august 05
racism UK______________________
The murder of Anthony Walker in Huyton, Liverpool has made headlines for the last week. Walker, a black 18 year-old, was bludgeoned to death in the street by a gang of young white men. Once again, as the country's record on racism comes under the spotlight, it's worth looking at just who's holding the spotlight and what they're saying.
Acknowledging the significance of the event, the BBC sent its north of England correspondent to the scene. Catastrophic consequences arise from the kind of analysis he produced because, while appearing to treat the issue seriously, his report is in fact a carefully crafted apology for racism.
The beginning of the piece, essential to the apology's effect, premises all subsequent comment on a false pretext:
"The debate is not about whether racism exists but how widespread it is. As ever, the answer depends on whom you talk to. Anecdotal evidence in Huyton points to a small but simmering racial problem for some time. Anthony had previously been picked on by a group of white males and taunted with racist shouts. Opinions vary on how isolated an incident this was."
The debate is not at all about the prevalence of racist street incidents in Huyton or about the local details of a "small but simmering racial problem". It is about the entire civic and national culture of racism which is endemic to this island's way of life and which leads to grotesque racist murders in backwaters like Huyton.
As an august and indeed pivotal part of the national culture, the BBC cannot afford to have this discussion, however, as it actively supports the racist status quo. Here is a good example of how the real debate is elided; the senior BBC reporter states:
"Most Liverpool politicians who have been interviewed in recent days have insisted Merseyside's racial problems are relatively minor. Figures from Merseyside police indicate that the number of hate crimes is falling - 421 between April and July this year compared to 442 in the same period last year."
Firstly, Liverpool's politicians are the only cited source of opinion on racism in the city but of the 5 MPs and 90 councillors all but one are white. The council itself is not an equal opportunities employer so, despite some fine PR pronouncements, it is now and has been for a very long time a racist organisation.
Granby, Liverpool's most ethnically diverse ward where 38% of the population are from racial minorities (compared to an 8% city average), has 250% more unemployment than the city average (13.6% compared to 5.3%) and is the 5th worst employed ward out of 8414 in the country. Its residents have an average income 25% lower than the rest of the city, putting it 7th from bottom in the same list.
As well as committing itself to unspecified EO targets, the council claims in its Equal Opportunities statement that it "will encourage private contractors and suppliers to adopt [EO] policies and practices". But while Liverpool has been undergoing massive regeneration for the last couple of years, with every hectare a building site, it is impossible to spot anyone of colour working on any of these projects.
Walk around the streets, visit the council offices, visit any of the major employers in the city and you'll soon notice that the regeneration boom is taking place without the representative employment participation of the city's ethnic minorities. One in 16 shop workers, one in 16 building site workers, one in 16 council employees should be from an ethnic minority. They're not and the naked racism of the high street, the building site and the office is startling. Where they do work, as the figures show, they work for less.
The senior BBC man, carrying the significant responsibility of informing the nation about racism, reports none of this. Instead he uses police figures to claim that racist incidents have been falling while other recent BBC headlines have proclaimed the exact opposite:
"Racist attacks in Scotland have risen by almost a quarter since the London bombings, according to police figures"
"The number of racially-motivated incidents reported to police in Yorkshire has soared in the past year"
The report's conclusion is also a sentimental lie:
"Cynics might point to the fact that it [an anti-racism rally in Liverpool city centre] attracted only a couple of thousand people, compared to the hundreds of thousands who packed the same streets two months ago to celebrate Liverpool winning the European Cup. The reality is, however, the rally was hastily-arranged and although the attendance was by no means massive, the sight of black and white people in one place, with one message, was extremely powerful."
The reality is, that if the rally had been arranged weeks in advance the attendance would still have been in the low thousands because many more people care about the footy than they do about racism while they practice it and benefit from it. Does this callousness breed the racism or does the racism make people callous?
The situation in Liverpool, however, is just part of a much bigger national picture.
Racism is not just institutionalised with particular employers, it is also institutionalised culturally across the country. The media play an important part in disguising the endemic and industrial quality of UK racism, primarily because such racism is central to our national economy and is organised by central government.
Nothing does more to crank up incidents of domestic street racism than a war abroad. So while the national press and its readers salivate with nationalist-inspired Islamophobia and become more entrenched in nationalist-racist fake righteousness as the 'war on terror' goes pear-shaped, their general level of racism rises. People can, nevertheless, still simultaneously affect outrage over the racist murder of a black UK teenager.
This racist / anti-racist contradiction is possible because although racism is generally overtly disapproved of in public life, it is always necessary to support the brutal nationalist interests of government. The media, and lets not forget, 99% of the public, are ready to go along with the philosophy that "bad stuff at home = bad", "bad stuff abroad = good" because it ensures that profitable exploitation of foreigners continues while a high profile anti-racism strategy here appears to be doing good work although it is constantly undermined by the international actions of government.
Ironically, the ethnic minorities participate as much as anyone in this racist death machine by identifying themselves with belligerent nationalist interests and by voting for the war-prosecuting Labour party. Indeed, in Granby, part of the Riverside constituency, the bellicose warmonger and known Islamophobe Louise Ellman was returned for the Labour Party with a huge 33% majority.
Ethnic minority voters make decisions like this partly because of the Labour party's supposed anti-racist credentials but these only ever appeared justified because the party's own racism was exported and the rebound effects denied - something more indirect than the overtly racist BNP or Tory parties. Wars for profit are made possible by tapping people's nationalist-racist pride and fear and by appealing to their wallets. Compared to the sad death of a teenager, it's worth remembering the scale of the destruction that such callous self-interest has caused.
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