AIBU to agree with Diane Abbott

I'm Irish. I have an English accent. I hear and experience racism all the time. But she's correct. How I experience it makes me very angry, but it is experienced differently than bigotry based on skin colour. It isn't a race to the bottom, or to the "top". Racism is racism. We experience it differently, but it is disgusting we experience it at all. Isn't that the point? It is 2025 and we still propagate hate and bigotry based on difference rather than focus on our similarities- we are all humans.

She was responding to this article which said that gypsy/travellers and Jewish people were amongst the most likely to say they had suffered racist abuse.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/racism-in-britain-is-not-a-black-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated

Diane doesn't think they can experience racism. Racism is only for people with dark skin according to Diane.

I still can't get past her comment about the buses. It's true that Jews were not being sent to the back of the bus in 1950s America, but they were being murdered in their millions here in Europe in the 1940s.

She's either a Holocaust denier or incredibly thick. Maybe both.

But it’s at best idiotic, at worse malign. Yes, you can instantly see skin colour in a way you can’t always see other things - but (a), in her constituency alone there are lots of orthodox Jewish people who, through their dress, are equally as instantly recognisable by their Judaism as anyone would be by their skin colour, (b) it suggests that people have the privilege of hiding their Judaism in a way black people can’t, which is crass (to say the least) given the history of Jewish persecution and the complete inability to hide from that persecution (not to mention that nobody should have to hide their ethnicity or see doing so as a privilege), (c) she compared Jewish people and Irish travellers to people with red hair, which is trivialising and comparing groups who have suffered genocide (Jews) and hugely low social and economic discrimination and disadvantage (travellers) with people who suffer social bullying, and (d) she did this in the context of the Labour Party being blind to antisemitism in its own ranks, including by the leadership at the time of which she was a senior part. And lastly, she said today that she didn’t understand why anyone would object to what she said, which given the discussion about it at the time must mean she hasn’t listened to anything anyone said. She doesn’t have to agree with the point of view, but to not even be able to state what it is must mean she’s either unwilling or unable to listen.

So no, I don’t think she’s right, and my sympathy is about level with the floor.

That would be fair enough to say if that was what she said. But she didn't say that. Everyone should read what she actually said.

So, I think she’s describing a very different experience.

I don’t think there is an acceptable face of racism against black people any more. There is ignorance, yes, and some diehard bigots lurking in backward corners. There’s inequality of outcome but not necessarily related to being black, so much as to poverty. Poor white boys have shocking outcomes as well.

Travellers, Jews and Muslims face severe criticism that’s not easy to distinguish from racism. There are conversations all the time about the appalling behaviour of some people in these groups, that must feel very challenging if you are also Jewish, or a Muslim, or a Traveller.

I take part in those conversations and it’s really hard to tread a line around the criticism that needs to be discussed, and that which is racism.

I wouldn’t like to be a Traveller- and equally I hate the behaviour of a significant chunk of travellers.

Those conversations aren't happening about black people. So you could argue it’s the other way round.

Why are so many people saying that all racism is bad??? We know. OP knows. It's pretty much said in the last sentence of the OP. That's not the point being made.

No, there's no "hierarchy".
Yes, it's all bad.
No, it's not a competition.

But having a visible difference will give you a different experience. Surely that's fair enough to say? Is this the Mumsnet racism coming out to play?

I don’t think there should be a hierarchy of racism. In terms of history, the Jewish community has experienced racism for thousands of years - the colour of their skin is irrelevant. I really don’t like this type of comparison, and it feels intrinsically wrong.

All she has said, as far as I know, is that black people are instantly identified by others as black while people from other groups are not always instantly identified as coming from that group. Which I agree is true.
She hasn't said there's a hierarchy of racism it's just different. Black people cannot hide being black, for them racism is inescapable

Why are so many people saying that all racism is bad??? We know. OP knows. It's pretty much said in the last sentence of the OP. That's not the point being made.

No, there's no "hierarchy".
Yes, it's all bad.
No, it's not a competition.

But having a visible difference will give you a different experience. Surely that's fair enough to say? Is this the Mumsnet racism coming out to play?

Nobody knows with certainty how anyone experiences anything. Most of us talk to each other, read, maybe look at history etc and have an idea of how others live.

How do you know with certainty how Jewish people experience antisemitism?

I think she’s absolutely right. She often is, if one bothers to look past the unconventional delivery and the relentless media hatchet job. It doesn’t cancel out the appalling bigotry faced by travellers and Jews and Eastern Europeans, but it is true that racism is different when your race is instantly visible.

It’s patently obvious that if people can’t tell you are of a different race to them (as I type this I wonder what “race” actually means and who decided the boundaries) then there will be times where you are not the focus of racism. You will of course be in a racist environment and know that it is not nurturing to you or your family, but there will be times you are less impacted.

I hadnt seen that. She has a point about the visibility of black racism but it is true she has made it very badly. What was she thinking?

I don’t think there should be a hierarchy of racism. In terms of history, the Jewish community has experienced racism for thousands of years - the colour of their skin is irrelevant. I really don’t like this type of comparison, and it feels intrinsically wrong.

There are a lot of sneaky untruths here. @AmateurNoun she has said nothing of the sort. You are being flatly dishonest.

DA has said that black people are subject to racism in a different way, and that’s patently true. I can see that someone is Jewish or a traveller but I can see that they are black. Very much racism results from just this.

Starmer is an arse, frankly, regardless of what any of us think about DAs politics.