Is Diane Abbott right that only Black people experience racism and other ethnic groups experience prejudice?

[IwantToRetire]

Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism to the Observer, the party has said.

The politician said "many types of white people with points of difference" can experience prejudice, in a letter published on Sunday.

But they are not subject to racism "all their lives", she said.

She later tweeted to say she was withdrawing her remarks and apologised "for any anguish caused".

Labour said the comments were "deeply offensive and wrong".

Suspending the whip means Ms Abbott will not be allowed to represent Labour in the House of Commons, where she will now sit as an independent MP.

In the letter, she wrote that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people "undoubtedly experience prejudice", which she said is "similar to racism".

She continued: "It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice.

"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."

She had been responding to a comment piece in the Guardian questioning the view that racism "only affects people of colour".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65365978

And yes, what is 'other black'?

You are doing what Diane Abbot was doing - talking about Britain as if it was America. It isnt. Anyone's son can pull in to the wrong driveway in the UK without being shot for it.

The difference here is that female violence is a minor issue compared to male violence and far fewer women are weak and power less than men. But discrimination against some groups in this country is higher than against black people. Jews in London, even in DAs constituency, experience high levels of violence and she minimised that. Risk in other places in the world is not risk for the people she is paid to represent.

As for the black women being more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth their are many reasons for that and if you focus exclusively on skin colour you harm the people you claim to be trying to help. That is actually the message of woke racism - too much focus on language and too little on dealing with the problems. "Almost all of those who died during or after pregnancy had multiple issues such as mental or physical health problems, were victims of domestic abuse, or were living in a deprived area. More than half of those who died were overweight or obese. Cardiac disease represents the largest single cause of indirect maternal deaths." Claiming, as some people do, that this is about racial bias is unhelpful. The interventions needed are likely to be things like extra and local antenatal care, signposting to domestic abuse refuges or more visits post delivery to pick up problems sooner.

Jewish is both a race and a religion. The Jewish people originated in North Africa and were then enslaved by the Egyptians. They escaped and went to the Middle East where they conquered Israel. Then they were invaded and carried off into slavery into Iraq/Iran by the Babylonians. This was their great diaspora which lasted until after WWII, when Israel was resurrected so they’d have a homeland, the Jewish people were forced to flee from region to region. Over the Millenium, they intermarried with locals in every continent (or Jewish women were raped by locals) and as you only need a Jewish mother to be Jewish, this then meant over the millennia that the Jewish people became physically diverse and visibly mixed race. So if you look at the DNA of a white Jew or a black Jew, they will have the same DNA associated with the original Jewish ethnicity from North Africa.

The Jewish people are a great example of how racism is not based on skin colour alone, and skin colour alone isn’t what determines your ethnicity.

Yes, you have Ashkenazi jews and Sephardic jews, as two examples - whose ancestors migrated to different parts of the world after they had been banished from their home land.

For legal purposes Jews are considered a race.

Hitler believed that a person's characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her so-called racial make-up. In Hitler's view, all groups, races, or peoples (he used those terms interchangeably) carried within them traits that were passed from one generation to the next. No individual could overcome the qualities of race. All of human history could be explained in terms of racial struggle.

In formulating their ideology of race, Hitler and the Nazis drew upon the ideas of the German social Darwinists of the late 19th century. Like the social Darwinists before them, the Nazis believed that human beings could be classified collectively as “races,” with each race bearing distinctive characteristics that had been passed on genetically since the first appearance of humans in prehistoric times.

These inherited characteristics related not only to outward appearance and physical structure, but also shaped internal mental life, ways of thinking, creative and organizational abilities, intelligence, taste and appreciation of culture, physical strength, and military prowess.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology

Agree with a lot of this. Not many people are going to disagree that certain groups are worse off in the UK. But often the causes of that have nothing to do with race. Arguing over whether this represents something 'systemic' is just tying ourselves up in knots. Better to tackle the actual problems.

Not sure why the Labour are punishing Abbot, though. I've never thought she was very bright, but this is just the latest not very well thought through thing she's said. Admittedly, I haven't read the whole article, but I'm not sure what she's said that could be called racist. Unless we accept the definition of racism as 'not appreciating somebody's point of view', which I think is a quite slippery definition of racism.

