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

"Race" doesn't really exist, does it?

And I'm not trying to deny racism, by the way, which definitely exists.

'Race' doesn't exist in the sense that was believed by e.g. certain early 19th century scientists who busied themselves travelling the globe collecting/measuring human skulls and drawing wild inferences from these measurements, drawing bright lines between groups of people, etc. It obviously exists in the sense that any of us could today be transported to a rural setting in any of e.g. China/Iceland/Nigeria and immediately know which was which based on the way that people look, and more broadly in the way that variations in people's recent ancestry translate into certain tendencies (not bright lines or hard and fast rules) to on average be more likely to look a certain way.

@puffyisgood

Cannot answer your question in any detail - will leave that to AP5Diva but broadly

as jewishness is an ethno-religious rather than racial construct the two things can be true at the same time

ie
in a) jewish people from all those places share common DNA and culture/religion

and
in b) jews and palestinians share some DNA in common but not culture/religion

Hope that's helpful rather than confusing

I agree. I think this is part of the problem.

"Race" is a very fluid definition. At the risk of outing myself - I am very mixed race. I get to tick three categories in the usual Ethnic Monitoring forms (which is apparently one too many for the NHS to cope with even for medical screening). I am also a Jew by conversion. My children, who are half-Ashkenazi Jewish from their father, therefore fall into at least four ethnic categories in these surveys. Frankly, this is the point at which it feels slightly pointless putting these labels on ourselves.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Jews as a whole are a ethno-religious group so we do not fit neatly into any one category. Left to ourselves, we would best describe ourselves as a 'people'.

"Racism", on the other hand, is very real. In the sense of discrimination against someone because of their perceived 'racial', ethnic or geographic origin. I know this definition is contested, but if you asked the average person on the street this is still what they would consider racism to be.

Some of the posts here about DNA and genetics and how they map onto different ethnic categories (including Jews) are fascinating. However, they also miss the point. Racism exists regardless of whether 'race' is a meaningful biological category. What DA termed 'white people with points of difference' (apparently Jews, Irish and Travellers) can and have definitely been the victims of racism.

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned, but what is particularly galling about DA's comments is that a fair chunk of recent high-profile antisemitic incidents have actually been committed by black and brown-skinned people against Jews. This includes a fatal shooting at a New Jersey kosher supermarket by a gunman linked to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement (the BHI mentioned by a PP) and, more relevant, abuse and assaults against Jews in Stamford Hill (DA's constituency). If you don't believe me, go take a look at the Shomrim Stamford Hill twitter thread.

Ironically, this means that as a brown-skinned woman in a headscarf, I get privilege by 'passing' in some settings where my more visibly Jewish friends can't.

Oh well.

As a former resident of Hackney, now naturalised northerner I’ve been utterly horrified to observe, from a distance, the recent rash of crimes committed against members of the Jewish community in Stamford Hill.

It’s particularly flabbergasting that this is happening in Diane Abbott’s own parliamentary constituency!

Here’s a few news stories from the last couple of years that I am familiar with, not all include a description or ID of the perp, which is a bit weird when you consider some articles are appeals for more information so a description of the suspect would be useful…

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-08-23/jewish-man-knocked-unconscious-in-north-london-in-an-alleged-racist-attack

https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-ultra-orthodox-jewish-men-assaulted-on-london-street-18-year-old-arrested

https://vinnews.com/2023/02/01/12-year-old-jewish-boy-grabbed-by-the-throat-and-thrown-off-london-bus/

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/23056005.police-drop-anti-semitic-case-golders-green-jews-attack/

https://www.mylondon.news/news/north-london-news/london-crime-man-grabs-jewish-26133487

Plus some commentary on the failures of The Met: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-met-is-failing-london-s-ultra-orthodox-jews/

Yes, I think so. Jewish is its own race/ethnicity and there is tons of genetic evidence to prove it. Just because the Jewish people have a bit of admixture with every region they migrated to over the past few millennia, it doesn’t erase their unique core identity as a separate ethnicity/race.

Race is fluid as it is a by and large a social construct whereby different societies/governments/scientists will lump groups of ethnicities together into broader categories based on different criteria. That’s why people would love to get rid of it, but then the question becomes how do you do a census and how do you track equality and diversity without building some race categories?

I don’t know of any other ethnicity/race that has migrated so much- and let’s face it usually not by choice but by being enslaved or fleeing genocide. But wherever they go on the globe, they still retain their unique genetic signature on top of culture and religion. Unlike most other ethnicities, they didn’t have the luxury of staying put in one place for thousands of years and so to me, we can’t really lump them under a broad race category that includes any other ethnicity.

