As we saw the dying embers of a chilly November gradually give way to December 2018, in what proved to be, one of the most turbulent political years, in the post war period, Britain’s leading, left wing paper, the Guardia announced it was to publish, over the course of an entire week, a series of articles, entitled Bias In Britain highlighting the extent of "unconscious bias" and prejudice here in the UK.
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| Guardian: Bias In Britain. |
Brexit and austerity have combined to amplify both the common gross racism of the streets and football terraces in addition to Parliament and Whitehall. Their combined affects has resulted in a doubling down of racism on Britain’s Black communities.
A Black community that, even prior to the financial crash of 2008, was already suffering acute institutional and societal racism resulting in economic exclusion, is now suffering the profound effects of Brexit, that has seen the resurgence of much more muscular, devastating and aggressive form of racism.
My initial response was to welcome the news, after all in these #Brexit obsessed, rancorous times, such a detailed expose of British racism, in our mainstream media, is a very rare event indeed.
However, being a veteran race activist and a recognised expert in the area of race discrimination. I was also little anxious.
There are two principle reasons for this, the first from an unapologetically black perspective; the periodic public and political debate’s on ‘racism’ over the last 20 years, can be characterised by the angst, deep anxiety, uncertainty, sometimes anger, and shed loads of denial and disappointment. The second is in-spite of these reports we've made virtually no progress in the last 20 years in reducing race inequality.
Such sterility of debate and inquiry, have come to typify British debates on racism. Such discussions tend to generate, lots of heat and very light. they're often painful discussions that are far too often derailed by white anxiety, anger, fragility or outright denial.
It’s one of the reasons why, over the course of the last decade, both the incidence of racism, racial prejudice and substantive racial inequality in Britain, has exploded.
Britain’s failure to learn lessons from it’s inglorious, imperial past provides an explanation.
History teaches us that all European economies under stress ,always see’s right wing elites, foaming at the mouth, eager to scapegoat domestic minorities and ramp up racism, as means of distracting people from identifying the real authors of their economic misfortune, i.e. politicians and masters of the universe in the financial services sector.
When it come to the issue of “racism”, for black people, everyday is like Groundhog Day.
What we hear is a lot of talk, and what we see is a surfeit of academic and policy analysis, foregrounded by acute shortage of political action and popular indifference.
What we hear is a lot of talk, and what we see is a surfeit of academic and policy analysis, foregrounded by acute shortage of political action and popular indifference.
In my 35-year experience, such investigations, reports and media articles, on the whole, tend to be conceptually weak, reactionary, anodyne and lacking in terms of both their depth of analysis and ability to arrive at recommendations, capable of making a difference.
We are so very tired of explaining the blindingly bleeding obvious.
Exhausted of being ‘researched’ and of being ignored. Tired of being marginalised as third class citizens in a supposed ‘first-class democracy’, so the last thing we need, is actually more research, analysis and more white middle class angst and prevarication.
And let’s face it, British black communities must be one of the most researched ethnic communities in Europe other than the Roma community.
There are literally decades of these endless reports, investigations and media exposes, all identifying real, serious, substantive racial discrimination, stretching back over decades.
All conscientiously written, painstakingly assembled and published at great public expense.
These reports sometimes catch the publics attention for a hot minute and then are duly forgotten.
There are at least, a couple of aircraft campaigners somewhere in Surrey, where these things are stored. Stacks upon stacks of largely white people's reports, on the nature of racism and what outlining what they’re going to do about.
So yes, I was a little anxious and for good reason.
My additionally worry was, that if the Guardian, reputedly the most progressive left wing paper in the country, cant get this right, with its diverse roster of black journalist and columnists, then we’re in deep, deep trouble.
And these are contentious and troubling times ,with the toxic and hysterical Brexit debate in rancid, full hysterical flow. It is therefore, important that any mainstream media contributions to the debate
on racism, do take us forward.
