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This is worth watching:
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Tax Research UK Blog is written by Richard Murphy unless otherwise stated and published by Tax Research LLP under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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Second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence:-
“…all Men are created equal,…”
not hard to re-word this today to read:-
“…all Men, Women and Children, irrespective of color, are created equal,…”
Trump and Johnson should have a desk sign made with these words on it just like former American president Harry Truman had “The BUCK STOPS here!” desk sign made for his desk:-
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/buck-stops-here-sign
🙂
I think that Dr Kendi hits the nail on the head about racism coming out of economic self interest is spot on (at around 5 minutes in). I’ve been having conversations with my children about this, one of whom is discovering communism and wants to works in Left wing organisations. This is not the first time economics – which is one of the core themes discussed here – has been associated with the production of discrimination of one form or another.
David Graeber in his book ‘Debt: The First 5000 Years’ relates the story that women in society lost their status (which apparently at one time was more equal to men) during times of economic stress, where they were effectively commoditised as way of seeing off debt.
I find the relationship between economics and discrimination/racism very plausible.
Yes
Thank you. Kendi’s observation about the relationship between economics in racism is an important one.
A good, thought provoking, interview there. It was the British Empire that invented racism was it not? Kendi just mentions colonialism, not specifying that it was the biggest coloniser that brought about the winning technique – will it ever be in the interests of those in power to stamp it out? Or even to discourage it? Yes times have changed, but the casual racism seems to be ever there – people don’t realise they do it – which is why this distinction of anti-racism is a good one. As a systemic problem, it really needs the majority of people to become aware and campaign against it. When you get one culture that believes it is inherently superior to all others, it’s quite astounding the things they think are normal to say and do. But I best not go down the route of stereotyping…
I think (and a quick search backs me up) that racism was first codified by Spain during the Spanish Inquisition.
A seed of hope perhaps – my impression is that, at least in England, that each successive generation is less racist than the last. That’s not to say that there is not more to be done, but the direction of travel is at least correct.
I am not sure how you conclude that
Racial inequality is massive in the UK
The Covid 19 experience shows that
And it is the result of racist policy
How can we be sure matters are progressing in that case?
Only 80 years gone by since the Naziz were exterminating and enslaving people! A very short period of time in evolutionary terms.
Maybe it’s just the people I hang around with? My general perception is of a generational sea-change against racism, particularly from younger generations, but as I said above, I see this as a seed of hope, not as an excuse to do nothing.
I realise that my above comment could easily be interpreted as “it’ll sort itself out”. My apologies, it wasn’t meant that way. I guess I was trying to share some of my hope for the future.
I would suggest that there is a time lag between new generations with reduced racist attitudes and implementation of anti-racist policy. Again, this is not a call to sit back and do nothing, merely an observation that the reduction in racist views I think I see in each younger generation is unlikely to manifest at this moment as policy. But as I said, not a reason to stop the fight.
> How can we be sure matters are progressing in that case?
Continue the good fight. I think hope is that with reduced racism within the population, introduction of anti-racist policy will become easier, or even mandated at the ballot box. Beyond that: keep talking to people; keep engaging and trying to change attitudes; call out racism where you can and try to change minds. I think your work is a contributing factor, and I find it to be one of my more significant inspirations.
Anyway, as I feel that I’m rambling, I’ll finish by saying that I think it important to hold and share grains of hope, especially at the moment.
I do see hope amongst many young people
But I don’t as yet see the changes in attitude on race that I have seen on women’s and LGBTQ rights, for example, over my life
Hence the comment
We have to remain anti-racist
@ Johan G
I have had long-standing association with the black community both personally and professionally in London and the NW. I can assure you there has been very little change over the decades. Difficult to measure but if anything it may even be worse now, not least because of the rhetoric that has emanated from the likes of the EDL, the English Democrats, UKIP (although it denies any racist tendency) and other nationalist organisations. You know the culprits.