As it is, we know the Jewish people were in enslaved in Egypt and that Moses wife was Jewish and also a Cushite (which was the Egyptian term for a Black person from Kush, modern day Ethiopia to the south of Egypt). Btw, there are Black Jewish people in Ethiopia that still practised a pre-Talmudic form of Judaism when Europeans first went into Ethiopia. No one is entirely sure when/how Judaism arrived in Kush.

But at any rate, no the Palestinians are not the same ethnicity or race as the Jewish people. For the Levant, the people who were there before the Jewish tribes arrived around 1,300 BC were the Canaanites. Todays Lebanese are descended from the Canaanites of 3,700 yrs ago as are the original Israeli Jewish (preRoman), but not the Palestinians. This Canaanite DNA from 3,000yrs ago then travelled with the Jewish people during the different diasporas down through history- into Iran & Asia when the Babylonians conquered Israel, then into Europe where the Ashkenazi Jews started, off to Iberia and Italy with the Romans, back into North Africa and into West Africa and Arabia with the rise of Islam. The Ashkenazi Jews then spread to Russia, Northern Europe and finally over to the US, South Africa and so on. It is this 3,000 Yr old Canaanite DNA that points to their origins as in the Levant as most genetic studies look at 2,000yrs ago as the proxy for “origin.” This DNA is also proof that despite what some say, the Jewish tribes did not wipe out the Canaanites when they arrived at the promised land, rather it was a bog standard migration and peaceful intermixing during a time period that was known for mass migrations, civilisation collapses, climate disasters and so on.

The Palestinians are traced to have Arabian genetic origins and arrived in the region of Canaan/Israel with the expansion of Islam- almost 2,000 yrs after Israel was founded and are about as indigenous to Israel as the Vikings are to Britain. Yes, some people who are culturally Palestinian would have been converted from Judaism or Christianity to Islam during this early Medieval period and rise of the Islamic Empire, meaning some Jewish DNA was admixed into a core Arabian ethnicity. A study that once claimed Palestinians and Jews were genetically the same had to be retracted because it didn’t take into account the timing or extent of the DNA admixtures.

So, while the lines between races can get blurred thorough inter-marriage and admixture, there has always been a core ethnicity and population that persists down through the millennia due to largely endogamous cultural practices. DNA studies have shown that all the Jewish peoples scattered across the globe are more genetically similar to each other than to any other population regardless of physical appearance. The genes for skin, eye, hair colour are a teeny tiny proportion of our DNA.

Yes. I can get what she means about the literal racism people can suffer based on nothing more than their perceived ‘race’, as having a different slant to the prejudice people suffer for belonging to a particular tribe/nation/ethnicity, and perhaps it isn’t always helpful to throw them in together and treat them as though they are the same.

However, the fact that a huge number of her constituents are Jewish and quite visibly so, suffering hate crimes, I can’t help feeling like she is sticking two fingers up at them - the people who voted her in and she represents.

@AP5Diva I think there is a difference between a tribe or nation who purposely chooses to avoid marrying outsiders (which will reduce their genetic diversity), and a ‘race’ - which I think is more about a natural genetic mutation.

Racism exists regardless of whether 'race' is a meaningful biological category.

Exactly! And given the known history of thousands of years of persecution, enslavement, massacres, and genocide against the Jewish people it is unforgivable imho for DA to compare the racism suffered to mild harassment for having red hair.

I disagree. Endogamous cultural practices is what preserves the ethnic signature of a race, it doesn’t create it. Genetic mutations don’t create races either. That’s like saying all albinos or RH+ blood typed people are their own race.

The genetic mutation which gave people paler skin + straighter hair + prominent nose bridge - north of the Sahara must have has some kind of advantage in the climate or terrain for it to become so dominant and widespread. I know that Europeans have a certain amount of Neanderthal DNA so it could be that.

What, in your opinion brought these changes if not a mutation?

Endogamous cultural practices is what preserves the ethnic signature of a race, it doesn’t create it.

I wouldn’t call a tribe or nation a ‘race’.

Not a geneticist but I’d imagine the mutation for paler skin came about simply due to climate conditions and the associated health issues such as lack of vitamin D from sunlight in those with darker skin. Everyone in this country is advised to take Vit D supplements from September to March due to the lack of natural sunlight, people with darker skin are advised to take even higher doses.

I imagine low vitamin D levels in those who migrated north meant they were more prone to health conditions that meant it was an evolutionary advantage to be paler in those circumstances.

