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

This is incorrect. Certain medical risk factors are more prominent in particular races/ethnicities, even if they aren’t born or live in the country of their ethnicity. It’s biology, not just culture.

@headstone You seem to be suggesting that the Roma do not experience serious racism, or that they are somehow at fault due to "lifestyle" choices.

The majority of Roma people are not travelling and never were. Those who did travel were not "freedom loving" and doing so by choice, but they were persecuted and regularly forced to move on.

The Roma tend to have low school attendance, because large numbers of their children experience racism and bullying at school, because their families have learned to trust no one outside of the community and because historically the white majority did not allow Roma children to attend schools with their children. So the Roma learned crafts and offered services for which you needed no formal education. Their low school attendance is firmly rooted in racism.

That's totally inaccurate. 💯 outdated nonsense

I think the point is that race doesn't just mean the narrow definition you are giving to it. It is a term which is used, and understood, more widely.

'The human race' is a term used to denote the whole species, and within that species there are varied categorisations.

@NotHavingIt I think the point is that race doesn't just mean the narrow definition you are giving to it. It is a term which is used, and understood, more widely.
I can see if race means something different from the traditional meaning of race then it could make sense

This is incorrect. Certain medical risk factors are more prominent in particular races/ethnicities, even if they aren’t born or live in the country of their ethnicity. It’s biology, not just culture.

I'm intrigued. Can you give an example?

I'm surprised by the number of people on this thread using the term 'race' and 'races' to describes different peoples. I thought that had died out decades ago and it was common knowledge that humans are one 'race' and ethnicity is a more accurate way to differentiate between people (although even that has blurred edges).

Do those people actually believe there are different races of humans or are they just using an outdated term to denote different ethnic groups?

Some people on this thread are gonna start advocating measuring people's heads, jaws and noses like they did in the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany.

This conversation really is getting quite...icky.

I’m not sure that there is any merit in arguing over whether there is a Jewish race or not unless we also talk about the utility of classifying people by race, and as being described as a race hasn’t served Jewish people very well over the last 100 years I’d rather present some articles by Jewish authors and some Jewish resources.

This one is specifically in related response to Diane Abbott’s letter:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/diane-abbott-racism-antisemitism-b2325729.html

These two are Jewish websites:

https://aish.com/are-jews-a-race-its-complicated/

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/498027/jewish/Are-Jews-a-Race.htm

and this one is a scientific paper:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15516841/

I'm surprised by the number of people on this thread using the term 'race' and 'races' to describes different peoples. I thought that had died out decades ago and it was common knowledge that humans are one 'race' and ethnicity is a more accurate way to differentiate between people (although even that has blurred edges).

Me too. Categorising people into "races" seems like a bad idea to me. Haven't we done that once before and it didn't work out so well?

I think part of the problem is that intersectionality and critical race theory of the sort espoused by people like Kimberle Crenshaw and Ta-Nehisi Coates and AOC and Ilhan Omar, does have the effect of regressing us back to an overly intense concern with 'racial' 'differences' and 'characteristics'.

Sickle cell disease in African Americans. No idea if it's more prevalent in all black people

Sickle Cell Disease, for one

I didn't write the original post you quoted, but a couple of examples:

• sickle cell - more common in people of Black African origin
• diabetes - higher incidence in people of South Asian origin

tay sachs disease - used to be predominantly ashkenazi Jews who were carriers, although incidence massively reduced due to massive screening.

factor clotting disorder - ashkenazi Jews. I can name 3 people (not relatives) offhand who have this

@IfNot You quoted one example from this country and I explained why focusing solely on race is unhelpful. Many women can talk about not being listened to in pregnancy but if you focus on that to the exclusion of other causes you dont address all the things that are leading to poor outcomes. I should have capitalised Woke Racism, but it's been referred to in this thread before, I encourage you to read it. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696856/woke-racism-by-john-mcwhorter/

A higher death rate in young black men is one reason why they are stopped and searched more often, the police try to take weapons off the street. Then they are accused of racism for doing so. There is not a simple solution. You need to improve opportunities for young men, show them good role models and stop constantly telling them they are victims who have no hope in life.

Educational disadvantage is now higher in white males https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/education-inequalities/ I come from a deprived background and was seeking employment when an employer could tell you they didnt normally recruit women. I was never encouraged to blame all my problems on that. Racism still exists and it needs to be called out - but you can recognise that there are sometimes other people who are also suffering. Obsessing over who is the biggest victim holds you back.