Problem is, that much of the British left today and in particular, the Labour movement, are totally confused about racism, preferring the traditional and much rehearsed, Punch and Judy, set piece politics, of ‘anti fascism’ that results in chasing Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage around the country, as opposed to focusing on 50% black youth unemployment, racist policing, criminalisation and immigration policy.
The left’s obsession with fascism comes at the huge expense of failing to support British black communities in tackling substantive institutionalised racism.
So yes I was concerned and anxious. My hope was the ethics of progressive journalism we saw reflected the Guardians excellent coverage of the 2011, disturbances surrounding the death of Mark Duggan, would mean the Guardian would feel a special ethical responsibility to make sure it does justice to these difficult issues.
Whilst the former certainly did, these later articles were for me, less than impressive.
But before we get into all of that, let me clear the semantic decks.
For the purposes of this article to avoid the repetitive use of the dreaded acronym BAME, I will use the term black, as an all inclusive term to describe non white British peoples of African, Caribbean and Asian descent.
I detest the designation, now ubiquitous, of describing all black peoples as ‘ethnic minorities.’
Excuse me?
Let’s be absolutely clear about this, as black and brown British people, we are part of a worldwide global majority, we are no ones minority, whatever the particular national context.
Global demographic growth trends tells us that today and well into the future, the world will look increasingly black and brown, and white people are now the world's newest ethnic minorities.
This may seem a small semantic point to some, but it’s an incredibly important part of a progressive black perspective and analysis.
Lets talk content, the authors of these endless supply of the of 'race focused reports' , sometimes written by academics, sometimes campaigning non-governmental organisations, tend, in the main, to be white middle class professionals or one of the small number of emerging black bourgeoisie.
Whilst both are happy to identify the disproportionate outcomes of discrimination, they become much more coy and reticent about identifying it’s causes, preferring to conclude that the issue of British racism is "complex" and requires "further investigations” and that we suffer an assault of daily "micro-aggressions".
This issue of the use of language is very, very important because, as we know, language has the power to define, confirm or undermine and deny people's lived experience and realities.
Reading this series of articles, although very much welcomed in general, I’m not at all sure the Guardian got the balance right.
Contrast the tepid language of "unconscious bias" as an explanation of the catastrophic prejudice and injustice endured by black people at the hands of white people, and contrast with the recent comments made by the UN Special Rapporteur[3]on racism, xenophobia and intolerance in Britain.
The response from UN representative Ms Tenadayo Achiume was unequivocal and explicit in her strong condemnation of the UK.
She said;
"I am shocked by the criminalisation of young people from ethnic minorities, especially young black men. They are overrepresented in police stop and searches, more likely to face prosecution…"
Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the efforts of the Guardian to exposé the real realities of racism, but where is the radical articulation of the politics of black liberation, equality and justice?
It’s critically important, we don’t ‘dumb down’ the problem of racism in the UK, to "attitudinal or unconscious bias", small, localised domestic problem, when in reality, what we have is a full-scale crisis of state legitimacy, a full-scale human rights problem, that is negatively affecting and destroying the lives, hopes and aspirations of millions of black British people.
Here’s my disappointment, from Windrush to school exclusions, from prison population to the ethnic pay gap, onto mental health and well being, endemic levels of poverty and sky high unemployment, I would have expected the Guardian to be able to bring together the bigger picture, with much more focus on the routine denial of human rights and our rights as supposed British citizens.
By that, I mean ensuring that the full political implications and legal context, of our political and human right infringements and oppression, i.e. that of of increasing institutionalised racism, prejudice and bias is fully explored.
Reading the whole piece, I can find no radical agenda for change at all. Surely this is a missed opportunity that could have been used to ventilate radical demands for change.
And it’s not like the Guardian doesn’t have the journalists or individuals, who could deliver such insight and articulation.
The quotes from a range of black activists were welcomed and insightful, but again, by and large, their comments as printed, seemed largely descriptive rather than demand led or solution focused.
Is there a big idea/answer to the question of what do we do about racism in Britain in this series of articles?
If there was, I didn’t see it. And that’s the problem right there, paralysis of analysis.
