I’m Not a Racist, But…

I’m trying to avoid getting into the current furore over race. To be frank, I’ve got more pressing problems on the personal front to worry about. Besides, weeks of lockdown have reduced my stress levels to the lowest they have been in years, getting into arguments with racists will only get me angry, push my stress levels up and have an adverse effect on my blood pressure. But I will say this, what the current ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests here in the UK have revealed is the staggering level of ignorance on the part of a depressingly large number of people who just can’t seem to grasp what constitutes racism. You know the ones I mean, the ones who profess not to be racist in the same breath as saying something like it is a fact that black people commit more crimes. Because they are stating a ‘fact’ means that they can’t possibly be guilty of racism, they contend. But let’s look at that ‘fact’ in a bit more detail, (as it is typical of these ‘non racist’ racist statements): in the first place, it isn’t a fact.

More importantly, even if it was a ‘fact’, it is trying to correlate a particular form of behaviour solely with a racial characteristic, implying that being black is a causal factor of criminal activity. That’s racist. In reality, crime rates are linked to a whole array of factors – cultural, economic, educational etc – with economic factors most likely the biggest underlying cause. A lot of criminal activity might well be committed – often out of perceived economic necessity – by the less well off. A large proportion of the less well off might well be black, largely as the result of historical and cultural factors, (more often than not the legacy of slavery), but that isn’t the causal factor – these is no genetic disposition to criminality linked to skin pigmentation.

The obsession with inanimate objects amongst these non-racist racists is another depressing revelation – they get themselves terribly worked up about the treatment of statues by protestors, as if an attack on a statue of someone is equivalent to an attack on the person themselves. It is another manifestation of our valuing of property over people, a precept which has, for too long, warped the legal code of the UK, which traditionally afforded more protection to property than persons. Bearing in mind that the statues in question are of historical figures with links to slavery or some other kind of racist legacy, these concerns also betray an inability to grasp that historical figures were, in life, complex human beings possessed of many seemingly contradictory beliefs and impulses. The usual refrain in defence of these figures goes along the lines of: ‘well, he might have made his fortune from the slave trade, but he did a lot of philanthropic shit with his money, which is what the statue is celebrating’.

Which seems to be based upon a notion that there is some sort of cosmic scales, upon which our deeds can be measured and if the ‘good’ outweighs the ‘bad’, then that’s OK and expunges the evil. Except that it doesn’t work like that – you can’t weigh the lives of slaves against the number of civic buildings constructed using the proceeds from their trafficking. The latter remains wrong, regardless. It’s a very medieval idea that you can somehow ‘buy’ your way into paradise with a few charitable contributions after a life of unadulterated sin. Of course, right now a lot of the outrage surrounds the treatment of the statue of Winston Churchill outside parliament. To the right and the ignorant, (often the same thing), Churchill has the status of a latter day saint, based upon his wartime leadership of the UK. Unfortunately, though, history is never, if you will excuse the phrase, black and white. The fact is that while Churchill was good at the rhetoric, his interventions in military strategy were usually ill informed and unwelcome. He didn’t ‘win the war’.

The war was won, ultimately, by the concerted efforts on the home front to support the war effort (organised largely by Labour leader and wartime Deputy PM Clement Attlee), and the efforts on the battlefield of a citizen army drawn from all over the Empire – many, many of them non-white. Ironically, of course, despite their efforts, Churchill saw such non-whites as coming from inferior races (this is well documented). He was especially dismissive of Indians., who made up a significant proportion of the army that fought in North Africa, provided pilots to Fighter Command for the defence of the UK and, of course, fought the Japanese in the Far East. So, I’m afraid, Churchill’s legacy is complex and often problematic – as is that of just about any political leader. There’s no doubt, he was a racist. As were most people of his background and era. Which doesn’t justify it, it just makes it more understandable. That said, there is a key difference between monuments to him and those to slave traders cum philanthropists: Churchill’s statue is there to memorialise a particular part of his legacy – his contribution to the Allied victory in WWII – which wasn’t built upon the proceeds of slavery and to which his racial views weren’t a major factor.

But my point is that people really need to stop getting worked up about his racist views being highlighted – they are a matter of historical fact and underline the fact that racism has been deeply ingrained in Britain’s ruling classes and inculcated by them in the rest of the population. That racism continues to express itself through the way the law is enforced, the education system and even popular culture, (yes, Little Britain is racist, but I really don’t have time to get into that right now). It apparently permeates our society to the extent that many still can’t even see it. But that’s enough of that. I need to get back to my own problems, (actually, not so much of a problem as a decision I can no longer put off).

Doc Sleaze