She’s such a stupid woman.

anyolddinosaur · Today 13:59

Re your reply to IfNot in this paragraph:

As for the black women being more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth their are many reasons for that and if you focus exclusively on skin colour you harm the people you claim to be trying to help. That is actually the message of woke racism - too much focus on language and too little on dealing with the problems. "Almost all of those who died during or after pregnancy had multiple issues such as mental or physical health problems, were victims of domestic abuse, or were living in a deprived area. More than half of those who died were overweight or obese. Cardiac disease represents the largest single cause of indirect maternal deaths." Claiming, as some people do, that this is about racial bias is unhelpful. The interventions needed are likely to be things like extra and local antenatal care, signposting to domestic abuse refuges or more visits post delivery to pick up problems sooner.

There was an interesting article related to research on the outcome of pregnancies posted on a thread that might have been about this very recently. There is a difference too in the outcome of pregnancies between Black African and Black Caribbean women showing that skin colour cannot be the main factor.

Poverty plays a part too.

I’ll see if I can find that.

Interesting thanks!

My husband's DNA results ( one of those home testing kits) came back with him as 5% Ashkenazi. We kind of knew there must have been jewish ancestry because of his mother's family's surname and place of birth ( Russia).

So it seems that a DNA blood test does indeed show 'Jewishness'.

incidentally I have 1% north african and 1% Middle Eastern - amongst all of the Scottish, Irish and English.

@Dobby123456 read the article - https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2023/apr/23/success-for-women-not-same-as-for-men-letters

Article about poor outcomes for black pregnancies. It was in this thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4787833-womans-hour-today?page=2

Article posted by Beowulfa

https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/mbrrace-uk/reports

Yes I was replying to you and I also found your response deeply offensive and tone deaf. I don’t have a right to not be offended, but I do have a right to reply. If I started reporting posts on here based on that, I’d be here all night.

it’s obvious from my response that I understand what ‘passing’ means. Suggesting to Jewish people that it’s a privilege that they may at times be able to do so is… well, I think I’ve made it clear what I think of that in my first response.

I think a relevant example would be if men were told that they can't be victims of sexism, but only "prejudice".

I'm sure the case could be made that, yes, they can certainly be victims of sexism, and you can't just have silly leftist activists making up their own meanings for words. Especially when it's so offensive.

I would think women here should know better than anyone, you can't trust activists to be changing the definitions of words!

You are doing what Diane Abbot was doing - talking about Britain as if it was America. It isnt. Anyone's son can pull in to the wrong driveway in the UK without being shot for it.

No. I'm really not. I have mentioned things that are current serious issues in the UK.
And I have not said the appalling black maternity death rates were ONLY based on racism, there will be a number of reasons, but you can't explain away such a massive disparity between black and white mothers without accepting that it plays a part. A large percentage of Black mother's testified to feeling un-istened to, having their pain ignored, and being de-prioritised, or treated as though they were being difficult. Or do you not believe women's testimony?
So many people on this thread tying themselves in KNOTS to " prove" that racism towards black people isn't worse in the UK and that even if it is, they probably are just poorer, or unhealthier, or have "social" problems...
As far as young black men being safe in the UK- this is from ONS 2022;
"Although the majority of homicide victims were White, accounting for different population sizes shows that Black people had higher rates of victimisation (Appendix table 7). In the three years to year ending March 2022, average rates per million population were around four times higher for Black victims than White victims or victims of other ethnicities."
I stand by what I said, I don't give a shit about critical race theory or woke or whatever other words are being used this week to deny racism.

I didn't realise the letter was that short! She does get to the point, doesn't she?! But this is Dianne Abbott. We know what she's like and yet she continues to get elected. I'm not a fan of cancel culture. The fact is, a lot of the people who vote for her approve of her and agree with her opinions. Are we just going to sweep that under the carpet?

“So many people on this thread tying themselves in KNOTS to " prove" that racism towards black people isn't worse in the UK”

Who? I see people essentially saying that Diane Abbot is wrong to say that racism can only happen to Black people. Saying that you don’t have to be Black to experience racism too, isn’t saying anything about who has it worse.

Stupid AND supremely assured of her own moral superiority.

A dangerous combo.

