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If parties pretend racism is a question of a few bad apples, they may worsen relationships between minority communities
All the political parties claim to be anti-racists appalled by their opponents. Meanwhile, some political commentators appear to have discovered racism in our public life as if it were a new phenomenon. Racism is a complex, widespread issue with deep historical roots; I won’t (and I can’t, as the director of a charity during an election) offer a balance sheet of who is more racist and which racisms matter more. But there are several problems that must be raised.
The first should be obvious: we’re having a very public discussion about whether Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson (or other candidates for parliament) are personally racist. The problem with this framing is that racism isn’t mainly about individual attitudes and actions. It is an ideology developed – from medieval antisemitism to the hierarchies of 18th-century European colonialism – to justify the economic and political domination of ethnic majorities over minorities. Continue reading...