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

I was at Asda last week and there was a black man with 2 puppies following him.

A white lady said 'aww your puppies are gorgeous, what are their names'

He then proceeded to shout at her saying he doesn't speak to people like her. She's a white devil. Satan has her heart. She's evil. Evil white bitch. And he followed her carrying a huge stick saying he was waiting for her to come out after shopping, whilst smacking the stick against his hand.

If that's not racism then what the fuck is?

Agree - even the comments about “no white people manacled on slave ships” seems designed to answer the false, American confederate revivalist claims that poor white immigrants were treated just as badly as black slaves during the transatlantic slave trade, which clearly they weren’t.

But that isn’t a claim which is really being made in the UK, because we aren’t defending the US slave system/plantations, or wanting to return the American South to its pre-Civil War state.

I know a lot of Americans (mostly white) who can only see race via black/white lenses, and while that may make sense in the US, it makes no sense in the UK and can cross over into offensiveness (one drop rule, Spanish people being non-white, everyone non-white being black, everyone who is actually black being “African American” etc). Bizarre that Diane seems to have taken on the US view of race when she has always lived over here.

She is having an argument with herself here, and it makes her look terrible. I have a lot of respect for Diane given her historical achievements, and what she has been put through over the years. But this letter is disgraceful and she should never have written it.

I have long thought that Diane Abbot is an idiot. You can be academically clever and have no common sense or empathy at all.

Racism is such a sensitive and complex topic. Being black doesn't mean you can't put your foot in it.

That’s very insightful, I hadn’t thought of it like that but I think you’re right.

Yet again, the Left is tearing itself apart about its obsession with hierarchies of discrimination and the victimhood Olympics, rather than concentrating on the economic issues facing ordinary working people.

And they wonder why they keep losing. 🙄

I know you’re joking but it’s not funny. Jews in Hitler’s Germany were banned from public transport and public services. There was no seat on the bus for them- they had to walk or cycle. There was no school for their children. No park or theatre they could use. Then for being rounded up to go to concentration camps or for most of them immediate gassing upon arrival at the death camps, they were forced into the cattle cars of trains or the back of livestock lorries.

in the holocaust it was a race not religion I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but don't forget that Jehova's Witnesses were also targeted during the holocaust, as indeed were the disabled. Its very important not to forget these groups.

It sounds like mental illness to me (but obviously I wasn't there, don't know the man etc, so that's just my gut response).

I think what Diane Abbott and many others would probably argue is that racism isn't about individual acts of racial prejudice, such as the one you cite. It's more about institutions having racism embedded in them. So if you're black, you know that the police are more likely to use stop and search powers against you, more likely to subject you to strip search, and you're more likely to end up in prison. If something bad happens to you (eg you're a black woman who goes missing), the media are less likely to run stories about you. In school, you're less likely to learn about black history than white history. That kind of thing.

JolyGoodBloviator regarding GRT people having less access to education/ healthcare and lower life expectancy, is that because of their ethnicity/skin colour or because they have no fixed abode? No other ethinicity has to put up with police bruitality, stop and searches and other forms discrimination based on skin colour like black people do.

Yes, the terrible state the country is in and economic crisis ordinary people face due to 13 years of Tory government, should be at the forefront of our minds.

There are a couple of responses being shared online to her letter. One is from Tomiwa Owolade, who wrote the original Guardian article that Abbott responded to. He's very polite but it's damning. The other is from Brendan O'Neill who's not nearly as polite but just as damning:

For one who knows the pain of racism, Diane Abbott shows such ignorance

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2ccf4080-e221-11ed-82bc-08d7692e8310?shareToken=83b06d8b37c6ad4a04b9e08ca03c58ee

"Abbott wrote that these groups “undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.” According to the MP, prejudice and racism are not the same thing. In her view racism is about prejudice and power. Any group can be victims of prejudice: racism only applies to groups of people who lack social, economic and political power.

But this kind of reasoning is odd. How do Traveller communities have any sort of power when they have the worst educational outcomes of all ethnic minority groups in the country? And doesn’t the power and privilege framework risk playing into one of the key tropes of antisemitism: that Jews have too much power?"

www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/23/diane-abbott-and-the-deranged-left/

"Imagine thinking it’s a trump card to say Jews weren’t required to sit at the back of American buses while neglecting to mention that they were instead being forced into overcrowded cattle trucks and transported to camps that existed solely for the purposes of racial mass murder."

It shouldn’t matter whether the racism is triggered by skin colour or by some other difference.

I agree

No
I've always been a supporter of DA but she needs to hang up her hat now.

I think Abbott is unwell,that was a monstrously stupid letter .Starmer must be rubbing his hands with glee.

Unless ...was it a deliberately provocative act aimed at exposing just how ruthless Starmer is being in ridding his party of any left wing members? Aligning herself with Corbyn?

AP5Diva but if discrimination is caused by something other than race, how can it be racism?