@IfNot I agree with you to a certain extent. I think this is why Diane losing her job is actually really bad as it shuts down conversations that are nuanced.
There are many layers to all of this. A large majority of black young men dying will be due to black on black crime. There is a huge issue with gang culture, esp in cities. They don't even put deaths from knife crime on my local news anymore but when they do, 99.9% of the time it is a young black life lost. This will be different outside of London. There are towns where it's predominantly working class white boys that are the victims of knife crime and equally those communities will feel a sense of hurt when their pain is belittled simply because they don't have the same volume of deaths as they're a small town. A lot of the country feels the politics of UK are very London centric and I do feel that's true to some sense. A very densely populated city will obviously skew stats. It would be interesting to see how these stats look when London data is taken out of them.
It'll be the same with maternity. The scandal in Shropshire effected mostly white women. How will they feel when they read that they have white privilege and better maternity care.
What I'm trying to say is that by generalising a very serious topic and saying flat out that no one but black people can experience racism, you are almost immediately putting walls up and stopping anyone having a nuanced conversation.

by generalising a very serious topic and saying flat out that no one but black people can experience racism, you are almost immediately putting walls up and stopping anyone having a nuanced conversation.

Has anyone at all actually said that though??

Diane Abbot did in her letter- that’s why it is the topic of this thread.

@IfNot Have you even read her letter? That's literally what it's about. She said no one but black people can experience racism. What Jews and travellers experience is prejudice.

IfNot · Today 14:51
I stand by what I said, I don't give a shit about critical race theory or woke or whatever other words are being used this week to deny racism.

I think denying racism is not what CRT says at all, but the opposite.

Jewish women of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi descent are at increased risk of inheriting the BRCA gene mutations, significantly elevating their risk of Breast and Ovarian cancers, Ashkenazi women especially so:

https://ovarian.org.uk/ovarian-cancer/brca/brca-fault-jewish-populations/

There are some less well known Breast Cancer -causing genetic mutations amongst Ashkenazi women too:

https://www.cancernetwork.com/view/newly-identified-genetic-mutations-found-ashkenazi-jewish-women-breast-cancer

(Obvs chaps can inherit the same gene mutations but they are less likely to cause cancer in men, and obvs men can’t get Ovarian Cancer but they do have to keep an eye out for Breast and Pancreatic Cancers)

https://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/familial/about/ashkenazi-jews

Diane Abbott wrote the letter in the screenshot to the letters page of The Observer for publication in response to this article:

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

Diane Abbott’s constituency is home to a huge community of ultra Orthodox Jews, who in the last few years have been subjected to some really egregious crimes (eg young Black British and Asian British lads randomly punching elderly Jewish men) so it seems a bit bonkers that she would send such a US-centric letter (hence some of us wondering if a recently graduated intern wrote it).

Diane says it was ‘a draft’ and shouldn’t have been sent.

No one here thinks racism is remotely acceptable but quite a few of us think viewing racism as it manifests in the U.K. through the specific American viewpoint of Critical Race Theory is unhelpful at best, hurtful at worst.

@AP5Diva if Jews started in North Africa then are they not then the sane race as the people of North Africa? How are they a different race? An ethnic group yes. A religion yes but how race? Black, Asian/Mongoloid, Caucasian, Aborigines are all races because they all evolved over 120,000 years ago. Jews came about in modern times through a religion. How does that make them a race?

pfftt· Today 16:16
AP5Diva if Jews started in North Africa then are they not then the sane race as the people of North Africa? How are they a different race? An ethnic group yes. A religion yes but how race? Black, Asian/Mongoloid, Caucasian, Aborigines are all races because they all evolved over 120,000 years ago. Jews came about in modern times through a religion. How does that make them a race?*

I wonder being Jewish ( not meaning only in the religious sense) is more of an ethnicity than a race.

When we speak of someone being “anti semetic” we mean against Jews. But I also think Jews and Arabs were both ‘Semites’ which used to be a name based on a group of languages spoken which had a common origin.

“SEMITE
From "Shemi," Hebrew word from the name of Shem, son of Noah, who, according to Biblical tradition, was the eponymous ancestor of the Semites. Semites are people of the Middle East and Africa who speak one of the Semitic languages, which are branches of the Afro-Asiatic family. Examples of such languages are Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew.”
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/people/semites

But Arabs are more generally seen as being just ‘foreign’ from the UK point of view, while it is Jews who experience prejudice and attacks, whether it is called racism or something else.

People here can be anti-Muslim though. So in this case some of the prejudice is motivated by hatred of a culture rather than race per se.