An open letter to white people
Last week was difficult for black people in the UK. The unashamed, aggressive, offended denial of a simple truth has laid bare how widespread racism in the UK still is, and how little white people understand it.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are leaving the UK because of racism. There are other factors at work too such as misogyny, but that only serves to amplify her supposed crimes. She’s black and she’s a woman. Besides, using misogyny to try and discount racism shows a total lack of understanding of the intersectional nature of oppression, and it’s not really something most people would choose to highlight on the UK’s national CV either.
To admit that press coverage of Meghan is racist is too difficult for many white people. It would mean a fundamental reordering of the way they think. It would mean the realisation that they have been silently benefiting from a system set up to favour them, and only them, for their entire lives. It would mean challenging and interrogating all the thoughts and feelings they have around race, and all the difficult emotions that brings up. It would mean talking to people of colour and black people and really listening to what they have to say. It would mean not centring themselves for the first time ever in a world that tells them they are the sun everybody else orbits around. That kind of self-reflection is tough, jarring, and a constant practice.
Last week, we saw both faces of white fragility on full display in the media. First up we saw Philip Schofield earnestly interviewing black female academic Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu on This Morning (possibly the whitest programme on TV) and asserting that he hadn’t read anything about Meghan that he could say was “based on racism.” He politely denied and ignored his guest’s lived experience and her articulate explanation of how his reaction was rooted in white privilege and how that skews and shuts down the conversation around racism. Schofield’s is the smiling, well-meaning face of white fragility, where we see at least the performative act of listening before the shutters come down. Then however, we went full bared-teeth gammon rage with Piers Morgan and Laurence Fox’s ridiculous claims (on Good Morning Britain and Question Time respectively) that they themselves were victims of racism after being called out on their entitled nonsense.
All three examples are enough to turn me into the Incredible Hulk and start smashing things, and all three bear depressingly similar hallmarks. Rich, powerful white men using their position to shut down a discussion about racism in the UK. All three had the power to really start an honest conversation, and all three failed to do so. I can’t tell you how depressing it feels as a black British person to know that after so many years of supposed progress, and so many hard-won battles, our collective lived experiences can be so easily dismissed and ridiculed.
Most white people believe that for an act to be racist, there has to be malicious intent behind it. From a very young age the teaching goes that only “bad” people are racist and that being “nice” to everyone is some kind of panacea. But viewing the world through this lens is massively reductive and shuts down debate because “I didn’t mean it like that” or “I’ve got lots of black friends” becomes enough of an absolution that any attempt to continue the discussion seems unwarranted and aggressive. This worldview also ignores the structural, institutional, and unconscious racism and racial bias still so prevalent in the UK.
We need you to do better.
51% of boys in young offender institutions in England and Wales are from a black or minority ethnic background. Black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth in the UK than their white counterparts. Homelessness rates are running at 36% among ethnic minorities. Do you think the Windrush scandal would have been allowed to happen to white Britons? If you can really and truly look at statistics like these and also dismiss the experiences of millions of your friends, family and co-workers as mere coincidence, misunderstanding or hysteria, then there really is no hope for you. Congratulations, you’re a cunt. But if. as I suspect, most white people are the victims of a system that churns out batch after batch of blinkered racial narcissists, and if, as I hope, most white people would like to see true equality between the races, then it is incumbent on you to do the work.
There’s a book every white person should read. I think it should be compulsory reading in schools too. It’s called White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, a white sociologist and diversity and inclusion trainer who coined the term white fragility to describe white people’s defensiveness when talking about racism and white supremacy. It’s a good starting point and there is a wealth of knowledge on this topic both in print and online. Google it.
Doing the work to truly realise your place in the racialised world we all inhabit, come to terms with your privilege, and then use it to challenge the status quo, is a difficult thing to do. But we need you to do exactly that because your voices carry more weight than ours. That’s the nature of the beast.
We need you to accept that the past has direct links to the present, and to understand that so much of the UK’s wealth is down to the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors. The “grateful immigrant” trope stops now, this country is as much ours as yours. We need you to understand that we have been here since the Romans, and that equating Britishness with whiteness is simply untrue. We need you to stop talking and really listen. We need you to be brave and to call out that person who says something that you know in your gut is problematic, because silence is the same as approval. We need you to go against that deeply ingrained British trait of not making a scene and act like a rebel. We need you to realise that just because you can’t see something, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We need you to read an article like this and not say “but not all white people,” and if you do have that reaction, then to question where it comes from.
Ultimately, your discomfort reading this or hearing the truth about race in the UK is not worse than racism itself, so I’m afraid it’s kind of a get off the cross, Jesus needs the wood back moment.
Our Prime Minister is a racist. He has an unassailable majority and is going to govern with near impunity for up to five years. His government will enact racist policies, run our country even deeper into the ground, and then look for scapegoats to absolve itself of any wrongdoing. Who do you think will be in the crosshairs?
We are your friends, family, neighbours, lovers, carers, and much more. We are as British as egg and chips and a roast dinner on Sunday. If the vision of an open, fair, equal, accepting Britain is ever going to become a reality for everyone, then fight for it, fight for us. Change has to start with you. We are never going to dismantle racism from the top down, the establishment has a vested interest in keeping us fighting amongst ourselves. The way we defeat this is person to person, difficult discussion to difficult discussion. That is always how real, lasting change is achieved.
As I write, it’s Martin Luther King day. Over the years, King has become the acceptable whitewashed face of the civil rights movement. but during his lifetime, he was deeply unpopular with many white Americans precisely because he held a mirror up to them and forced them to confront the uncomfortable truth about racism. He was radical and unapologetic, and that same spirit is called for now if we truly want to honour his legacy. .
King’s dream is yet to come true, but it’s still there on the horizon. We’re halfway there but it’s up to white people to step on the gas and get us there quicker.
