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

Yep that's the conclusion I drew from the modules of one of my degrees.

I found it proven in rl e.g. the racism some Spanish people I know experienced in US owned and managed companies.

I don’t agree with what she has written, but I do think there may be some kind of distinction to be drawn between people who can ‘pass’ as white if they want to, and those who are unable to hide their ethnicity at all.

I think this point is fairly fundamental to feminism actually as well - women are judged on sight and often even before based on a name. Some groups do not appear as obviously different as others, so can hide their protected characteristic to some extent.

Is this tied up with the modern left-wing definition of racism that it's prejudice combined with power?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power

I was taught that it was later narrowed down to only three or perhaps four.

The Jews are a race of people. The holocaust happened. What is so unclear about that?

If it is then it makes her letter to the newspaper even worse.

Loads of Jewish people don’t look in any way Middle Eastern.

Yep. Race is a social construct and so there is no technical number of races.

That’s fine, but you have to think that outside of your teachings, other countries were teaching completely different race categories and race categories kept on changing over time all over the world.

Why is she trying to create a hierarchy of racism? It's all intolerable - one is not more worthy than the other. She's not even just trying to make anti semitism a bit less bad than racism against black people, she's downgrading it to something as petty as making fun of someone with red hair.

It's deplorable. She an anti semite and it needs to stop.

She didn't write that.

Maybe she should have had a conversation with the second black female MP who was elected to the HoC before emailing that letter.

Sorry but I can't get over the idiocy ( and utter disrespect ) of equating the holocaust to prejudice against redheads!

in the holocaust it was a race not religion thing primarily there was no distinction between devout Orthodox Jews and Atheistic Jews it wasn't the degree of devotion to religion that mattered but if they were Jewish or had a Jewish parent or a Jewish name or if the looked "jewish" by racial stereotyping, It was easier for jews to escape if they didn't look very jewish etc

What are the 3 races? Black, Caucasian, Asian? What are polynesians? Or aborigines? What are Sri Lankans?

Maybe, if we didn't allow black people, especially women, into the HoC this would not be a problem.

Or we could just accept that the majority of Jewish people are unnoticeable in modern society. Everyone knows the holocaust happened, we need to keep an eye on the big picture. But my black foster child was not only my only foster child to be attacked in public, but he was the only one to be attacked a dozen plus times.

Love it or hate it, people notice skin tone. Frankly most people don't notice or care if you are Jewish or Vegan unless you tell them.

I think Labour plan to change equality law:

https://twitter.com/anneliesedodds/status/1492560568661811209?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-party-race-equality-planukk_5ee167a8c5b678a937d01463

This episode reveals not only the true thoughts of one of its MPs, but also how little is known about race and the current act:

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/9

Race includes—

colour;

nationality;

ethnic or national origins.

She has form for this.

Look at her comments on Finnish nurses.

Classifying Jewish people as 'white with points of difference' similar to red-heads (some Jewish people of course have red hair, so do some black people) and then making out they aren't discriminated against that much (not on the back of the bus) is outrageous given the history of anti-semitism and the Holocaust.

It also obscures the good point that being obviously non-white in a white society heightens prejudice and racism as it can't be hidden.

Red-haired people can dye their hair for starters! (although I actually hate she mentioned this as it is so trivializing of the Holocaust and ongoing antisemitism and prejudice against Travellers and Irish people it's embarrassing, and as a red-haired person I don't want to be dragged into it).

She seems to be attempting to redefine racism, and I'm not sure I even understand to what! If Jewish people, travellers, and Irish people suffer, as she says, "prejudice," and that is due to their ethnicity (and she doesn't seem to be arguing with that part either) then that's pretty much the dictionary definition of racism, isn't it?

You can argue about whether one of these groups suffers, or has suffered, more than another from racism (though frankly I struggle to see why that's particularly helpful), but not really about whether they experience it.

What are you saying? That Diane Abbot speaks for all black people on racism? That it’s only racism if it’s based on skin tone? Have can you not know that skin tone within ‘races’ is more varied than between ‘races’?

Abbott a Holocaust denier?

No words. Victim top trumps is a loser’s game but she’s really taken her cause to a new low.

Truly the gift that goes on giving

Is that you, Diane?

There are well over 2,000 recorded antisemitic hate incidents a year, despite the Jewish population being under 300,000.

Unfortunately there is a significant minority in this country who both notice and care if someone is Jewish, and not in a good way.

Denying that Jewish people experience racism has a result of being Jewish is fundamentally racist.

That's absolutely true. but bear in mind that the Nazis would certainly have considered e.g. Slavs to be a 'race', which few people would today. Generally speaking, a Jewish person who 'marries out' and lives outside a Jewish enclave is highly unlikely to face discrimination. It's possible that they might if there were to somehow advertise their ethnic Jewishness, e.g. if they were to announce it to a local neo-nazi, but their kids probably wouldn't face even this possibility - I can't imagine it'd be easy to get much hate from modern anti semites by simply telling them that one of your parents was born into a Jewish family. Whereas of course mixed black/white people can and do face racism. Really it probably is fair to argue that modern anti semitism has as least as much in common with religious or cultural intoleranceF it does racism. travellers are not an unfair comparison, people living in a traveling community face a lot of prejudice in a way that people who leave that community don't, and that's not, as say David Baddiel might argue, because their traveller status is 'invisible', it's more that prejudice is targeted at the community/the collective.