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

Coincidentally, this was in Sunday's Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/23/when-cleopatra-was-alive-she-wasnt-categorised-by-colour-of-her-skin

I didn't even know that. That's really interesting.

@Climbles I actually really agree with you on this. I know of multiple white people that have either been in trouble with HR or lost their positions because of speaking up about this. When I was working for a charity a couple of years back, we were forced to take a training course and it basically said word for word what Diane Abbott said. There is no way in hell I could speak up even though I've experienced racism first hand many, many times. I was basically told that neither my eastern European background or Jewish heritage matter.
The other thing this does is closes the dialogue that's so important to have with kids who are black. I know many black parents who are sick and tired of their kids being force fed victim propaganda. It does them absolutely no favours and is causing so much division.

Speak from your own experience, I, and all of my family don’t look white at all. We’re Jewish, and quite frankly I find it odd when Jews don’t look slightly Middle Eastern.

Isn’t it all in one sense the same thing, ie ‘othering’ another group and treating them worse because they are another group by ethnicity…

And also complex because even within African ethnicity - there are many different histories, different complexities depending on both history and current circumstances all interplaying together.

I haven’t read the article, but there are probably very valid points in both of them but it’s such a hot potato subject that it can so easily be divisive. When really most oppressed people are stronger united together.

I think she was clumsy in the extreme particularly with regard to Jewish people. However, I think what she was referring to was 'passing'. Many other races have this 'priveledge', black people do not.

That is not to say Jewish people or any other ethic group are privileged per say - passing brings with it a whole host of other issues - but some (not all) are able to pass when it suits and that can - on the surface, given way we measure success, be helpful.

Diane is an extremely bright woman who has suffered a lifetime of abuse. To see her suspended is heartbreaking. To turn the tables on her in this way

I think she was just trying to defend the left's redefined idea of racism.

‘Jewish People, stop complaining about antisemitism, just remember you can pretend to not be Jewish and everything will be fine!’

Fucking hell.

I don’t think she should have the whip removed, Boris Johnson said far worse regarding Muslims and black people and that was fine apparently. What she was saying that from her perspective no one has it as bad as black people.

Presumably Diane was only referring to who had it worse in modern Britain at this moment rather than who had it worse in historical terms. I think if you look at things statistically she might be right in terms of income levels, housing , education and access to health. Wasn’t there a recent report that black women were four times more likely to die in child birth then any other ethnic group.

Last time I looked it was GRT people on pretty much all those markers (life expectancy, educational attainment, most likely to experience the death of a child etc).

https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/media-centre/house-of-lords-media-notices/2022/may-2022/stark-and-shocking-inequality-faced-by-gypsies-roma-and-travellers--lords-committee/

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/file/6506/download?token=8L_E32Zg

Diane Abbot has time and time again, proved herself to be ignorant, stupid and a hypocrite.

She is no better than the racists and bigots that she tries to call out.

Presumably Diane was only referring to who had it worse in modern Britain at this moment rather than who had it worse in historical terms

Maybe read the letter? It very specifically references Jim Crow laws and the transatlantic slave trade.

At least Hitler allowed the Jews to sit at the front of the bus on the way to concentration camp...
Dianne Abbott, probably.

@Cordeliathecat I don't really know what I'm suggesting I just find it odd. Also the thing about how it was a first draft and wasn't supposed to be published - and why didn't the editor read this letter and predict the reaction Diane would get? It feels like a set up but I don't know by whom or for what reason.

I don't think its a newspaper editors job to protect MPs from their own stupidity

In addition to her anti semitism, her comment that "at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships." is factually incorrect.

At the height of slavery there were indeed very many "white seeming people " from Europe being taken from their homes by African slave traders and taken to Africa in manacles on slave ships, including some of my ancestors.

Her lack of historical knowledge is shocking and only made worse by the fact she studied History at Cambridge.

I think she said what she and her Momentum friends believe - that racism against black people is worse and more unavoidable than any other type of discrimination. That Jewish people can pretend not to be Jewish, and anyway they’re rich, and probably supporters of killing innocent Palestinians. So “worlds smallest violin” and shut up.