As a fifth generation Black Britain, I'm not interested in this perennial paralysis of analysis and the mealy mouthed expression of equality, quoted from a standard operating model, torn from straight from White Pages. the white privileged, mainstream, equality and diversity training manual.
Endless research and insipid conclusions have only resulted in bone aching, incremental progress and now under austerity, the reverse race equality regression.
Put simply, is it too much to ask to have race equality in my lifetime?
And if that’ not forthcoming, then we should embark on a radical campaign of economic boycotts and civil disobedience, until such time as we are able to place race equality back on the political agenda and win back our hard won rights.
To do that, we need the British left, including the Guardian to wake up to the realities of racism and to help elevate and ventilate our struggle for equality and justice. The real reality is, we are suffering from the most egregious invasion of our citizenship rights ever seen in Britain in the post-war period.
In addition, we need to stop talking about the discrimination we face in a purely parochial and uninformed way, that downgrades and dumbs down, the very real and substantive racial inequality and discrimination we face. It's nothing more than a fundamental violation of our human rights. We do have important historical precedents for demanding our plight is recognised at the highest level. African American icon Malcolm X understood the importance of not restricting the US civil rights struggle, to the stifling confines of small town, Jim Crown America.
Speaking in 1964 Malcolm said,
“We have to make the world see that the problem that we’re confronted with is a problem for humanity. It’snot a Negro problem; it’s not an American problem. You and I have to make it a world problem…”[4]
He understood the importance of just how we articulate and where we advocate for justice.
To often in Britain, we can allow our struggle to be domesticated, relegated to simple appeals “to do the right thing”. We end up pleading to the very institutions, Governments and people who are primarily responsible for the continued racism we face.
For example, following the publication of the Stephen Lawrence Report[5]in 1999, there has been a successful " countercoup" backlash, led by deeply reactionary forces, and initiated by senior police officers at the time, and fully supported by successive Labour Home Secretaries, following Jack Straw MP.
Their sole aim was to get rid of and discard the use of term “institutional racism“ in relation to modern policing, and they did this with the full support of Trevor Phillips, the then Chair of Commission for Race Equality (CRE)
Today as we can see, the important lessons of Lawrence Inquiry report, have been squandered and lost[6]. The gains that were made have withered on the vine or simply evaporated in the searing xenophobic heat of Brexit. The deeply rooted virus of institutionalised racism that was identified, was not routed and after a brief period of recession, has now become massively amplified.
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| Black Activists Rising Against The Cuts. |
Frankly, I expected more from the Guardian.
Racism, just like any other contractible social disease, where the patient decides to only take half of the prescribed medicine, the infection has now aggressively returned and is worse than ever.
Such timidity has receipts too.
In the wake of McPherson we saw an determined and co-ordinated effort to ‘depoliticise’ police racism, and adopt a liberal preference for the moderate professional language of human resource management theory and diversity, language and terminologies that have now come to dominate discussions of racial inequality and prejudice in the UK.
This is reflective of another British canard about racism, the idea that substantive, systemic, racism is largely a thing of the past and that today, were just dealing with a view errant idiotic individuals and series of one off, largely isolated incidents.
The liberal confusion extends to many British trade unions, which have invested millions in combating the perceived and potential dangers of fascism, have largely ignored the toxic effects of institutionalised racism.
I assume it is easier to organise demonstration against fake fascism then real racism, particularly where it involves powerful state institutions, such as the police, prisons or immigration service for example.
It's a way of being seen to do something, whilst doing nothing.
More generally, the British left and their liberal allies, have reduced the complex problems and deep power politics of racial inequality and anti racism, down to a simple, people management, diversity and/or equality, community outreach/engagement strategy.
Effectively tackling racism requires the relinquishing of power and authority by white people. It's a deeply uncomfortable and confrontation political project and quite frankly cannot be divorced from its subjective reality and historical contexts.
The full facts of the matter are, that when it comes to racism, Britain is in deep, deep denial about the scale of its problem.
