I am outraged, hurt and fearful. Not particularly for myself, but for this country. For many the riots engendered a feeling of fear that manifested itself in positive community action and solidarity. But the racists hope to capitalise on this for much more sinister purposes.
After the third day of rioting, when the public had well and truly caught on to what was happening, I wondered into my local town centre, Ealing, to assess the damage and offer my support in the cleanup efforts. I saw many familiar faces (including an old singing teacher that I hadn’t seen for a few years) and could definitely tell that this was the Ealing community that I knew well which had come together. But I felt a strange apprehension. That people were looking at me slightly differently, because I was young, because I was black. You may think this was no more than an irrational feeling; this is certainly what I thought, but I know for sure that even I had irrational feelings towards the young black boys hanging around on their bikes.
Why on earth should we assume that members of our very own communities are criminal or worthy of caution because of their race, class, sexuality or gender? That isn’t a sentiment I allow myself or others to hold. But in those days after the riots it seemed that irrational fears based on these very criteria were somehow justified. That we were able to make assumptions not only about those who had been on riots or looted, but used those very same assumptions to tar anyone identifiably similar to them.
Black community leader after community leader were dragged in front of the camera to say their piece, almost having to condemn the riots on behalf of the black communities that they apparently represented. Often they obliged and ran with a narrative in line with what David Cameron wanted the public to think of the riots, yet when Darcus Howe appeared on the BBC with a new view, one that didn’t simply blame criminality, but visited the issue of why these riots started, he found himself being shut down and accused of being “no stranger to riots”.
Perhaps the reporter meant that he shouldn’t have stood up to racism from the police at the Mangrove restaurant? I doubt it. Instead it seems as though this was simply an ignorance in the way the interviewer pursued their question, but yet a dangerous mistake that plays into the hands of those who wish to describe an entire group of people as violent and characteristically criminal in nature.
People like David Starkey who was invited on to Newsnight to take part in a debate, but ended up using this as a platform to spew what I would describe as bigoted at best. Those who have had the misfortune of seeing Starkey speak before will be well aware that he is ignorant and out of touch with modern Britain, but in this interview it seemed that he wanted to add incitement of racial hatred to his list of accolades. To know that he quoted Enoch Powell as he began his point is to recognise that this man had deliberately chosen to drag our social narrative back to a far worse time.
When he said ‘the chavs have become black; the whites have become black’ he essentially made two distinctions: Firstly, that the white working class, or ‘chavs’ as he says, is distinct from the black working class. Secondly, that criminality and violence of this nature is something blacks do, not whites. He references ‘a Jamaican patwa’ as the new fashionable language of ‘black and white, boy and girl’ and dismisses rap as a form for the glorification of riots. Now this is clearly a man who is deeply out of touch, and whilst I would love to agree with calls to simply ignore his vile hate speech, it has not been seen in isolation the last few days.
I found the BBC repeating an ‘interview’ where a man blames Polish migrants for the rioting. In reporting the tragic deaths of Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir the BBC interviewed some who said they had to protect their communities from elements of the black community. The EDL arrived in Eltham and disturbing scenes were videoed of a blatant attack on a bus carrying black youths.
It is widely recognised that the EDL’s nonsense is born out of ignorance. But if we simply continue to disregard every bigot as ignorant and fail to tackle vile hate mongering head on, we may find ourselves in a position where ignorance becomes the blissful mainstream. Our multiculturalism hasn’t fail, our society hasn’t been infiltrated by evil blacks and we certainly aren’t about to see rivers of blood. We do however need to curb a terrifying narrative that seeks to destroy the equality so many of us stand for. A shock doctrine of hate cannot be allowed to commence.
