. I am not a stranger to racism being a black child brought up under apartheid. I have also been called names throughout my childhood and adulthood, from stupid to dumb by both adults and my age group. I can rationalise why these idiots came to their conclusion; it is because I refuse to talk to people if they upset me and I have been that way since I can remember my life and once I make that decision, no one can unmake it for me. It is me, that is how I am and I don’t make apologies to anyone for that because there is no one who has a right to deliberately hurt another person. These were black people including relation. Sticks and stones can break your bones but words break your heart. I can live with being called stupid or dumb because I refuse to talk to idiots, but what broke my heart was being called a witch, a prostitute and a liar by strangers.

Not so long ago witches were burnt alive in this country and that was outlawed because people got civilised. But it is in this country in the 21st century where people who did not know me from Adam concluding that I was a witch, a liar and a prostitute. Socialists and anti racists alike believed that I was a witch with some witch hunting me and others refusing to speak to me. I am not talking about the 1920 here, but I am talking about 2003 – 2010. The question I ask is; given the circumstances that resulted in me being called these names, would I have been called a witch if I was a white woman? Of course the answer is no, because it was these white men and women who came to the conclusion that I was a witch. It is these elusive racists that I am challenging, because I know that the reason they came to that conclusion was because I refused to talk to them. How dare a black woman refuse to talk to white people? But I did not want to talk to them as I did not know them from Adam and I wanted them to leave me alone. Does that make me a witch, a liar and a prostitute? No. I was labelled a witch, a liar and a prostitute purely because I am a black woman and racists use such scapegoating because they believe theirs is a pure superior race. This is the mentality of elusive racists because they convince other black people who submit to them that they have black people’s interest at heart.

We live in a divided world, divided between rich and poor. There is no need for those who are struggling in this economic crisis to scapegoat other people what ever colour or shape they are. I am at the forefront of fighting against privatisation of the NHS in the UK to save jobs just as I am at the forefront of fighting against racism. The last thing I need is to waste my time and energies fighting against elusive racists who nearly destroyed my life. I work hard for every penny that I have and I don’t need any idiot judging me by what I have worked hard for. It is for this reason that I am prepared to destroy anyone who deliberately hurts me. We cannot rewrite the history and root causes of racism, but what we can do as working class people is to work together not only to prevent another holocaust, but also to take control of the means of production so as to free ourselves from the yolks of capital and write our own history.

They take my kindness as a weakness
They take my silence as stupidity
And when I fight back they call me aggressive