A problem with racism in England is that it lurks beneath the surface within all social strata, veneered over with a thin layer of deceptive politeness and apparent reasonableness, viz. “I can assure you I’m not racist”. As it’s an issue close to my heart, I could go on at some length but I’m not a qualified sociologist, so it is just my personal grass-roots experience among a fairly wide spectrum of society, including I’m ashamed to say even ‘friends’ and relatives. Suffice to say it’s unequivocally shameful.
However, I believe there is a meaningful shift away from this ingrained prejudice – among Generations Y, Z and Alpha, not least perhaps in part due to the influence of black music. Hip- Hop/Rap has become one of the world’s dominant music genres (https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2018/01/03/rap-overtakes-rock-most-popular-genre-among-music-fans-heres-why/990873001). Similarly one cannot overlook the incrementally positive influence of black sports people, actors and comedians, et al.
For anyone who wants to understand what’s at the heart of the BLM movement – again from an American perspective but relevant elsewhere – and to appreciate how little has changed over the intervening years, this recently re-released 1969 Dick Cavett interview with James Baldwin is worth watching. Unfortunately the sound quality isn’t brilliant and the young 33 year-old Cavett has difficulty with some of what Baldwin so eloquently & eruditely explains – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE.
I have seen that James Baldwin interview. I’d beg anyone to watch it
Like you I do not see much progress
I do find the attitude of the vast majority of students significantly more enlightened though
Going back to the first reply by Johan G: that it was the Spanish what done it, I think therein lies the big fundamental problem here – the British Empire and people’s attitude to what they believe it is. Maybe it didn’t ‘invent’ racism, but it applied it wholesale throughout the world – and it owned most of the world there for a while – to its own benefit. It used it to strip countries of assets, destroy cultures, commit genocide and torture with impunity. What the British Empire did invent were concentration camps – that’s where the Germans got the idea from.
By dehumanising whole races and cultures the British Empire justified the atrocities it committed, slave trading was just one aspect to my mind.
Until we start looking at the real histories, own up to the actual atrocities committed, stop defending a dead and defunct British Imperial project, stop feeling inherently superior because of it: we will never lose that inherently racist attitude. Deflection, by saying that it was Spain in this case, is one of the main techniques used to avoid owning up to the cruel history (usually you hear ‘France was just as bad’ etc). That rosy glow of satisfaction as you consider how Great the British Empire was and how superior you are because of it – very effective propaganda to control the masses – is what you need to lose to make any kind of progress in accepting other cultures and peoples as equal. Different is not something to fear or denigrate or try to change, it’s what makes the world an interesting and exciting place to live in. You don’t have to be superior to have your own culture and to be proud of it, and a society whose only identity is based on such feelings is not a pleasant one.
There have been recent calls to teach ‘real history’ in schools – as if the State would allow that! – and if they did it would be good, but it needs to start with us the people finding out what it is, accepting it, and moving on to a better place.
If you want to be anti-racist, start by owning up to the darker more unpleasant parts of our histories, and then re-examine your attitudes to other cultures.
Hear, hear
The transporting of people like cattle, often girls for exploitation, into the UK has been going on, largely unnoticed in plain sight; for decades. People are illegally brought in and transported around the country to work under ‘gangmasters’, that we knew nothing about, until disaster strikes. In February, 2004 no less than 21 unlawfully transported Chinese workers were drowned, harvesting cockles in Morecambe Bay.
Our ignorance is a function of our indifference, which leads to complacent disregard of what happens in front of us; which is rather Kendi’s point; isn’t it?
Yes, it is
I seem to have unintentionally hit a nerve.
@ John D:
Thank you for your more informed insight. I’m saddened that things are worsening. I’ve had my own unfortunate run ins with the BNP – not an experience I would recommend, even such mild confrontation as I experienced.