Yes - and to add to this - much of the discussion has focused on the Holocaust but this was not some weird anomalous blip where people suddenly became antisemitic for a decade for no particular reason. The Holocaust followed centuries of antisemitism- pogroms, the Inquisition, Jews being expelled from various countries, Jews not permitted to work in most professions...etc. I've seen antisemitism referred to as "the longest hatred" with good reason - it didn't just suddenly appear in the mid 20th century.

Both suffer prejudice based on visual appearance.

@AP5Diva it matters to the people experiencing the prejudice (or racism) if it is grouped together as it strips out their own struggles, history, heritage etc. Essentially this issue we are debating will never be remedied as noone can agree on any central definition of anything and why should it be defined in that way? Why are we so keen to lump everything together under one pretext which ignores so many different historical facts, experiences, different forms of exclusion?
Its a wonder anyone can feel comfortable talking about these issues when others are too keen to shoot people down for not representing the full complexity or getting agreement from every authority on the matter that what is said is 'right'.
Ultimately we are asking for the impossible

@HathorsFigTree Tell that to the ones that had their noses and heads measured. There was literal booklets on how to spot the Jewish race. Also, the racism eastern Europeans face in the UK is astounding. Yet apparently they have the whitest of privilege. A man was literally murdered for being Polish.

This is a nuanced (and increasingly so) subject. On the one hand biologically there really isn’t such a thing as race, there aren’t even any sub species of Homo Sapiens. Racial categories aren’t even especially calcified.

However what is self-evident is that racism exists. The problem is that racism itself is born out of ignorance and bigotry, and it’s next to impossible to enter into an intellectual space to combat it, without entertaining the very same errors in thinking that lead to a racist mindset.

There has also been a shift in the language. Originally racism was simply prejudice and bigotry towards a specific perceived race. Under the original definition it was perfectly possible for racism to exist towards white people. However in the 70s and 80s in academia there was the inception of all this critical race theory stuff which has shifted the definition of racism away from an erroneously held individual belief (albeit a view that could be held by a majority), to views of systemic prejudices that exist baked into societal structures themselves.

Under this newer definition racism can’t be said to exist against those who are seen as the natural beneficiaries of said societal structures. Namely white people in predominately white societies. However we run into problems as indeed Diane Abbott has here, and also say for example within the black community have had to invent an entirely new term for preferences and privileges enjoyed by black people with lighter skin tones, they have landed on the term colourism.

Needless to say prejudice and bigotry is a cancer in any form, but we have sort of over complicated the way we talk about it. Which I fear has overly narrowed the focus, and in so doing moved away from simply combating those prejudices. That’s not say that something like critical race theory doesn’t have utility. It’s particularly useful in exposing unconscious bias that gives rise to the structural inequalities.

I’m not entirely sure what the answer is aside from more listening, and perhaps where possible trying to lower the temperature of the debate a bit.

Diane Abbott and her defenders seemingly are ignorant about Jim Crow and the 'one drop' rule that drove Racial segregation in the Deep South. You could be as 'white seeming' as anything but if you were found to have 'one drop' of 'Black' blood, then you were Black. Racism is not just about visible physical characteristics. It's actually pretty creepy and racist to say that it is.

Yes Jewish people do have certain physical characteristics. They are an ethnicity.

I would also like to add that the colorism within the African American communities (DS vs LS) is utterly, utterly vicious. Who perpetuated the 'brown bag' test?

All this to say that it is complex. Creating hierarchies of racism does NOT help.

With Travellers, it's difficult because many more conservative Travellers will pull their children out of school at 12, 13 because they do not agree with the modern education system which they believe is against Traveller beliefs and customs. They willk also have their girls marry very, very young. So in many ways it is their own customs which affects their health and educational outcomes. I am really not sure what can be done about this. Is it not racist to insist that they fit into a system they don't agree with?

I suspect it’s not nearly as clear cut as you imagine (and that many of the existing racial discrepancies in policing are down to one force, The Met, which is also sexist as fuck). Thankfully we don’t have all the police shooting deaths that the US has.

Most GRT families aren’t actually ‘of no fixed abode’ btw, the 2011 census has only 24% in caravan/mobile homes and the majority of those are located on permanent sites, they don’t move anyway.
Not many UK GRT families travel nowadays, (and those that do tend to have a relatively small radius of a ‘home’ area) and not all UK ‘travellers’ are GRT in race and ethnicity terms. The new age type aren’t included in the GRT statistics.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/summaries/gypsy-roma-irish-traveller

I’m wondering if some under 25 year old very-online office intern wrote the ‘draft’ and it was sent in with very little input from Abbot, who really does have first hand experience of racism in Britain and has spoken about both her mother and her son’s experiences too. Plus she’s a Hackney MP.

Seems well weird that she submitted some largely irrelevant imported US talking points to The Observer, almost like like she’s resorted to copying someone else’s homework?

What an idiot she is.
Anti-semitism has been going on for centuries.

@Soontobe60 Bloody hell, I am the same age as you and my teachers were intelligent people , where on earth did you go to school?