Race and My Generation
Does the fact that a young aide “blacked up” and another posted the photo along with a jokey caption mean that the Tories are racist? Of course it doesn’t. Yet Dawn Butler says that this shows that the Tories “ha[ve] not changed one bit”. Quite what she is suggesting, I don’t know. Anyone who makes such a link between one young aide dressing up and an entire party being potentially - if not actively - racist is an idiot. Yes, both of them were stupid. But, last I heard, stupidity wasn’t a crime. If it was, all of the present government would currently be residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
What is shows is that Labour react against anyone who does not fully accede to their racism, their politically correct “positive discrimination” - such an oxymoronic phrase that I’m surprised that anyone can utter it in all seriousness. There is nothing “positive” about discrimination, after all - discrimination is discrimination is discrimination. And discrimination, we all accept, is wrong.
Racism can go in any direction, from any and to any. So why is it that Labour believe that only whites can be racist? Because they are living in a world created by their politically-correct infatuations with an “equality” that is anything from equal at all. Nelson Mandela himself came out and said that we shouldn’t read racism into every situation after a man was reported to what was then the CRE for “blacking up”. So why won’t Labour listen to him on this? Because that would be common sense.
Labour is living in a racial world that stopped existing years ago. People my age don’t see race or skin colour as meaning anything. It’s just your genes, innit, not who you are. It is these middle-age race campaigners who are the modern racists, who fixate about skin colour and creating an “equal” [ie. unequal] country.
To my generation, “race” means bugger-all. We believe in meritocracy, where a person earns their own position, not one where they have one already created simply because of their racial origins, usually demonstrated by skin colour. Who cares what your ancestors may have been or done? To them, it means everything. Who is the racist here?
Image: Oxfam
Sources: The Guardian, Daily Mail
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Hang on, TD. It’s a fair comment that you can’t really extrapolate from the actions of a couple of individuals to an entire political party. But what does the rest of your piece do? What’s the difference between a Labour supporter saying “See? scratch a Tory, find a racist” and a Tory saying “See? all Labourites are obsessed with PC gone mad”? Sod the substantive issue, let’s make a party political point. Really, you’re all as bad as each other.
I was clearly referring to the Labour PARTY itself, not the individuals within it.
They say that all individual Tories are racist, I say that the Labour Party is obsessed with political correctness.
Look, you’re doing it again: “They say that all individual Tories are racist”. Even if you have in mind some slippery semantics, whereby a collective noun can sometimes have a plural pronoun, it’s not at all clear to me that you can attribute opinions to an organisation: how do you picture the Labour party, if not as a group of individuals? Certainly, you can’t do it on the basis of one individual’s remarks, as you appear to be doing here, even though you began by criticising that very action…
Whilst I obviously agree with you that racism can work in any direction, I don’t see how you get from Butler’s remarks as quoted in the Guardian piece you link to to asserting that “Labour believes only whites can be racist”. Nor do I buy your argument that ethnic identity is the fixation solely of the middle-aged: Youdon’tknowme Wayne is a younger man than you…
If you truly believe in meritocracy, are there not arguments for removing the structural obstacles in the way of historically disadvantaged groups? It’s not a level playing field, yet. I can see cynical reasons why, if you support a party whose leader has inherited wealth, you might wish to downplay the importance of one’s forebears in helping determine one’s own levels of success, but I hope you’re above that level.
So, assuming that you make the argument from abstract ideals, can you see how it might sound hollow to a young Pakistani man in Bradford who’s grown up hearing the disadvantages faced by his parents and grandparents, and is still encountering them himself? Never mind all the members of a given party, do you have the right to speak on behalf of an entire generation?
When I refer to the Labour party in this sense, I mean the over-arching organisational and ideological structure. That does not include the members, because members differ in their opinions. The remarks are just the springboard, not the basis.
Wayne is an anomaly - taken in by the Daily Mail-esque rhetoric and without anything against which to balance it. And even he is less bothered about the race of individuals themselves and more about those coming in to Britain.
It isn’t a level playing field precisely because of the Labour party’s mismanagement of the race situation. Meritocracy means that NO-ONE is given or loses anything simply based on race or anything else like that [eg. gender, sexuality]. If one side has a bunch of bodyguards, it isn’t a fair game.
Few of the disadvantages a young Pakistani man in Bradford will be based on his race. The will be based on social and economic issues, which effect people of all races. No-one had the “right” to speak on the behalf of a generation. I am making my point based on my experiences as a part of my generation. I don’t have the “right” to - and no-one dopes. But I have the ABILITY to. And why shouldn’t I speak on behalf of my generation? I am part of it, after all.
I am still not convinced that it’s possible to discuss an organisation in the abstract and yet assign opinions to it. Agendas, constitutions and the like don’t write or approve themselves.
I can’t agree with your analysis of our hypothetical Bradford youth’s situation, either - if race is not a factor, then why were the Bradford riots not multi-racial? There is no shortage of disadvantaged young white men in my home town, but they don’t face the added cultural obstacles.
The other trouble with your definition of meritocracy is it concentrates on those facing structural obstacles based on factors like ethnicity, gender or sexual preference, and tells people that it is not fair to complain. Yet it ignores structural advantages like inherited wealth, or public school and Oxbridge education. Like you say, if one side has a bunch of bodyguards it isn’t a fair game…
Lastly, I’m genuinely unsure about generalising from individual experience to entire groups. I once received a birthday card inscribed “from one left-handed accordion-playing motorcyclist to the other”, but we differed on almost every other point you care to mention. So, yes, I draw on my experiences when blogging, as everywhere else in my life, but I try and make clear that it is just my point of view. I hope we’ve all moved past making sweeping generalisations on the basis of racial or sexual stereotypes; why is it any more acceptable to make similar remarks based on age?