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.

I’m quoting the letter. ‘Abbott wrote that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice”. “This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable,” she said.’

Is it just individual black men you call out for criticism? Do you not see why that’s problematic?

I think Jewish people should determine the words used. Typically it’s antisemitism and / or persecution.

I think you need to listen to the experiences of Jewish people more carefully. You’re not really listening .

Tomiwa Owolade today

Two years ago I wrote a column for The Observer. It was, I thought then, one of the more uncontroversial columns I have written in my career. It had two general points. The first is that Jews can be victims of racism; the second is that any definition of racism that excludes them is worthless and sinister.
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Who could possibly object to these points? They are almost so basic as to be not even w8orth expressing. The middle of the twentieth century was indelibly marked by one of the most gruesome acts of inhumanity ever perpetrated: the annihilation of European Jewry. And the people who committed this crime – the Nazis and the regimes who collaborated with them – saw Jews not simply as a religious group. They were demonised as a race; atheist Jews were also slaughtered in the gas chambers.
I ask who could object to such a point, but what I really mean is which figure would stoop so low to do so. There are cranks in academia and the media, of course, who may reiterate the nonsense argument that only black and brown people could be victims of racism. But I was astonished, a week after I wrote my column, to learn that a member of Parliament would object to the main points I made. And not just any member of Parliament, but someone as experienced and well-respected as Diane Abbott.
Jews can experience prejudice like “redheads”, she wrote in a letter, but they can’t experience racism. She apologised soon after and was suspended from the Labour Party. But it seems her apology meant nothing in the end, and she has just been suspended again by the Labour Party. The reason? According to Abbott, in a recent interview with the BBC’s James Naughtie, she doesn’t regret her letter from 2023. She added that: “Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know.”
That Jews cannot be recognised simply by looking at them would be news to those who are verbally and physically abused on the streets.
But there’s something else going on here that needs to be unpacked: it is the notion of a hierarchy of racism. In her original letter to The Observer, Abbott argued that Jews were not put at the back of the bus in segregationist America. Nor were they oppressed in apartheid South Africa. That they were oppressed and victimised in other ways is beside the point; Jews are white, according to this logic, so they can evade the prejudice against black and brown people
have no personal animosity towards Abbott. I sympathise with the racist and misogynistic abuse she has suffered. And I thought her recent stand against assisted dying was brave and principled. More than anything else, I feel sad that someone so ostensibly committed to the cause of anti-racism can embarrass herself in this way. This doesn’t mean I have changed my mind on the article I wrote. In fact I stand by it even more fiercely than before. The piece was written 6 months before October 7, the greatest massacre of Jews since the Second World War, and since then the subsequent orgy of anti-Semitic abuse and violence throughout the world has reinforced the necessity of speaking out against anti-Jewish racism. And it has made it even more important to call out people like Abbott who spread untruths about what constitutes racism.

What she went to to say is the crucial bit and it follows a well worn path when it comes to anti racists minimising hatred towrads Jewish people.

'But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus.
“In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”

To say they are not all their lives subject to racism is blatantly untrue.

I’m really sorry to say I completely agree with your last paragraph.
The hypocrisy and double standard is staggering.
I did feel sympathy for DA because of the racism and misogyny she has been subjected to. I’m incredibly disappointed that it appears she can only speak up against injustice when it occurs to her own community.

Can't imagine Jewish people in her constituency would have much confidence or trust in her as an MP.

It’s not for Dianne Abbott to decide experiences and language for Jewish people. I wonder why she has continued to try to do that.

Because of the hierarchy of racism that she and others have constructed I suppose

I think you’re making a valid point.
Regarding conspiracy theories, just earlier today I saw a post on X lamenting that no UK politicians were openly anti-zionist.
The replies they were getting were all agreeing with them, coming out with the usual trope that the Jews controlled everything.
One even claimed that all UK MPs had to be approved by Tel Aviv and several people agreed. It’s really wild.

The first thing people should remember is that it’s up to those who experience antisemitism to determine the language and reality of that.

It’s not the place for anyone else to determine.

Absolutely and this is what the left normally assert about racism towards POC. They aren't quite so understanding of antisemitism. There's always a grey area, in their eyes. Abbott should know better.

What a fantastic article, thank you for sharing.

What I find hard to believe about a woman who's been in politics with an emphasis on racial justice, who attended Cambridge and must be well informed could possible say the things she says.

"Jews were not put at the back of the bus in segregationist America"

What a staggering thing to say. Starting with the fact that Jews weren’t segregated on buses in 1950s Alabama because by then, millions had just been gassed, shot, or starved in camps across Europe.

Jews were subject to forced ghettoisation across Europe for centuries, bans from owning land, holding professions, or living among Christians, expulsions from dozens of countries, pogroms, blood libels, mass killings - long before the Nazis. That's segregation and worse.

Then, in the 20th century: the Holocaust, the single most industrialised genocide in history which included Nuremberg style laws throughout most of Europe as well and those appearing in the middle east through the 40s and 50s.

How can she have such historical amnesia?

The subtext is that Jews were "white enough" to avoid real racism - a modern twist that ignores how Jews were explicitly excluded from whiteness in Western society until very recently (and still are, in many contexts). Nazis didn’t consider Jews “white.” Neither did many in America or Europe.

What makes me feel so deeply sad about it, and about the other POC who share her views is that Jews were deeply involved in the American civil rights movement and were among the most committed non-Black allies.

Jewish lawyers helped fight landmark cases, Jewish activists made up a significant portion of white volunteers in the South. Two Jewish men were murdered alongside a Black activist during Freedom Summer. Rabbis marched with Dr. King, Jewish organisations also provided financial support to the NAACP and other civil rights groups.

To now claim that Jews aren’t worth aligning with erases this long, principled history of solidarity.

I agree, very well put. And I grew up with that knowledge that Jewish people were central to so many justice movements - their participation was about allyship in the light of their own history. She must have known it too but has chosen to rewrite history for political gain today. A diagraceful betrayal.

Hopefully @SharonEllis will be along to ask you why you are setting up a hierarchy of racism.

This is from a long time ago. Why bring it up now?

Looking at statistics is not setting up a hierarchy, is one measure for understanding experience. It is in response to Abbott minimising racism against Jews and others and using different criteria. Its the criteria that is the key bit in setting up the hieratchy.

You should ask Abbott. She chose to dig it all up again this week but given that she has doubled down, and apparently some posters agree with her, its relevant. One poster has even said she is not an ally of the Jewish community despite the growing racism they face.

You: "It’s possible to see the black community as the most targeted and disenfranchised and as the victims of structural, institutional and systemic racism AND know that racism toward Jews, Muslims, Asians exists as well. The two are not mutually exclusive"

My reply: "The Black community are not the most targeted. Jewish people are the most disproportionately targeted"

You were trying to create a hierarchy of racism, I was just correcting a false statement in your post.

It’s due to a recent interview where she doubled down on it.

DA could have used this as an opportunity to show support to British Jews at this time, where it is very much needed, but instead she chose to double down on the ridiculous and offensive statement she made.

Why is pointing out that the black community are often victims of structural, institutional and systemic racism ‘setting up a hierarchy’ but pointing to statistics isn’t?

Seriously? This goady thread, to which the OP hasn't returned, has set the scene for ranking racism.

So me saying black people are the victims of structural, institutional and systemic racism is setting up a hierarchy but you saying that Jews are is not setting up a hierarchy?