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

She's wrong.

Blondes were associated with sexual promiscuity during the Renaissance due to their predecessors, the Roman slave trade liking exotic blondes for their brothels. The Romans also passed a law that all prostitutes must dye their hair blonde so that men would know which sort of woman they could harass in the streets or proposition.

This beauty “ideal” in Renaissance Italy wasn’t for respectable women but for courtesans. Sappho is Greek and from 2nd c. AD (when Greece was part of Roman Empire)and similar thing, in the poems Helen hides her blonde hair under a dark wig, she may look like a Queen on the surface but underneath she is a blonde whore and her blondness is a hint as to her upcoming infidelity to her husband.

It’s more sexualising exoticism than real admiration.

It’s why the Virgin Mary in Renaissance Italy is usually pictured as a brunette.
https://arthistorysociety.org/essays/titians-assumption-of-the-virgin-piety-in-renaissance-italy

AP5Diva · Today 16:54
Blondes were associated with sexual promiscuity during the Renaissance due to their predecessors, the Roman slave trade liking exotic blondes for their brothels. The Romans also passed a law that all prostitutes must dye their hair blonde so that men would know which sort of woman they could harass in the streets or proposition.

This beauty “ideal” in Renaissance Italy wasn’t for respectable women but for courtesans. Sappho is Greek and from 2nd c. AD (when Greece was part of Roman Empire)and similar thing, in the poems Helen hides her blonde hair under a dark wig, she may look like a Queen on the surface but underneath she is a blonde whore and her blondness is a hint as to her upcoming infidelity to her husband.

It’s more sexualising exoticism than real admiration.

Thank you for that information which is very interesting and I’d never have realised that. I went to look it up and saw though that eventually dyed blond hair or blond wigs made from the hair of northern captives became popular among the governing class of women too, and they also liked dark black wigs from Indian hair as they did not like to be grey-haired.

As to the Renaissance Madonnas there are a lot of blond ones, so if being blond was thought of as being associated with prostitutes then, it must also have had associations with purity in this context.

It is probably the case that prejudices and/or racism are often born from projecting suppressed aspects of oneself, some more positive (exotic, passionate?), some negative (malevolence, brutality) and falsely seeing them in the ‘other’.

Attitudes to black people must have changed somewhat in the Romantic Era were black people are sometimes exalted. Coleridge’s Abyssinian maid playing a dulcimer in “Kubla Khan”, for instance. Wordsworth seeing the indomitable and enduring heroism of Toussaint l’Ouverture ( the former slave who rose up to lead a revolt in Haiti). Then there is the idea of discovering the superiority of the ‘primitive’ both aesthetically and morally, which may have developed from this, which we would most likely think is condescending now but inspired Picasso, Matisse etc

Remember that Pope Gregory lived in the 5th century. Lumping him in with the Renaissance is like lumping us in with the late Middle Ages.

People were much less traveled in Gregory's time, for the most part.

I also would be wary of assuming that negative views of people of other groups or races were universal, and so explanations of positive attitudes or accounts we see are required.

Yes some virgin Mary’s were blonde, but the Renaissance covered alot of cultures other than Italy, including the same countries where the Romans were capturing their blonde slaves and shipping them south. Those regions didn’t have the same association, so their depictions of the Virgin Mary were the usual modelling of the ideal woman for the locals.

Sure it’s a thousand years after the Roman Empire, but it’s fair to say that the trauma of the British Empire on former colonies will last as least as long imho.

Yes some virgin Mary’s were blonde, but the Renaissance covered alot of cultures other than Italy, including the same countries where the Romans were capturing their blonde slaves and shipping them south. Those regions didn’t have the same association, so their depictions of the Virgin Mary were the usual modelling of the ideal woman for the locals.

The paintings I posted before were from Florence, Rome, Urbino where most of the local Italians would have had dark hair so I do not think what you say is always true.

Clearly, Jesus as a baby was often shown to be blond too.

This attached image was painted by Raphael for a church in Naples, so even further south.

I think clearly blondness became associated either with some sort of holiness, perhaps like a golden light; or for aesthetic delight - not just prostitution.