I should possibly have been more specific in my original comments. I am of mid gen y, and I meant that I personally observe gen y/z to be generally more racially enlightened. I assume for now that gen alpha will continue this trend, but as they’re still very young I couldn’t really comment
@ Contrary
I think our clash is a result of my pedantry. I genuinely didn’t mean any deflection by my comment, I think I just like sharing facts. I can see how it could have been interpreted as an attempt at “get out of jail free”. Anyway, I agree with the rest of what you wrote and I hope it wasn’t a personal attack on me. I’m not here to pick fights.
In fairness, it’s not the first time I’ve come a cropper for my pedantry. That’s ok, as long as we’re all on the same page eventually 🙂
@ John S
I can’t believe the Morecambe bay cockle pickers was both that long ago and also that recently. It was big news locally but I don’t remember any significant uproar or change coming about as a result. Then again, I was young and not politically interested so I likely wouldn’t have noticed regardless.
Talking of understanding the heart of the BLM movement,
– The aforementioned 1969 Dick Cavett interview with James Baldwin crops up in a documentary on BBC iplayer which is entirely narrated by the words of James Baldwin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kbk6/arena-i-am-not-your-negro
– “13th” a documentary on Netflix is also a good, reveals how the prison system that arose from the civil war has entrenched racial inequality
– Lastly, slightly off topic but here’s an interesting discussion with one of the founders of XR on how racial justice is a prerequisite to climate justice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U7PYZCObtk&t=1459s
Thanks
Thank you for sharing.
Only one point I’d have questioned, that racism, the systematic hierarchical classification of peoples into racial groups, started at the time European nations used the slave trade to enrich their monarchs & supporting elites.
I’d like this historical point confirmed by historians, ethnologists or other experts specialised in European but also non-European societies.
Whatever the deep origin of racism however, it seems clear that the massive organised colonialism which took place in the recent past spread it wide and fast, with huge repercussions till this day.
I like the intellectual honesty and the calm questioning in this interview.
In ‘How to Be an Antiracist’ Prof Ibram X. Kendi‎ suggests so
Thanks, clearly worth a read. On the list it goes.
Hmmmm……………I think that we have been kidding ourselves for a long time about racism being in decline in this country.
I once had a lecturer tell me that the issue of class was now not a viable theory either!! I looked at him gone out when he said it. I think the appearance of the UK being a profitable and rich society before 2008 papered over many of the racial and class cracks in it.
I lived in Lewisham for 6 years, a very racially mixed area with its own tensions but relatively peaceful. But the worst places I went to in London were Peckham (where I was investigating a new social housing development for some Uni coursework) and Hackney (where my partner and I went to a well known Indian vegetarian restaurant one night). In both cases the tension was palpable, it was akin to being in a police state with police seemingly everywhere in cars. I think Peckham was the worst – I obviously stuck out like sore thumb walking up the high street from the station with a camera strapped around my neck and notebook. I felt very uncomfortable – I felt anger and resentment following me along as I went. And in both cases, these areas looked run down, ill kept although in a way they were also vibrant and had a life of their own. In South London’s Lewisham, the place black and white colleagues advised me to keep away from was Eltham – I think Steven Lawrence was killed there. I never went.
The other thing I remember about serving BAME tenants in London was an instant distrust and wariness because I was white. I was always stepping into some sort of past racial incident and it took time to build relationships and trust – but I was so naïve and it was all new and interesting (I’d got work through the University on my housing degree) and I just ploughed on.
As I’ve said before here on this blog, I worked in social housing in London in the 1990’s and saw how competition for housing could induce casual racism between multi-ethnic racial groups, never mind between black and white groups.
It seems to me that stressful situations seem to bring these attitudes out. I sat on a train last year only to see a young Afro-Caribbean chap come back on the train because he had left his phone. He could not find it and then immediately started to accuse an ethnic African bloke (who took the same train as me on a regular basis for years) of taking it (he even called him an African ****) but we other (mostly white) passengers in the carriage stuck up for the African because they hadn’t seen him move and some were on speaking terms with him (we always exchange a friendly good morning as he always talks to others who join the train later).