And that is why I find Labour unelectable until Starmer finds the courage to say ‘no’ to Momentum. He’s made a good start on anti semitism, now he needs to do it across the board. Ideally with definition of woman as adult human female.

I admire DA’s tenacity in being the first black, female MP, and I hate how much abuse she gets. I’d rather she said what she thinks and we get to discuss it, than she get cancelled or shouted down.

This feels like a very American idea, splitting the concepts of 'racism' and 'prejudice'. Within the American context, it probably makes more sense. But looking at world history, it doesn't. Whoopi Goldberg also got in trouble over this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/06/whoopi-goldberg-holocaust-remarks-were-born-of-ignorance-not-racism

I attended a Holocaust Educational Trust event over a decade ago where the speaker was a survivor of the Holocaust. She told her story and about what happened to her family and many others.

I assumed that the rest of her talk would be about combating prejudice against Jewish people but it was a much wider talk about stereotypes and prejudice and the dangers of dehumanising language and genocide. It made a deep impression upon me and has affected how I see everything from the way travellers are talked about in the local press/online to how I engage with and talk about people I disagree with in political debates.

It was powerful that she used her story which could justifiably center Jewish people to make a much wider point.

In comparison, Abbott seems to view racism through a tight US Civil Rights lens and ignored the experiences and histories of the Roma, Irish and other ethnicities in the article she was responding to in order to dismiss their experience of racism.

I don't know whether she just has Holocaust mentally filed under a completely different heading than racism such that it did not occur to her whilst she was talking about not sitting at the back of buses. Or whether she holds deeper antisemitic beliefs as some other Corbyn supporters do.

It's interesting the challenge that Jewish history makes for that understanding of historical racism and current inequality.

Thanks Onlytherain for your post. I knew some things but not all of it.

I was taught that black Africans were directly descended from gorillas!!! Not everything we are “taught” is factually correct.

Good grief- this is a senior politician, not a child. It’s not the Observer’s job to save her from the consequences of her actions. The public have every right to know that she thinks this.

She is a massive electoral asset - to the Tories.

You got a lot of good feedback on this already. So just to add that actual Caucasians - as in, you know, people actually FROM the freaking Caucasus, rather than a vast group misnomed according to Anglo-Saxon 19th century orientalist phantasizing - are often referred to as "those blacks" by Russian racists. Meaning roughly what said 19th century phantasists would have termed "swarthy" when referring to Mediterranean nations. "Sallow" skin, bushy dark eyebrows, black hair.

Some of the most overt racism I have heard was from Black people tlaking about Jewish people. This was in a very diverse workplace I was in about 6 years ago. Couldn't believe what I was hearing; kept my mouth firmly shut.

The Bradford riots of Hindus vs Muslims last year shows that tensions simmer ethinically as well as racially. Likewise the Black-on-Asian attacks in New York over the past few years. Likewise anti-White sentiment in China - who here has ever had a drunken honest conversation with a Chinese; they think (and are taught) that Europeans are backwards (maybe we are lol). And yes, English people have definitely been racist towards the Irish for centuries. I see racism as multi-lateral, it goes lots of ways, humans naturally want in-groups and out-groups but we have to learn to overcome that in order to function as multi-cultural globalised societiies.

I think we all agree that racism is just bad and I don't think that creating hierarchies of racism is helpful.

I feel sorry for Diane. I believe what she said about accidentally sending an initial draft. I think the letter writing might have taken place late at night after a little glass of wine or two.

Whether Abbott was being deliberately racist/anti-semetic, or as I suspect trying to make a point (which might not have been correct), getting in a mess and digging a giant hole, I suspect this was a gift to the Labour hierarchy.

She has form for putting her foot in it, and she was a close ally of Corbyn, we are heading towards another election, which Labour are almost certainly in with a serious chance of winning overall, and also routing the SNP in Scotland - the last thing they need is Diane Abbott offending half the electorate with some guff at the last minute, so it was a good chance to get rid.