This is further evidenced, by the fact that when it comes to decreasing racial inequality and increasing black representation, both in the workplace or in public life more generally, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of pounds, has been spent on ‘diversity strategy consultants’, thousands of race equality reports have been written, and countless media exposures too, we’ve nevertheless regressed as a nation.
When we look in the boardroom, in the classroom and the courtroom, what we see the grindingly slow incremental progress, achieved at monumental costs simply to achieve a staggering slow, glacial rate pace of progress.
The only real progress we've seen is the progression of individual people's careers as a consequence of writing these reports.
This intellectual ‘pimping and cultural expropriation’ of black communities lived experience of racism, captured by white liberals, academics and mainstream race equality organisations, is something we’ve become used to in Britain. Like our culture, even our suffering is expropriated, repackaged and monetised for the benefit of others.
Academics, journalists, race equality practioners enter the urban jungle on exotic safari, take their pictures, talk to the natives, then leave town, write book and become celebrities or instant "experts" on the nature of the black condition and the "complex" dynamics of racism, without a thank you, by your leave, kiss my arse, good bye or nothing.
Too many simply use the black experience of racism, as a jumping off point to develop their own careers, without putting anything back into the communities they pimp.
All sorts of professionals export our intellectual, cultural and social assets, which are harvested, repackaged and leveraged without a second thought for the communities suffering disadvantage.
So with that in mind, I went on to read all of the articles, studies and readers letters, and I was struck by the repetitive use of the terms "unconscious bias" and by the terms "micro-aggressions", terms that, in our experience, usually indicate an unwillingness for white people to own the issue of racism.
What I found surprising in the Guardian series of articles and reinforces my key point, is there is virtually no mention of the central issue, that is the cause of so much racial inequality and exclusion, namely institutionalised racism.
Racial inequality in Britain, has become greatly aggravated, exacerbated and amplified by austerity and the toxic atmosphere created by Brexit. Institutional racism in Britain today, is both resurgent and rampant.
All have contributed to increasing rate of racial inequalities to such an extent, that it now poses the very real risk of inflaming racial tensions according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. [7]
I would go further, much further, than the Commission and suggest that these tensions, after a decade of austerity and increasing inequality, will inevitably explode onto our streets, with the usual devastating and tragic consequences.
The Guardian helpfully explained, it’s intentions in publishing this important series of articles as follows…
“Unconscious or implicit bias is one part of the explanation for why, despite equalities being enshrined in law, minority groups are still at a disadvantage in many parts of life.
In this series, Bias in Britain, we're exploring some of the ways unconscious bias plays out in the real world. For example, we conducted a poll which found that ethnic minorities are much more likely to report being suspected of shoplifting, refused entry to bars and clubs or being unfairly overlooked for promotion at work.“
It went on to add in the penultimate paragraph of their explanation,
“While some of our biases may begin on an unconscious level, experts caution that the concept of unconscious bias should not absolve people of discriminatory behaviour.
Now I absolutely sure these articles educated some white people on the issue, however I found the penultimate explanatory paragraph above, represented a profound understatement and potentially left the reader with the confused impression that institutional racismand unconscious biasare some how, two different things.
It's worth reminding ourselves that the 1999 MacPherson Report into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence concluded institutional racism as defined as,
"The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotypingwhich disadvantage minority ethnic people."
Such a definition was initially useful, particularly within the context of senior public and political figures, fully accepted the application of this definition, as it applied to their own organisations and institutions, most notably the police.
However, the current regressive confusion about race and racism has helped foster the idea, now sadly commonplace in Britain, that you can have racism and racist outcomes, without any individual racists or institutionalised racism.
Such prejudice is nothing if not irrational.
The idea that you can have an institutional racist organisation without a single conscious act of racism or overly racist person within it, and equally that racist incident’s within institutions, does not automatically translate into an organisation being deemed as institutionally racist.
The Guardian Bias in Britainattitudinal survey is helpful [8]as it confirms in general, what we as black people have known all along, that white people just don’t get racism.
