The last few hours have seen a barrage of apoplectic white liberals berating Diane Abbott regarding her comments on Twitter. Their claim is that she has been “racist” by making a generalisation about white people. Any serious post on this matter must begin by showing the reader what she actually said:
Cue the obligatory histrionics from the section of our society that has little sense of context or proportion. You know the people I am talking about? The faux-PC-actually-reactionary types who think that Loose Women is a sexist TV show. The types that would sooner get Jeremy Clarkson/Jonathan Ross/Frankie Boyle (insert celebrity here) fired than critically engage with what they have said. I can’t help but feel that they call for these dismissals simply because they lack the intellect to participate in a debate in a meaningful way.
I should be fair though. I have shown you what Diane Abbott said – I’ll discuss that in a minute. To provide balance, please look at a mere sample of what the near exclusively white respondents on Twitter have to say for themselves:
For the purposes of brevity, here is a synopsis of Diane Abbott’s detractors’ case. Saying that “White people love playing divide & rule” is racist and dreadfully inconsistent. After all, if a white politician were to write “Black people love playing divide & rule” most sensible opinion would be calling for their head. The chances are that you, reader, may be thinking the same thing. However, there are a few things that must be considered:
a) Have black people systematically brutalised and oppressed white people over a period of centuries?
b) Does British society, explicitly & implicitly, exclude white people from its power structures?
If we accept that the answer to the previous two questions is ‘No’ (if you’ve answered ‘Yes’ to either you’re probably a member of this group) then we accept that our attitude towards race relations cannot be one of blind consistency; the fact is that British society does do this to those who aren’t white. Racism and sexism are wrong because they are forms of oppression, not because they are forms of generalisation. White people cannot be victims of racism because they are not oppressed. Therefore, Abbott’s comments are not racist.
Besides, anyone who does understand the legacy of colonialism will be fully aware that white people do love playing divide & rule! Iraq, Rwanda, the partition of India, I could go on… The point is that Abbott has not been racist because she is not attacking an oppressed group. Leftier-than-thou respondents with Lenin profile pictures might want to consider this before joining a queue of white people haranguing Britain’s foremost black politician.
Diane Abbott has now been forced to apologise. This is what I find so dreadfully depressing about politics. Her remarks should have lead to a vigorous discussion of anti-imperialism and racism. But to do that would almost certainly lead to her being drowned out by a series of idiots who think too little of her remarks and too much of their own opinion. Why think about colonialism when you could… preserve your white vanity and not think about colonialism?
If Diane Abbott were to come out swinging here, her career would be scuppered by a series of narrow minded fools that have neither the intellect nor the patience to consider these issues. Therefore, for the benefit of herself, her party and her constituents, she apologises. The idiots have won.
you realliy piss me off. ..always sttanding for blacks and criminals while us law abiding white anglosaxons are. second class citizens in our own country..
.i wud hav the fuking lorra yez shot if it woz down to me.
oliver cromwell had the right idea. go in with the army and denounce parliament as the bunch of corrupt backstabbing traittors they really are…then instal an interim dictatorship
for say 20 years. ..make up new laws in keeping with the demands of the majority. …then reinstall a TRUE DEMOCRACY
Mr Atkinson, I am delighted that I “piss you off”. Between your proposal of a dictatorship and your overt racism towards “the blacks”, I believe that your words alone will condemn you in the eyes of most readers.
A man so concerned by history might want to consider where the combination of racism & dictatorship has lead certain other European nations…
so we british colonalist play divide and rule in Iraq….we did not invent it.
In 727 BC those same Iraqis came down like Wolves on the Fold and. wiped out 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel by death and slavery. …..In Africa. West Coast blacks were fully complicit with the Arab and European Slavers. ravaging hundreds of negro villages for slaves…..Even the darling of revolutionary left. Chey Gevarro despised the corruption…incompetance and indiscipline of the anti Mbotu. Black ongolese revolutionary forces….murder. …rape and even cannibalism. And the blacks have got the cheek to come and settle in this country and want everything their way. …and when. they cannot achieve this…they start rioting…looting and arson attacks…
AND ALL YOU BLEEDING HEARTS CAN DO IS MAKE. F&@?!,NG. EXCUSES FOR THEM! !!!!!
I can’t recall the title, but there’s a rather good book which explains the origins of racism and colonization. Essentially it brings it all back to simple resources – countries with greater goods will become more powerful than those who don’t and, over time, this leads to the aforementioned issues. It also goes into how racism is essentially an outdated instinct, dating back to when we travelled in families who resembled us and needed to be able to identify other tribes and associate them with certain characteristic – IE this one will kill me, this one will keep me, etc
So the idea of ‘divide and conquer’ is more a human thing than something attributed to any one race – if you are in a position of power and see no reason to give it up, be it on a grand scale as British colonization was or a smaller scale in terms of dictatorships, you are never going to willingly give that power up and you are going to do everything in your power to stop this from happening. Dividing people and making them fight amongst themselves is an unfortunately effective way to do this.
Also, could it not be argued that if racism is directed towards you in a manner intended to hurt you then you are therefore being oppressed as a result, as opposed to it being the other way around? The scale may be much different but the intent is the same.
As much as I respect your opinion, I have to disagree with your view. However much I agree that white people haven’t been oppressed and aren’t discriminated against systematically by the government, I don’t believe that it gives her free reign to make negative comments about a particular group of people, based on their skin colour – which is exactly what she did. And it’s not like she hasn’t said negative statements about white people in the past, or since then! I honestly believe that this woman has a negative view towards white people, and seems to hold all of us, consciously or subconsciously, at fault for the wrongdoings of the few, which is completely unfair. I’ve had this argument before with people. “Oh, but white people haven’t been oppressed for centuries”. That isn’t the point, the fact is is that you’re showing a negative, racist view toward a particular race. And from reading her twitter comments, white people were not even a part of the conversation at all, and all of a sudden she says “WHITE people love playing divide and rule.. We shouldn’t play at their game”. What does that say about her character? It’s as if she felt to use white people and attribute negative qualities to them, for emphasis to whatever she was talking about. If a white politician were to have said the exact same thing about black people, there would be a media uproar and they would most definitely get the sack.