That all seems plausible, though it'd be much more so if you didn't speak of 'Moses' as a genuine historical figure, with respect that's a complete nonsense.

Yes, I can see how that might happen, either through a lack of Vitamin D causing death before having children or causing infertility - perhaps not being able to carry a pregnancy to term (isn’t there some connection between the absorption of calcium and vitamin D? You need plenty of calcium for the baby’s bones to grow)

Needing to wear lots of clothes for warmth, only your face can absorb the sunlight.

With respect, it isn’t nonsense, no more than Jesus.

So there’s a theory for the paler skin. How about the prominent nose bridge?

Maybe being able to warm the air up before it enters the body?

The straighter hair? Keeping the ears from getting frostbite? Keeping the neck warm?

Anyway, whether it was by mutation, the more costly premature death/infertility of those who didn’t have these differences, or the interbreeding with Neanderthals, I still think the differences add up together to be more significant than just tribal differences, enough to be called a ‘racial’ differences - even if people hate the idea of the word ‘race’ because of the dubious schools of thought from which the word originated.

I heard that there is far more genetic diversity in subsaharan Africa, than there is in the rest of the world, and I’ve not encountered many people who think of the different African tribes as different ‘races’. They’re tribes.

In Tanzania pretty much everyone is ‘Masai’ in origin, though most are not living the traditional nomadic life. They are more like people who are culturally, but not religiously Jewish.

Ok. But we have already covered the fact that the definition of a race is a social construct. So you can have the definition of a race is a genetic mutant that you want, meanwhile I will stick with the definition that is currently the consensus which says that Jews are a race. 🤷‍♀️

In the context of this thread, Diane Abbot’s comments- I think it is important to draw a distinction between tribe and race. Why conflate the two?

Yes, I agree we should distinguish between a tribe and a race. Tribes often correlate to different ethnicities, and of course, a race is where you or society have decided to lump a group of ethnicities together based on a commonality, and then call it a race.

By saying that “I’ve not encountered many people who think of the different African tribes as different ‘races’. They’re tribes.” I have to wonder whether you think all of Africa is one race? If you do think this way, then you’d probably say all Europe is one race, and all Asia, Australia . You’d be defining race based on the name of a continent.

Very few people still adhere to this long discredited social Darwinist race model that goes by continent, and of course ranked the races with Europeans at the top and Africans at the bottom. Even though I don’t think you rank the races like they did, I think you’ve inherited the thought pattern where you think oh yes, Africa, that’s the one race of Black people. Europe that’s the one race of White people.

We have had numerous genocides based on racism happening within these “one (insert continent name here) races” that have blown this reductive construct to bits.

So moving past the lumping of ethnicities into races by the name of a landmass, I also don’t adhere to the people of colour model which would have us categorise races by a makeup shade sheet (attached). It is all quite ridiculous imho.

The definition of racism includes when one ethnicity has hatred or prejudice for another ethnicity, so to my mind this means that each ethnicity can be a race in its own right depending on the circumstances of oppression, genocide and so on. In this view, race is defined not by land mass or skin tone, but by the entirety of what makes them a separate ethnic group, when they are being viewed as “other” in a society.

Mmmm. I don’t think it has to be like that. Yes, there is huge genetic diversity is subsaharan Africa and it does seem a broad brush to regard it all as one ‘race’. There is more diversity there than in the rest of the world put together.

However, people migrated from Africa across the Indian Ocean all the way to Australia, who didn’t have the genetic quirks (mutations?) of Caucasians. So it’s not about countries, more about migration and the significant dying off of certain inherited traits in certain large populations over long periods of time which is distinctive and visible.

Although it is a politically loaded term, calling these differences ‘races’ is still meaningfully descriptive, particularly since people suffer ‘racism’ as a result of these differences being perceived.

It’s a totally different kettle of fish to tribal differences.

'Jesus' is much closer to being a historical figure than 'Moses', though I'm very happy to accept them as exact peers when it comes to the authenticity of their supposed interactions with 'God'.

The evidence for a historical Jesus isn't great: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5x4SUZZrHuKcjVBMmR6THZiV1E/view?resourcekey=0-fyrabtKL7GJX0M3U70Sc7A

(Apologies for the derail.)

Not really. Different is different. Visible is visible. Doesn’t have to be down to what shade of makeup you match for it to be racism.

Ok, I’ll just take this music recorder’s word for it then as he’s written down a presentation he did for his Uni of Iowa Student Humanist Society.