AIBU to agree with Diane Abbott

[Elephantiner]

I cannot stand Diane Abbott, she has a lazy, patronising manner which riles me, but she has said that people visiblybof a different race (e.g. black people) experience a different sort of racism than those who’s race is not visually obvious (travellers, Jewish people etc). She has a point, doesn’t she? Am I missing something here?

Obviously all types of racism are utterly abhorrent.

Here's another🙄

Cool - try removing your skin though.

I agree. But you can't hide being a traveler and still be a traveler can you? It's stopping living your heritage, culture and all that. Like being a Christian who doesn't practice the faith. Your not really a Christian any more. But I get what you mean in that you could try to hide it unlike your skin.

But even just saying that and thinking that is all kinds of wrong. Imagine if say travelers was all red heads and someone implied you could experience less discrimination if you just dyed your hair.

Oh you're giving me the love reaction emoji? The laughing emoji was removed for being inappropriately used. You've got to love hypocrites.

Are you bored, hun?

Oh please are we really going to pretend that Reeves and Raynor are accused of having chip on shoulder, using race card, always harping on about their ethnicity, being angry the list goes on

of course they get criticism they are prominent women but the do not get it with a load of racism thrown at them too and with Diane Abbott it’s always there because she dares to address it time and time again

you do not have to agree with her opinions but to make such a frankly ridiculous comparison shows your utter ignorance

There's nothing cool about being spat on by racists. 🙄

That’s absolutely not what was said and you know it. The poster was saying that DA always gets vilified. This is true. The poster did not say WHY that was. You jumped to the PoC thing. I think there are other factors. If you look upthread you’ll see that DA was the object of a vastly disproportionate percentage of abuse. So the poster is completely correct. Diane does always get vilified. Statistics prove it.

I'm really sorry for what you've experienced. I too of course have suffered from antisemitism passively as a Jewish person: when people say racist things about Jews, it affects me. I also have Holocaust victims in my ancestry. But I think the difference is (and I do think this is what Abbott was trying to say) for someone like me, who is Jewish but to all appearances is white, we don't suffer racism the same way that someone like Abbott, or someone like you, might do. So some Jews, but not all Jews. For example I was saying something the other day to a colleague about Stella McCartney being a Jewish businesswoman and they were so thrown that we had an argument about it because to my mind as a Jew, of course she is Jewish because she had a Jewish mother, but the colleague had no idea at all. In a Holocaust situation someone like SMcC would've been subject to racism but in the current situation in the UK, she isn't, thankfully for her and many of us. That doesn't mean we don't realise that many Jewish people do suffer active racism from being recognisable.

What are you talking about? I'm saying that it's not just black women "with a voice" who society 'hates'.

Oh please.

Redheads were burned as witches. İt just happened further down the history line than any of the other events mentioned.

No, you're right. Society dislikes women in general but only Black women face racism and misogyny.

I’ve somehow messed this up as my post was in response to one up thread so ignore this.

Why does she have to say anything at all! Just let others have the conversation. Knowing when to shut up and bow out is a skill she doesn’t have.

Nope, white women are susceptible to sexism and racism. unless the Rotheram girls have changed colour.

Going to be honest Jews weren’t even on my radar until 7th October when I saw people literally celebrating Jews being killed. It was disgusting. There was a request for an anti Israel protest the next day, the Israelis hadn’t even done anything yet and people wanted to protest them, it was clearly support for Hamas’ actions.

Revolting, utterly revolting. Thats when I understood how there was a section of society that genuinely just hated Jews. Being hated for what you are is something any minority should be able to understand and empathise with.

Look the intersectional stuff has a place. Criticising a woman for shit she said is not intersectional.

As you can see from this thread, some are just desperate to minimise antisemitism.

What? She’s a politician. She isn’t elected to ‘let others have the conversation’ or ‘shut up and bow out’. Honestly, this must be the most gormless contribution to the entire thread.

Seriously

wrf that was a group of men that the vast majority of people have been absolutely horrified to learn about

same can not be said about what Diane Abbott has to deal with

Jewish people are far more targeted proportionally — over 12x more likely per capita than Muslims, and significantly more than Black people. So obviously she's a fucking idiot.

I believe she also said "white people weren't taken on slave ships". Err, literally millions of white people were taken on ships and sold as slaves by north Africans.

I cannot stand her, however I wish people would listen to her on race. She was one of the first British black elected MPs, alongside Lammy et al. The amount of racist abuse her and her peers have experienced is off the scale, but also sadly indicative of many black British peoples experiences.

I think it's a hill she is willing to die on and good for her. I think she is representing the experiences of her constituents.

I think it’s important that you learn to distinguish between racism and other forms of harm or oppression. White women absolutely experience sexism, and sometimes targeted violence - but that doesn’t make it racism. Racism is specifically about racial prejudice combined with systemic power. In the UK, Black and brown people disproportionately face this because of how institutions are set up and maintained.

What happened in Rotherham was horrific, but it wasn’t about systemic racism against white people - it was a failure of safeguarding, compounded by other complex social dynamics. Using that tragedy to suggest white people face racism the way people of colour do isn’t accurate or true.

This!

Same point that I (perhaps not so well) and others have tried to make.

Some people of certain religions/ethnicity can look white and so are not subject to racism in the same way as some (even of the same religion/ethnicity) who do not look white.

This does not take away from current or past persecution. It is more about the instant racist (conscious or subconscious) that is suffered by blacks, Asians, Jews,,travellers who do not look white.
Of course, after a conversation or some period of time you may get to know that person is Muslim, Jew, traveller and then start enacting your racism. But you won’t be subject to the racial profiling that those that are obviously of a non-white race/ethnicity be that black, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, travellers.