I suppose the problem with arguing that racism can manifest in various directions and that being subjected to racism isn’t unique to people of African descent (as Diane Abbott seems to claim) is that it necessitates pointing at various large scale injustices and individual crimes that are inflicted on one type of person by another type of person using ‘race’ as the divider!

And that IS proper squicky (and is perhaps the ‘Kafka Trap’ of Critical Race Theory in action!)

Still, it seems proper bonkers to me that Abbott would say that Jewish people and Romany people are subjected to prejudice in a manner that is more akin to that experienced by Ginger people than that experienced by Black people.

We've had an example recently of biological differences between groups of people - a gene that is more common in those of Asian origin making you more susceptible to severe covid. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-05-researchers-uncover-gene-doubles-risk-death-covid-19 But the number of such differences is relatively small. We all have 99% of our DNA similar to chimpanzees and we all originally came from Africa.

If there is no such thing as ‘race’ which I agree is a questionable way to divide human beings, then the word ‘racism’ should also be obsolete.

However, isn’t there a danger of glossing over the particular forms of prejudice experienced by those thought to be ‘racially’ different?

A friend of mine had an Indian dad and a white British mum. People would ask her if she’s Spanish. Another friend, with a Nigerian dad, white mum, everyone assumes she is black and talks to her about things they assume she’ll relate to on that basis, but she is much closer to her mum and it’s all very awkward because she isn’t down with the things people assume, based on her appearance - her perceived racial ‘other ness’. It’s the same if someone has a Chinese parent.

Isn't sickle cell environmental? In areas where malaria is prevalant. There was a benefit for those with sickle cell trait (which developed over generations) because it provided protection against malaria?

So what I am trying to say, before I have to dash out, is that referring only to ‘ethnicity’ invisibilises racialised prejudice, which is different and merits its own consideration and discussion.

https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/how-sickle-cell-protects-against-malaria-a-sticky-connection

As with all inherited genetic diseases, you’d expect natural selection to weed out a gene that has such unpleasant consequences but with sickle cell disease, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Indeed, as of 2015, about 4.4 million people have sickle cell disease, while an additional 43 million have sickle cell trait. So what makes the disease stay in the human population?

Researchers found the answer by looking at where the disease was most prevalent. As it turns out, 80% of sickle cell disease cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa or amongst populations having their ancestors in this region, as well as in other parts of the world where malaria is or was common. There was a long standing theory that the sickle cell trait – having only one sickle cell gene – didn’t cause discomfort and provided a bonus trait of preventing patients from contracting severe forms of malaria. Later confirmed - associating sickle cell to a 29% reduction in malaria incidence- this working theory would explain why the mutation stuck around in evolution. In 2011, researchers used mice to confirm the assumption.

There are some earlier in the thread, e.g., about the increased prevalence of breast cancer in Ashkenazi Jewish women. Sickle cell anaemia would, of course, be another example.

The irony of Diane Abbott being criticised for apparently saying there is a hierarchy (this doesn't seem to be an appropriate word) of racism is exactly what Starmer has done in his response with his own hierarchy.

So whether DA wrote something that in fact was to address some internal Labour party dialogue, Starmer has done the same by saying the Labour Party wont tolerate anti-semitism and that is why she has been suspended.

In other words (assuming newspaper reports are correct) he has decided that the most important aspect was referencing Jews as suffering prejudice not racism, but apparently has no concerns about the other groups equally dismissed by DA as not suffering racism. I understand why he has done this as it is his platform to be elected as Labour party leader. But hardly reassuring to the other groups DA said only suffered prejudice. ie Hackney has quite a sizeable Irish community, and it is within living memory of rooms be advertised to rent except to "Blacks and Irish".

This also indicates part of the problem in trying to talk openly and honestly about race / racism in the UK (world) today is that political point scoring, and media meddling, means it never gets discussed properly.

ie Starmer has done the same as DA by inferring he thinks there is a hierarchy (or he thinks he will win points in the Labour party by implying this).

re DA getting elected in the part of London that is her constituency is that her election, like many in the Labour party is far more about people who would never vote Tory. Most inne London boroughs vote Labour, whoever is put forward as the candidate. Although to be fair to her, there were interviews in Stamford Hill with members of the Jewish community and (assuming the news didn't manilupate responses) they were about 50 50 in response to her letter. Some said absolutely she should stand down, others said she had been a good MP and whatever she intended by her letter they still supporter her to be their MP.