The gap in understanding of racism is huge and illuminates the profound difficulty some have in recognising and confronting the realities of racism in the UK
Such wholesale and widespread discrimination as identified in the survey, can only be maintained and delivered on the scale revealed, through systematic and cultural institutional discrimination, driven by cultural practices of white individuals, within organisations and institutions. Who care whether its unconscious or nit, the effects ar just the same. If a sleep walking man kills some, the victim is still dead, whatever the psychological, physiological stage of the murderer.
I’m not waiting for the benign enlightenment to emerge form their unconscious state of racism. I want affordable, accessible strong anti racist legalisation now.
As Professor Eldar Shafir Princeton University quoted in the Guardian articles states:
“When you tap my knee with a reflex hammer and I kick, that's a reflex. I'm still kicking you a minute later, that's something else."
We’ll all be here for another three hundred years, waiting for white people to give us justice.
No… we have already earned the right to be treated equally and today we have to radically organise ourselves to take justice and secure our rights for future generations.
Back to the series of investigative articles, the series was kicked off with the results of an ICM survey commissioned by the Guardian, of 1000 by ethnic minority peoples.
The result’s confirmed, that which again we, as black people know already, and that is huge swathes Britain's black populations, perceive themselves to be subject to wholesale race discrimination and disadvantage, and that by and large, white people in Britain in 2018, still have no clue about the realities of racism faced by their fellow citizens.
The survey concludes. “…thatunconscious bias has a negative effect on the lives of Britain’s 8.5 million people from minority backgrounds…"
I must admit my hackles began to rise as I read, the gently massaging, nuanced language, of the Guardian, that seemed completely incongruous with their own findings and what we know from other studies.
The Guardian’s editorial on this matter dryly observed:
“It is the norms that need changing, so that they prohibit rather than permit biased behaviour. This means taking a long, hard look at ourselves as a nation to see how we end up discriminating when we don’t mean to.”
For Christ sake, how long do you need?
Here again we see the modulating influence, white liberal approach to racism, by taking a serious issue, exploring it in some depth and yet arrive at the most derisory of conclusions.
I also have to take issue with the article written by senior assistant editor at the Guardian, journalist, Hugh Muir, a friend and colleague for many years, who wrote in a contributory article
"It has been easy, while reading the reports of how unconscious prejudice affects millions of lives, too point an angry finger; but that's too easy because so many of us are complicit."
Although there is much that I agree with him on in the article, I have to differ with him on this important point.
The fact is, and as these series of articles themselves demonstrate, we are facing the largest and most sustained assault on our fundamental human rights, that we've seen in the last 50 years, ranging from the denial of access to equality of justice, arbitrary detention and illegal deportation, access to education, housing, health and employment opportunities.
What we see, is social, economic and political justice denied, whilst we are, as British citizens, routinely and erroneously suspected, disbelieved and excluded, simply because of the colour of our skins.
The truth is, the ameliorating voices of incremental progress, the "winning hearts and minds" approach of non-confrontational, consensus accommodation and compromise, have had their day.
Over the last 20 or so years, and certainly since the publication of the Stephen Lawrence report, we have seen black people pleading, often on bended knee, for people in power, to do the right thing.
This quiet, undignified diplomacy has been the predominant mode of engagement with governments, businesses and the wider civil society, by those seeking progress through incremental reform.
I'm sorry, but today, our own young people cannot wait for the benign enlightenment of those in power to be afforded full citizenship, equality and social Justice.
Power concedes nothing without demand and truth be told, our demands to date have been weak, fragmented and contradictory.
All radical reform, such as affirmative action laws, reparations for slavery and colonialism, radical reform of the criminal justice system, the establishment of Black focused local schools and universities, are all examples of ideas capable of delivery substantive change in our lifetime, and all have been shunned, rejected in preference for incremental change and capturing "hearts and minds.”
We really need to abandon our "Kumbya" approach to achieving equality.