Della Bellezza delle Donne by Firenzuola 16thC was a book about female beauty. He gives preference to biondo “as the most beautiful colour for the hair, understanding by it a soft yellow inclining to brown.” (The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burkhardt)

The image below is:
Raphael’s Madonna del pesce, exhibited in the Sala Causa at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, was in fact created for the Chapel of the the Doce (or Santa Rosa) family right in San Domenico Maggiore (Naples)

This is a digression from the OP but a lot of our ideas of the image of Jesus, and of Mary, a holy, pure, woman come from the Renaissance.

Sure it’s a thousand years after the Roman Empire, but it’s fair to say that the trauma of the British Empire on former colonies will last as least as long imho.

I am sure you are right. We all consciously feel the influences that were part our grandparents’ lives and how they reacted to their times. They in their turn were influenced and affected by what happened to theirs….. and before you know it you begin to reach back a thousand years.

Just for interest - https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/b/black-madonnas-origin-history-controversy.php

More pictures here;

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/curry1011/black-madonna/

So special and interesting, thanks. Even if in many cases they are black from age or smoke it is notable that their blackness is cherished.

This is a photograph of a baby girl which led to a particularly satisfying humiliation of the Nazis and their idea of the Aryan race.
https://www.yadvashem.org/blog/jewish-girl-was-poster-baby-in-nazi-propaganda.html
Jewish Girl was "Poster Baby" in Nazi Propaganda

In 1935, Hessy's mother and aunt took six-month-old Hessy to be photographed in a professional studio by Hans Ballin, a well-known German photographer in Berlin. Seven months later the Levinson family housekeeper told Polin that she saw Hessy's picture on the cover of a popular Nazi family magazine "Sonne ins Haus" (Sunshine in the House). The photograph had been selected in a contest from an assortment of a hundred pictures of babies in Germany by ten well-known German photographers. The contest had been arranged by the Nazi propaganda department headed by Joseph Goebbels in which entries for the winning picture would depict the ideal beautiful German Aryan baby that would appear on the cover of the magazine

It’s a philosophical paradox. Race doesn’t exist, at least in terms of one single definition empiricists can define and reach consensus on. Racism however can and does exist defined as a set of behaviours and attitudes and prejudices created by bigots from an unsound philosophical foundation that is riddled with errors.

Trouble is historically racist groups have been such a majority that their attitudes and actions have compromised the lives of those in these make believe categories to such an extent that these groups now exist as self defined groups.

People trying to combat racism are guilty of making the same philosophical blunders that caused the problem in the first place. Now it’s been politicised by leftists and liberals to the extent they certain anti-racism activists wish to narrow the definition to ONLY use the language and term racism in analysis of white towards
black racism.

I also wish people would lay off Diane Abbott a bit, what she said was asinine and wrong, but no more so than 99% of any discourse surrounding race, and she did say she was wrong and owned her mistake. I really don’t see her as an actively hateful person who hates Jews, Red Heads and Romani people. At the absolute worst she just ill informed. I don’t think I can recall her being actively prejudiced towards any ethnics category.

^^

This.

'white' people with northern European and north-east Asian genetic lines (minimal melanin in the skin, ie. the very palest shade of brown possible) are the global ethnic minority and have always been so. The original human settlers in Europe would not have been recognisably 'white'.

More melanin (tones from olive tan to deep brown) is the global normal for our species, why people really can't grasp this is beyond me. I am on the edge of the AS and operate from biological logic when it comes to 'race' (there is no such thing unless one is describing the human race as a species).

Assuming any one is still interested in the original OP this was published today by Diane Abbott.
https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1704149054123360651/photo/1 and
https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1704149054123360651/photo/2

Unfortunately I couldn't find an accessible version on it. On both twitter and facebook the letter has been captured as a graphic image which excludes some with visual impairments from being able to read it. (It's not on her web site)

Here is the Guardian's report on this latest development https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/19/diane-abbott-accuses-labour-of-fraudulent-inquiry-into-racism-comments

(Without discussing Diane Abbott's particular situation what is it about the Labour Party that every time there is an investigation it ends up with it apparently being used to get rid of members of the party the leaders dont like. And now this. Using the despicable behaviour of a Labour Mayor in a neighbouring borough to justify stopping the local party from communicating with itself.)

