I always find it funny when people accuse me of hating this country,
and its culture and its people.
Because one I'm f**king here ain't I?
And two there is no other country on this earth which could make somebody
as obnoxious as me only Britain could do it.
And I love this country's culture and history I did English literature for f**k's sake
you don't do that unless you really like something about it.
And the things I've always loved most about this country are the ways
in which diaspora have shaped what it is to be British what it means to live here.
One of my favourite art forms in the entire world is Grime.
It couldn't have come from anywhere apart from East London and it itself
was a hodgepodge between bits of UK hip-hop, UK garage and of course
jungle and dancehall and all these forms of MCing shaped inherently
by the colonial and the post-colonial experience.
But because it's not draped in a Union Jack because it's not making excuses
for slavery and colonialism because it's not falling at the feet of Winston Churchill,
that's not seen as love for country.
It's love for the wrong bit of the country right the brown bit, the black bit,
the working class bit and not for ruling class ideology.
Here's the thing about Britain is that it's had a remarkably stable,
consistent and resilient ruling class.
We have had pretty much the same monarchy
with a little hiccup in the civil war for about 1200 years.
You have a hereditary aristocracy which still owns swathes of this country
and has representation in our legislature in the form of the house of lords.
Because of that fact I think we have got this idea of our history
being the kind of reorganisation of chairs at the top of the dining club,
rather than the heaves of history powered by
working class struggle and working class resistance.
Because it's not just Henry VIII, Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill,
it's the Levellers, the Chartists, British black Panthers, the Grunwick strike the miners strike.
All of these things which went into shaping and making
the partial democracy that we live in now.
That story doesn't get told very often because if you were to tell it too often
you would start asking uncomfortable questions about that ruling class,
which hasn't changed all that much since William the Conqueror.
I mean this idea that all you need are brown faces in high places
is just absolutely for the birds.
Margaret Thatcher was this country's first female prime minister,
she was the daughter of a grocer do you think she was good for women?
Do you think she was good for working class people?
or indeed you know lower middle class people? No!
So we should have learned this lesson a while ago
that just because somebody shares some of your identity attributes,
it doesn't mean that they are going to be organising in your interests.
Nobody is more interested in identity politics than black and brown Tories,
because they will tell you the story of how their grandparents sailed here in a shoe
with nothing but a hay penny in their pocket all the while deporting your grandparents!
that's the game that they play.
What they are are a flimsy cover for the ongoing institutional racism of the state
just now with a little bit of diversity bunting at the top.
The report into Racial and Ethnic Disparities is a joke.
It's the equivalent of getting a panel assembled by the CEO's of BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil,
to write a report into how and why climate change is happening.
It was biased from the start because Munira Mirza was behind it,
who has made a career denying the existence of institutional racism
saying that it leads to a culture of grievance.
It was chaired by Dr Tony Sewell who's been famous for the last decade
not only for saying much of the same thing but that any enduring racial disparities
can be put down to bad parenting and cultural failings.
And also Mercy Muroki who is at the improbably named 'Centre for Social Justice'
think tank set up by Ian Duncan Smith no less.
And you can most often find her in the pages of Rupert Murdoch's papers,
reassuring its readership that this whole racism malarkey thing is overblown.
So a government which doesn't like people talking about institutional racism,
assembled a panel of people who don't think institutional racism exists,
and lo and behold they've produced a report which says:
No institutional racism to be found here.
Even for a report put together in bad faith I was shocked and surprised that anybody
who has a career in academia would be willing to put their name
to such a sloppy piece of scholarship.
People have been cited as stakeholders who've had no contact with the commission:
"I never consented to it I was never consulted about it I had nothing to do with it."
There are real laugh out loud moments in the report as well
where they implore us to think about the bright side of slavery
where instead of focusing on the profit and exploitation of the slave trade
we look at it as an opportunity:
It's a cruise, I've never been on a big boat in the middle of the ocean before is it dangerous?
Absolutely not in fact we consider our customers precious cargo
so precious in fact we keep you safe and secure underneath the boat for the whole ride."
When it comes to the real purpose of the report,
which is to explain away enduring racial disparities,
they have to provide an alternative explanation.
And the one that they go for is that ethnic minorities in this country are haunted
by the memory of discrimination and this haunting memory is kept alive by
modern day anti-racists who are inculcating a culture of victimhood and grievance.
This is saying don't talk about the Bengal famine,
don't think too hard about the British Empire or of slavery,
don't think about your grandparents or your parents experience in this country
don't think too hard about postcolonial struggle for independence
which the British tried to stamp out.
"We're going to be extremely firm and uh extremely mean.
If anyone starts any trouble they'll just get their head blown off,
and they'll get the message in time you know."
So the model of Britishness that Tony Sewell and Mercy Muroki would have us embrace
it's a bit like that sketch in Goodness Gracious Me where you've got
the South Asian family trying to be more British than the British.
It's a kind of British identity which doesn't even really exist
for white British people in this country.
It's a complete fiction and it's all about pledging allegiance
to these symbols of domination, exploitation, empire,
rather than any kind of truly remodelled outward-looking Britishness.
Now as for the institutional racism bit whether it's the police
or the healthcare system or our education system or housing,
all the evidence is pointing in one direction there.
And within this context where there's a lack of trust in shared institutions
a lack of trust in shared information you can polarise and win over
an increasingly reactionary and paranoid majority.
So that is the point of this report it's to give racists
in the words of Doreen Lawrence the green light by handing them
a battle standard with which to batter people of colour over the head,
and say look racism doesn't exist.
And it's also about pumping out discredited half-baked and shoddy scholarship,
which means that all of us are stuck having a stupid argument
about whether or not institutional racism exists rather than
the one that we should be having which is how do we go about addressing it.
Controversy was absolutely the point of this report
because you've got to ask yourself why does the government like culture wars so much?
A culture war is a political conflict which takes place on the terrain of identity
it's about who are we how do we want people to see us.
who are you how do I see you.
And it means that it's a fight which is never ever going to be resolved because
no one's identity is ever resolved.
It can just keep going and going and going and it turns our attention away
from enduring material inequalities or problems with how our institutions are run
or who's getting those lucrative government contracts.
It is a master class in distraction it's a never-ending vortex
in which your energy gets sucked up and you can't disengage from it
because that is unfortunately where politics is at the moment.
But we believe in people power we don't believe in governments
producing reports which give us permission to be angry,
or permission to identify the social conditions that we live in
so as long as there are people there's hope.
You do have a country of changing demographics of young people
who have no buy into the system as it is and people of colour who are
politically and socially literate that's some pretty good ingredients to work with
if you want a people-powered movement.
The problem with liberal identity politics is that it puts recognition from the state
above self-organisation and above collective struggle and above solidarity.
So if we want those ingredients to mean anything in some ways
we've got to divest ourselves of the desire to be recognised by those at the top
and start recognising each other.
If you liked this content you should support Double Down News,
by finding their Patreon and giving them money.
And if you didn't like this content you should also
go to their Patreon and give them money
because then they can fund a higher caliber of guests, so whatever go there give them money.
Join the future of journalism join Double Down News on Patreon.