What we really need is to get angry and organised and shut down British society, forcing it to pay attention, through powerful consumer boycotts, organise non-violent civil disobedience, political education and mobilisation, in order to secure our God-given rights.
Black British citizens are living our lives imprisoned by the worst fears and nightmares of white imagination. This is intolerable and it behoves us to radically articulate and organise in defence of our human rights, and those of our children.
In these turbulent times, where the future is uncertain and racial inequality on the rise, the responsibility lies with this generation to do whatever'snecessary in order to secure full citizenship rights, as is our birthright.
Fundamental citizen rights, secured by the blood price, stolen sweat equity and 500 year oppression of our ancestors and our countries of origin, whose people and resources were stolen and used to enrich the "mother country".
Hugh, metaphorically, we need angry raised fists, not open acquiescent palms.
I was a little more impressed with Guardian journalist contributor Afau Hirsch’s[9]article in terms of it’s insight and attempts to "join up the dots" of our lived experience of racism.
She describes how racism destroys, and distorts social and civil relationships, to the point where humanity is no longer recognisable, where pain, depression and rejection replace hope, optimism and opportunity.
Hirsh ably sets out the day-to-day drubbing we endure as black British citizens.
One of the most pernicious aspects of our oppression is the physical and psychological degradation of our common humanity, citizenship and integrity, which comes at great personal cost to our physical and mental health and well-being.
The consequent psychological stress we suffer, comes from having to constantly legitimise and justify our presence in this country. We are rarely believed as black British citizens; we live our day-to-day lives under constant watch, criticism and suspicion.
However, here again, the language used, even in her article, lacks the urgent acknowledgement and articulation of the scale of, what are without doubt, the most fundamental human rights abuses seen in a generation.
It's almost as if, as described by Franz Fanon, we feel somewhat constrained in our own articulation of our real reality
I’m all for conversations that foster understanding, but the unpalatable truth is most White people are no longer listening to us when it comes to the issue of racism.
They have concluded as a consequence of their experience, that we are a people so redundant in ethical leadership, so politically and economically marginalised, that we are easily bought off, and seemingly incapable of maintaining any degree of political unity around any given subject.
They paid attention for a brief moment around the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, when they recognised how easy we could be played, it was a no-brainer, to walk away.
That's precisely why, this government felt so emboldened as to literally take black British citizens, the Windrush generation, and illegally detain and deport them, without batting an eyelid. The extent of theses bare faced, liberties being taken by this government and wider British society, should give us a crystal clear indication of the general loathing and contempt we are all held in.
Do not discount the rising anger of a new generation of young black people that are simply not prepared to sit quietly and be denied their hard-won citizenship rights.
That will be achieved by challenging racism as consumers, providing challenges to business and legal challenges to Government in the Supreme Court, whilst mobilising communities. .
First we have to change the paradigm and that requires that we replace liberal confusion with radical black certainty.
We know what it takes to achieve equality, now lets go out and get it, uncompromisingly, head held high, ditching the moderate expressions of the past and delivering a powerfully confident assertive vision of our futures.
To the Guardian, those who know better, should do better.
[1]Guardian Newspaper: Bias in Britain; A series of reports on the hidden impact of everyday racism. Sunday 2nd December to Friday the 5thof December 2019
[2]UN rights experts voice concerns about ‘structural racism’ in United Kingdom. UN News 27thApril 2018
[3]UN expert warns of 'stark increase' in hate crimes across UK, post-Brexit vote. UN News 11thMay 2018
[4]Malcolm X, July 1964 The Second Organization of African American Unity Rally. http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-second-oaau-rally-july-5-1964.html
[5]The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Sir William McPherson of Cluny. February 1999
[6]Police still 'institutionally racist' 25-years after Stephen Lawrence murder, Archbishop of York suggests. “Independent 22ndApril 22018
[7]Widespread inequality risks increasing racial tensions, wans Commission. 18thAugust 2016.
[8]Bias in Britain: explore the poll results. Guardian 2 December 2018. 18.00GMT
