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

As an Irish person I disagree with her first paragraph, although I agree with that white people are privileged.

The second paragraph though is some Holocaust denying bullshit.

@IwantToRetire

I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say DA has personally experienced a great deal of racism and it has been a particular focus of her to highlight racism against black people. Could this have led her to a view in order to highlight the many manifestations of rascism against black people this can only be done by not allowing the focus on this issue to be 'diluted' by allowing an emphasis on a more holistic racism? (I don't agree with this but maybe it's a motivation?)

I think what is rather telling is (assuming the quotes are correct) that she actually went as far as including "examples" of how Black people have been discriminated against, eg sit at the back of the bus, no right to vote, slavery all of which are true and shouldn't have happened. But in creating this list and not acknowledging for instance the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing of Travelling people, she is ignoring or deminishing the history of other groups of people who have experienced racism

That’s exactly right, I think.

As PPs have said, a lot of this is imported from the US, with its insistence on a hierarchy of oppression, which is counter-productive because it inevitably provokes pushback from groups who feel that the disadvantages they experience are disregarded.

there is a difference between ethnicity and race. Perhaps she made a point to this but in a very clumsy way

well, yes, ethnicity technically exists, but race technically doesn't - not in humans. There is only one race of humans, all previous races are extinct or hybridised with us

She's an experienced parliamentarian. It's utter bullshit that she might struggle to articulate her views. This "first draft" was her actual view. The kind of shit she would say in her echo chamber and have no one call her out.
I'd love to like her. I'd love to call her an impressive politician worthy of rest and admiration. But she's not. She's an antisemite who should have the same fate as Corbyn.

@bunsen

Do we need different terms for hatred towards different races and different ethnicities? Possibly expanding the language would have prevented DA coming up with such a back handed argument?

The first (I understand) known written example of the word Holocaust is in a written account from 1189 at the crowning of King Richard I. Jews were banned from actually attending the event but a few Jewish dignitaries turned up with gifts for the new king. They were robbed, stripped and banished from the court.

As they ran away, word got out in London that the infidels were hated by the new King and so Londons Jews were were murdered in large numbers or forced to convert to christianity by accepting being baptised under the most serious physical threats to life, limb and worse. Word of the kings hatred spread across the country and in York hundreds of Jews killed themselves to prevent the mob from doing the same but worse.

No one was asking these Jews about their adherence to the Torah. It is not hatred about religion, it is hatred towards their ancestry and culture. Can't see it being usefully described as anything other than racism.

Money doesn't matter when the mob is dragging your wife and children out of their home for gross violation and eventual death.

This is her statement re the letter: https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1650072333527252994

I think she was trying to make a point and hashed it up, making it sound offensive to some.

I think what she meant was that if you are black, thats on show 24/7, so any passing racist can have a pop, whereas someone who is Jewish, Romany etc. if they don't bring it up, so long as they aren't wearing traditional outfits, its not on display so they don't get abuse from every passing bigot.

Thats what I think she meant, and that kind of makes sense (and is so bleedin obvious it really doesn't need saying) but she stuffed it up big time - she should have known better, Labour has been so scrutinised (rightly) for anti-semitism and she is a Corbyn affiliate, it was a hugely unwise statement to make.

Did she? Can you quote?

Did she? Can you quote?

Read the letter. The link is in the OP.

No she didn't, she said readheads experience prejudice, and separately that Jews do - but Traffic Wardens and Estate Agents experience prejudice, basically pick any type of person, I'm sure there is some kind of prejudice, but these prejudices are not equal or of equal harm.

I don't think she set out to be offensive, but made a right pigs ear of trying to explain something that probably didn't need explanation and in doing so pissed off almost everyone!

An indigenous Australian would likely call him/herself "black'.

Well they did when I visited...

Exactly, but according to the poster it’s facial features too and it’s still not racism if it’s skin tone alone.

Your post doesn't really make sense to me. You've said that some groups seem to have different economic profiles, which is certainly true, but:

1. You haven't shown that any of them are caused by racism of any kind, there are many reasons for disparities, including things like the average age of group members, which has nothing to do with racism.

2. Even if some are related to racism, and these are experienced differently, that's not to say that anything about whether these are institutionalized differences or something else, with regard to any of those groups.

I doubt anyone would argue that there are not differences in people's or groups experiences, but that doesn't make what DA was saying accurate - what she said went well beyond that.

I might have another go at joining the BAME group at work, last time a Bengali colleague and I tried to join we are told it was for black people only. So it does seem a widely held belief that the only people who experience racism are black

Well according to that poster everyone who is of African descent looks the same.

You only need to take one country of the approximate 54 e.g. South Africa to realise that is BS.

I've thought for a long time that Diane Abbott is not very well. Probably for the best if she takes a step back for a bit.

And one wonders how many more anti-Semitic incidents there would be if synagogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish organisations didn't routinely employ security guards.

The idea of ‘biological’ race is discredited, there’s only one in terms of biology (obviously not referring to physical & cultural differences between different ethnicities).

Used to quite like Dianne Abbot but this is staggeringly stupid. The red head line is jaw dropping.

I really think the problem is that her reasoning is quite confused, and she is mixing up different things.

To me she seems to be thinking specifically about rules and laws similar to the American Jim Crow laws, or apartheid in SA. And I suspect she is unconsciously thinking about places that are English speaking as "one" place, so the UK, USA, SA, but not, say, Germany.

She may also be thinking about the 20th century mainly. And I suspect she is almost thinking as if those rules and laws are still in effect, or were very recently, rather than being something only fairly old people remember.

There is also a strong tendency in American style anti-racism to see any kind of negative social disparity as the result of institutionalized racism, but often to be very shallow in the analysis of the data showing that. I suspect that is also playing into her thinking.

And the final thing I'd say is that people who think this way never ever seem to consider that there is also a sector of white society that experiences long term, generational poverty, powerlessness, and lack of opportunity, in a way that has negativly impacted their social culture. Often these families struggle in very much the same ways as ethnic minorities families in the same situations, and are not able to escape for the same kinds of institutional and cultural issues - lack of access to capital, lack of social and cultural resources, problems with broken homes, addictions, criminality, and all the rest. And so they don't ask, if these things happen to these people and it's not caused by racism, maybe there are other factors at work that need to be considered for non-white groups too.

That is debunked science from the 19th century (although it persisted until I was at uni in the 90s!)

The theory was that humanity was divided into three groups, the names of two are now considered offensive, these were basically, black, white and folks from china or thereabouts and it was all based on skull shape and facial features, colour was not that important.

it's clearly tosh, and must have been obvious tosh to anyone travelling around with eyes back then.

The science of DNA junked all the old taxonomy stuff way back.

"Red heads"?!

DH and I were saying exactly the same thing earlier. I wonder if doing that programme weekly kept her grounded and in touch with reality. Made her see opposing views and consider them. Since The Week finished she appears to have gone completely mad.

I can’t get my head around how she thought she was able to so confidently comment on entire races’ experiences of life-long racism. Surely she can only comment on her own experience? It is truly baffling especially after everything her own party has done to try and combat anti-semitism.

She must have deeply offended so many people. I can’t understand how she couldn’t see that her stance, even in draft, was so clearly offensive and racist in itself.