Never got over her hypocrisy of sending her child to public school and refusing to speak about it - if she had explained herself I would have had more respect for her but she just went silent and refused to respond. Shame it has ended like this, but given her approach to things, not surprising, and richly deserved. There are too many people on the loony left who believe this type of shit (and yes, I am left leaning, but I cant stand the extremists).

I am neither for or against Diane Abbott, most in politics have some flaws, and many are hypocrites.

What I cant get over, and the media certainly never challenges them, is how high handed and undemocratic the Labour Party is.

Even without the issue of "what is a woman", and it doesn't seem to matter which clique is in power, the central office operates like some sort of demi god.

Why would anyone vote for a party that actually doesn't practice democracy?

I know the Tories are equally riven, but it appears (maybe falsely) that whoever is in central office lets the rivals groups fight it out, even at the expense of Brexit.

But the Labour party, which espouses different values, seems unable to put them into practice. All this kniving rivals in the back. And it is so ingrained that the establishment is against them, that nobody will talk about it publicly. Look at all the GC women ignored and insulted and excluded.

Labour HQ must have been clapping their hands with joy when Diane Abbott's letter was published. Gave them the opportunity they had been looking for even though others, who have made errors of judgement, are not isolated like this. I am sure they thought that without her (and others) Labour will be much more palatable to middle England.

Vote out the Tories to vote in the New Tories.

Why does anyone care what she says?
As I recall she said 10,000 extra police officers would cost £300,000. So they are paid £30 each are they?
Suggest commenting or even listening to anything she says is a complete waste of time.

Well we are talking about Diane Abbott here. I might listen if i thought she had any credibility. But she hasn’t…….

I agree that I don't think she's deliberately evil, or targets anyone, I just think she's stupid, low intelligence, useful idiot.
She's supposed to be very loyal which is probably a good trait in politics.

Claiming only black people can experience racism is itself a racist statement. She does like to play the race card. Relying on special/exclusive victim status seems to be her only policy.

I'm not sure, because I've been called a white slag by the muslim boys in Mile End, and been groped by them on their bikes etc, but I think that was more to do with not dressing modestly in an area where some men very much pressure women to wear niqab, let alone hijab, not to do with my skin. I understand where Dianne Abbott is coming from but as another poster said, it's more complex than that.

ourse

Clearly Diane Abbott isn't 'stupid' 'low intelligence' etc she's an Oxbridge graduate

She has however said/done some stupid things when she has been unwell with poorly controlled DM

This is the uk you should be able to dress how you please . What those boys did to you was sexual assault and racism. You should have reported it . Imagine if the boot was on the other foot and white boys had called you a black slag and groped you ? It goes both ways and should be stamped out .

Having a degree means you have a lot of knowledge in a narrow field. It does not mean 'clever'. It does not mean 'intelligent'. All it means is 'educated'. And I have come across many highly-educated people that were - yes, stupid - in the wider sphere.

To even be accepted to study for a degree you'd have to be of above average intelligence - this was particularly so for women at the beginning of the 70s before the sex discrimination act. Less than 5% of the population went to university at all

The fact that you know all these graduates with no commonsense doesn't change that fact

These harder left types are so clever they make up their own new meanings for words, that unfortunately many of the common people aren't sophisticated enough to grasp.

Have to admit I reactivated the thread, not necessarily to talk about Diane Abbott which had been done in its early stage.

But more about the complete shit show that is the Labour Party. It is irrelevant whether you think Diane Abbott is good, bad, stupid or intelligent.

The issue her recent statement raises that the political party that will no doubt be the next Government is either totally incompetent and / or willing to change the rules to get the outcome the inner circles wants, or (possibly like other parties) is managed not on good practice and equal treatment, but as a vendetta machince for which ever clique is in power within the party, to get rid of people that other people just dont like.

This level of personal corruption in relation to power positions is not a good endorsement for running the country.