Racism isn’t just about skin colour
Being an immigrant from Australia has shown me racism has a complex set of causes including arrogance, insecurity and ignorance. I’m ‘white’, male and six foot three, native English speaker, so I haven’t suffered the appalling physical violence others have. But people have tried to use my ethnic origin against me. This article gives what I think is behind the comments.
‘How can you teach English? You’re Australian.’
This doesn’t sound offensive, but it was meant to be. I taught English language and literature for nearly thirty years in the UK. I was challenged with this statement dozens of times and it was usually accompanied by a sneer.
All right, in a couple of cases merely informing them that Australians speak English too was enough. It was simple teenage ignorance.
However, the conversation usually continued with ‘but that’s not proper English’. It made no difference pointing out I’d done a degree and they didn’t know how to use full stops correctly. They assumed a British accent was superior because the British were superior. They were better than me. It wasn’t about skin colour, or education, or wealth; it was about where I was born.
‘You come over here stealing our jobs and living on benefits.’
I got this mostly when I was working in South Bank, Middleborough, a very deprived area. Nobody had applied for the job I had but I was offered it when turned down for a better one.
The deprivation in the area was real and a complete shock to me — I’d never seen poverty like it before. While I was at the school we started to turn out the third generation of permanently unemployed students. As one lad put it, ‘I’ll never have a job. My grandfather’s never had a job. My father’s never had a job. I’ll never have one.’ It was probably true. I saw him twelve months later and he was unemployed. It still upsets me.
Some of the students at that school believed their life chances were being blighted by foreigners. Considering their home lives, their geographical location and the educational inequalities that existed, it was reasonable to say they were disadvantaged. But not by immigrants. Social class, historical factors and government policy were the culprits. (A Tory politician at the time stated that there were no poor people because they all had access to clean water.)
‘You come over here stealing our women.’
They were saying, ‘I’m not good enough to get a girlfriend. Because you’re a foreigner, you’re more attractive than me.’ It was about insecurity. I was twice the age of the people that said it, hardly competition, but they still felt threatened.
‘What would you know? You’re all just convicts anyway?’
A colleague, someone with four years of university education, said this to me. He then turned and stomped off. We’d been having an argument about social class.
He thought his point of view was superior because of my (supposed) ancestry. (I told onlookers that my grandfather was English and had emigrated before the war.) He believed that because some of the first settlers in Australia had been convicted of minor crimes (you were hung for major ones) a whole nation was a bunch of criminals. (Of course, he didn’t question whether transporting people was right.)
‘Who won the rugby?’
In 2003 I spoke to my six-year-old son who was sitting in a shopping trolley. This flicked a switch in a scrawny, old man who was about five feet tall. He followed us around for the next half hour saying things like ‘What did you think of that, then? That showed you.’ and ‘Who won the World Cup?’.
I was tempted to turn around and say, ‘Not you. I doubt you could pass a ball, let alone tackle someone.’ His self-esteem was based on his place of birth. Some of his fellow countrymen had done something amazing. That made him amazing, too.
He’s not alone. Take international football matches. One Saturday afternoon I walked to the High Street in Exeter after England had lost a lunch time World Cup game. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Hundreds of drunk and disappointed men were looking for a way to bolster their self-esteem. Their belief that they were better than others had taken a kicking and so they wanted to give someone else one.
‘I voted for Brexit to get rid of all the immigrants.’
A dear lady I worked with said this to me. She paused before adding, ‘I suppose you hate me now because you’re an immigrant.’ I assured her that although I didn’t agree with her, I didn’t dislike her in the least.
She genuinely thought that unemployment and problems with the NHS were caused by immigration. She was frightened and ignorant. The issues for her were simple. She couldn’t understand that GP surgeries were being overwhelmed by an aging population and inadequate social care, not young, healthy Europeans coming here to work. How could elderly British people be a problem?
‘Keep Britain for the British. Send them all home. Go back to where you belong.’
One young man said this to me several times. I consider him a failure of the education system even though he got good grades.
There wasn’t logic in his thinking. When I asked him who he meant by ‘them’ he would name every racial group and colour he could think of. It didn’t matter that his forebears were born in another country.
‘The French are unfriendly.’
This wasn’t directed against me. However, it was something I heard several times before visiting the country. I have never found it to be true. Not only have they always been extremely tolerant of my appalling attempts to speak their language (I’m particularly bad with numbers) but I’ve found them going out of their way to be helpful on many occasions. If I pause and look at a map on a street, someone will stop and offer to assist.
It seems the sentiment was an expression of dislike for the fact that French people don’t universally speak English perfectly. ‘I’m not going to learn French; you should learn English.’
Conclusion?
Racism isn’t only about skin colour. (That is not to say it isn’t used as a basis for it.) It has a complex set of causes including arrogance, insecurity, deprivation and ignorance.
The solution isn’t to say we need to regain sovereignty. The solution isn’t to say we’re a great nation. The solution is to confront racism and the thinking behind it. But, you know, it has little effect me challenging wrong thinking. Why? Because I’m the immigrant — I’m the problem. It has to be the majority who decide to change. If you consider yourself ‘white’, now is the time to do something.
