Diane Abbott is right. We should talk about hierarchies of racism

Abbott’s comments have been considered so controversial because she has picked at a thread that threatens to unravel the entirety of the hollow liberal democracy we live in. A nation predicated upon injustice and racism has no interest in the lived realities of black and brown people.

In this post-woke era, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion have served their purpose: only of use insofar as placing a convenient non-white face in every body and institution to dissuade any accusations of prejudice. Anything that actually interrogates why different racisms are more acute, violent or embedded than others gets too close to challenging the status quo.

Anything that questions why some racial archetypes (the angry black person, the terrorist Muslim, the unexceptional migrant) are manufactured as public enemies and others are sanitised as the acceptable, palatable minorities is too dangerous to a system that is predicated upon this racist double standard in the first place.

Anyone who experiences racism on a regular basis knows that not all racial discrimination is the same, yet just last month MP Diane Abbott was suspended from the Labour Party for saying exactly that.

For defending previously made comments that people of colour experience a certain racism “all their lives” which is different from the “prejudice” experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers, Abbott has not only been suspended but also faces an investigation into her conduct and her statements have been widely smeared as antisemitic in the press.

Like many of the people of colour I know, I have watched this debacle unfold with a mixture of consternation and confusion. Diane Abbott has said what strikes many of us as entirely obvious - like with anything, there are variations and degrees to racism, different extents to which those who fall outside of the white Anglo-Saxon mould navigate prejudice. It fluctuates depending on the time, place and external conditions.

As a visibly Muslim woman, I am less likely than, for example, a young black man in a hoodie to be stopped and searched by police on the street. Yet, I am much more likely to be subjected to heightened security measures in somewhere like an airport. In the wake of a terror attack or anti-migrant riots, the threat facing me is indisputably higher than an Irish or Jewish person who could entirely pass as white or English. Yes, prejudice against all minorities exists but to say it is the same as to erase history and disregard the lived realities of a large chunk of the country today.

Abbott herself is living testament to the way different people experience racism. As the first black woman elected to parliament, she receives more death threats than any other politician. In fact she alone received half of all abusive messages sent to female MPs in the run up to the 2016 election.

When she experienced a very public decline in her health, she was mocked and discredited rather than given sympathy. The Tory party’s biggest donor said in 2019 that “It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV and you’re just like, I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot”.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by The New Arab (@thenewarab)

But the fact that she faces a specific combination of racism and misogyny, heightened by the fact that she is a dark skinned black woman in the public eye, doesn’t seem to matter. Suggesting she has it worse than, for example, a white-passing person with Irish or Jewish heritage, has now made her the racist in the public eye.

Over the years, I have witnessed how racism shifts and sharpens depending on how visible your differences are. As a half-white, half-Arab teenager, I received the odd offensive comment about having a brown dad, but mostly my Libyan blood was considered a quirk. After all, I was a white-passing child with a British accent and an acceptably English-sounding name. But when I chose to start wearing the hijab, I suddenly felt the brunt of how all-encompassing and relentless racism is in this country.

Once my otherness became visible in the form of a scarf on my head, everything changed. I was no longer a harmless child, but a threat-in-waiting at worst, and a victim at best. I was no longer English, but foreign. No longer neutral, but anti-British by virtue of my covered hair.

Public spaces that I had once been invisible in suddenly felt hostile as I was hyper-surveilled simply for being visibly Muslim - icy stares, suspicious glances and the weight of state-sanctioned Islamophobia following me wherever I went. Nothing about me had changed other than my hijab and yet, suddenly I was being asked where I was really from, or hearing comments about too many foreigners being muttered in my direction.

If that descent from native to outsider, induced by nothing but a scarf, is not evidence of Abbott’s point that the more visible your differences are, the more heightened the racism is, then I don’t know what is.

Abbott’s comments have been considered so controversial because she has picked at a thread that threatens to unravel the entirety of the hollow liberal democracy we live in. A nation predicated upon injustice and racism has no interest in the lived realities of black and brown people.

In this post-woke era, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion have served their purpose: only of use insofar as placing a convenient non-white face in every body and institution to dissuade any accusations of prejudice. Anything that actually interrogates why different racisms are more acute, violent or embedded than others gets too close to challenging the status quo.

Anything that questions why some racial archetypes (the angry black person, the terrorist Muslim, the unexceptional migrant) are manufactured as public enemies and others are sanitised as the acceptable, palatable minorities is too dangerous to a system that is predicated upon this racist double standard in the first place.

The truth is plain to see for anyone who cares to see it. Abbott has been ousted not because her comments are “offensive” or “ill-judged” as countless headlines posit, but rather because she has committed the cardinal sin of minorities everywhere. She refused to be grateful for being given a seat at all and instead used her place at the table to voice a reality that the establishment chooses to ignore.

Nadeine Asbali is a freelance writer and secondary school teacher based in London. She is the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain

Follow her on X: @nadeinewrites

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.