Economics is one thing however, (and rather than say its connection to racism is plausible I’d up rate that to ‘certain’) but how do you explain the Windrush scandal? That is deliberate, calculated institutional racism in my book, designed to create division and cultivate support from racist citizens for the Government pursuing it.
And I ‘m going to tell this story (If I’ve told it before forgive me).
My degree sandwich year was spent in a well known (one could say infamous) London local authority associated with a well known heiress to a well known retail empire.
The LA had a tenant whom was known as ‘Mr Smelly’. He was an elderly polish gentleman who shuffled in and out of various offices and one stop shops and no-one could wait to get him out because he did smell bad. Well anyway, one day this chap comes my way based at a local estate office (and may I say that the staff I worked with at the LA LEO were brilliant and committed unlike the allocation teams who shunted the polish gentleman around until then). I was managing some short life housing for housing applicants and Mr Polish was now one of my tenants under license. He shuffled slowly into his flat after I got him there. Well, the smell was really bad, and other residents began to complain. Not even air fresheners helped. I had a really bad cold and could smell nothing so one day I visited him. One way or another I got to the problem. The poor man was terrified of me. The issue had nothing to do with his personal hygiene; the issue was his legs. He had deep vein thromboses in both legs, so that his calves were swelling with restricted blood flow. This was causing the skin on his lower legs to break out into sores. The smell was the plasma and blood secreting through his skin under pressure and literally decomposing on top. He put germylene cream on top to try to control the infection and smell. I was astounded as I had had a DVT in my left leg in 1994 and knew how much pain he would be in – hence the shuffling (he handed me some paperwork that gave me a bit of history).
There was one other thing that I saw as I took him through the problem – he had a tattoo on his inner forearm – an inmate number from the Nazis. I remember staring at the arm for a long time as I took it in. I had just encouraged this man to partially undress in front of me so that I could help him and the other residents. Yes, he was a Polish Jew. God knows what he thought I was trying to do!?
Well anyway, I called an ambulance immediately and off we went to St Marys hospital in Paddington and I stayed with him for hours until the A&E doctor came because there was no-one else. Said Doctor was incandescent when he arrived finding a man in this condition until I managed to tell him what I’d done and how my intervention had come about. So, Mr Polish (I still remember his real name from over 20 years ago ) was now going to be looked after properly and would no longer be smelly ( I followed it up and his life got better as a result, his condition meant that his housing application – he had been made homeless as a private tenant – was prioritised because of his condition).
But the point is not my own role in this, but that even the so-called caring services had just seen Mr Polish as a smell – not a person who needed help. This perception of him became casualised – many could not see beyond the smell. You can reIate this behaviour to any form of discrimination via colour, race, gender, nationality. I cannot feel proud of even helping Mr Polish because I was a part of the system that prolonged his suffering and his negation as a human being.
I’m relating this story now because I think that the message is clear in the context of RLB: don’t fall for casualised discrimination. Think. Question. Look with your own eyes. Look beyond if you can.
Even more so given the speed and way in which in which social media works. Jaron Lanier has some relevant things to say about this here (I have read his book – this is a sort of extract) and he thinks that social media amplifies some of our worst behaviours:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/27/jaron-lanier-six-reasons-why-social-media-is-a-bummer
And so we learn; though experience, one step at a time.
Rights do not stand alone; they depend on their objective recognition, on the reciprocal duties of others. There are no rights if you are stranded alone on a desert island. The duties entailed by reciprocal rights are informed by a sense of justice that points not to the rights of others, which we may observe solely by abstract acknowledgement of their existence alone (and leave the right holder to it), but by recognition that their rights may require, in adversity and ‘at the touch’, our reciprocal duty to others to be performed; not just not-racism, but anti-racism.