All lives matter. It should never have been anything else. But we have in our world – in some places more than others – an ugly attitude called racism. The burning issue today is captured by the slogan Black Lives Matter. Racism lurks around many corners, mainly to the detriment of black people.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But let’s try. And first we need to be clear about what isn’t racism. There is nothing wrong with noting – preferably to yourself – that a person is white, brown, yellow or purple. The last shade, incidentally, is what you should go when you do encounter racist behaviour. But visually distinguishing a person by colour is no more prejudicial than doing so in reference to height, weight, hair colour or speaking accent. What is wrong is to think that a fat or short person, or someone of colour, is inferior because of that.
So what is racism? Among the many definitions, I will suggest – the irrational, predetermined and negative attitude to people of another race.
Let’s start with a positive – I don’t recall ever having heard anyone say that a black person is inferior, though there is clearly a negative attitude among many white people. How many, is a key but unquantified issue. No ethnic group is superior to another. Unless of course you’re talking about athletics! Most of the world champions are black. And no one minds that one bit. Usain Bolt is everyone’s hero. Did you hear the cheers of the predominantly white crowd as Tiger Woods won the 2019 US golf Masters? Barack Obama was for eight years the most powerful man in the world, put there by American voters, largely white. Singers and dancers – we’ve loved them. People of all skin colours have shown special skills and achievements over the centuries. So let’s enjoy all that.
But first we have to analyse what this current “racism” is all about. In a very broad sense we can look at it in terms of, firstly, nasty actions by whites against blacks, and, secondly, an underlying dislike or resentment in some whites against their black fellow human beings. The second feeds the first but it is the first that hits the news. And statistically each of those nasty actions is invariably carried out by a minute proportion of the world’s population. All the good work of recent decades damaged by just a few rather unpleasant people. But an underlying resentment towards blacks does appear to exist among many people.
The history of this goes back a long way. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years but in the United States the centuries of slavery saw a racial polarisation – an appallingly cruel treatment of blacks. In reality it existed long after slavery was abolished. As recently as sixty years ago a group of white Americans got away with killing a black teenager, Emmet Till, because he was alleged to have flirted with a white shopkeeper in one of the southern states. The Ku Klux Klan mob activities led to unpunished brutality, including murder, of black people. It was up to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s to make the acceleration of equal rights a reality. But it is still a very raw and recent memory for black people in the USA. Only time will remove that pain.
Elsewhere in the world, black people also got a pretty nasty deal. In 1948 the Nationalist party in government in South Africa formalised racial discrimination and respective rights to the detriment of black citizens. Tame by comparison with the centuries of black slavery but still wrong. In Europe the racism problem arose largely through institutional failure to strategically and systematically integrate immigrants into their societies.
Different circumstances exist around the world. But common to all ethnic groups is a significant degree of human dysfunctionality. The world has one murder every minute, and plenty of other serious crime such as rape, armed robbery, people-trafficking and gender-based violence; it has religious extremism leading to extensive slaughter; in most countries of the world greed and selfishness give rise to unpunished corruption with an utter disregard for those in poverty. All those aspects of modern society cause concern, despair, jealousy and resentment in others; in some cases even hatred. Drop that into a prevailing nationalism in most countries, with outsiders of colour clearly identifiable, and you have the potential for exclusivity. There is a degree of tribalism in a large proportion of the world’s population. You can’t shake that off in just a few millennia. And if you don’t have a tribe you find a football team!
Affirmative action in both the United States and the United Kingdom was launched decades ago – but far too late – to redress the prejudice against blacks. And sadly it served as much to breed resentment among whites as to create reassurance among blacks.
Next week – a way forward.