Getting serious about fighting racism

It does not do, in a society in which the balance of power rests overwhelmingly with the employer, to become dependent on the class power of the boss, says NICK WRIGHT writing in today's (6 August 2020) Morning Star

THE runaway success of the Black Lives Matter movement has shaken up politics and thrown up new — and not so new — practical and theoretical problems.

Inspired by a tragic event across the ocean, a whole new group of people has found that taking the knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds — the time it took for the life to be squeezed out of George Floyd by a Minnesota cop — is the catalyst for a whole new way of thinking about racism and politics in general.

For some people to adopt a posture like taking a knee — one now so deeply embedded in US sporting and political culture — seems to strike a false note in the specifically British context.

And some right-wing politicians and pundits hide behind this excuse to cloak their unease at this new movement.

But this is the way politics works today. What happens a continent or an ocean away seems so relevant here because it serves as a reminder that these things happen here also.

Symbolic acts have a powerful effect. Last weekend the parade through Brixton of black activists wearing bullet-proof vests — nothing could more powerfully make the point that young black men are in a specially vulnerable category — has stirred up the entirely predictable chorus of outrage.

There are calls from the right wing—— a category of politicians usually unconscious of irony — for the people on parade to prosecuted for wearing a political uniform as banned under legislation passed in the late ’30s.

This law, the Public Order Act, was supposedly to rid the streets of Oswald Mosley’s uniformed fascist thugs.

It is worth remembering that it was precisely at the insistence of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police that thousands of police were marshalled to force a way through the East End to facilitate the uniformed fascists in their aim to intimidate and terrorise.

A quarter of a million East Enders, communists, socialists, Jews and Irish dockers and their families, put a stop to that.

Uniformed fascists never again attempted to march through the East End, while in many parts the uniformed servants of the state still enjoy little respect.

For today’s Met to arrest black activists for calling attention to police violence might serve to demonstrate the political function of that force rather too forcibly for a government already under criticism.

In my modestly sized Kentish coastal town, we have an active anti-racist committee lately sprung into being.

Our Wednesday vigils — where increasing numbers take the knee — engender mixed responses.

One young activist has taken to data collection and she reports that appreciative horns honk, salutes are given and the greater part of the responses are supportive.

But not all. And when one van driver shouted out: “White lives matter!” there was a predictable response, some of it unprintable and all of it annoyed.

Controversy developed in the group when it was suggested that, as the company logo for which this character worked was visible on the van and a mobile phone had recorded his licence number, he should be pursued via his employer with a demand for disciplinary action taken against him.

And off a whole group of people went in righteous pursuit of this miserable creature.

At the same time a lively social media discussion developed about how people were responding to the controversy stirred up by BLM coverage in the media.

Some people were so upset by the reactions of their colleagues, friends and relatives that they broke off contact and “unfriended” them on various social media platforms.

I have to say that I disagreed strongly with both these approaches.

If we are serious about fighting racism and fascism we have to change the minds of millions of people and this is not easily done if we refuse to engage and reinforce barriers to dialogue that are already embedded in much of the political culture of these islands.

If we can’t convince our family, friends and workmates, who can we convince?

It is worth bringing out an issue which was extensively debated in the ’70s and ’80s.

The argument was that the term “racism” is most usefully deployed in relation to the systemic and institutionalised discrimination against black people.

Racialism, it was argued, has more explanatory power when applied to the thoughts, speech, actions and belief systems of people.

Things have moved on and we know what we mean but it is worth hanging on to that distinction.

When anti-racists retreat into their virtuous shell it looks like they are unable, or not confident enough, to challenge the racist assumptions that underlie each manifestation of hostility to BLM.

We cannot just ignore every expression of ideas which do not fit into a comfortable framework that assumes that these phenomena will go away if we refuse to engage with them.