I remember sitting on my sofa one cold, dark January afternoon in 2009, watching Barack Obama being inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America. I squeezed my infant daughter and howled with bursting joy, tears streaming down my face, at the hope and goodness this seemed to offer us all. The world seemed brighter the next day. It felt like millions of people had all done something good at once, and that choice would make life better for millions more people.
It was wonderful.
This, now, is not so good. Despite Clinton winning the popular vote by more than 630,000, the American people now have someone noooooooot greeeeaaaaat due to move in to the White House in the next few months, someone still wholly focused on criminalising abortion and deporting immigrants. Not only that, the Republican party have control of the House and the Senate. Here in the UK, Theresa May, she of the “Go Home, Immigrants” vans is powering through the process to trigger Article 50, despite the EU Referendum being explicitly an advisory, rather than a binding, referendum, because I guess 38% of the voting public saying, ‘Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of this madhouse where an innocent man isn’t even allowed to tell a few harmless racist jokes?’ is evidence enough to ignore a sweeping majority of economists, environmentalists, business leaders, charities, party leaders, and the governor of the Bank of England etc etc. (I know, I know, that’s how democracy™ works. I know.) And the opposition ahaha opposition hahaha the opposition, Labour, are hahahah… well. Their position is best summed up here, I think.
BUT! But. I have had a revelation. And like all my revelations, it was someone else’s first. This thread by Marco Rogers is both brilliant and accurate: we white liberals are to blame for this. And I know that blame isn’t in short supply right now, and it doesn’t do a whole lot of anything on its own, but bear with me, because this is important to accept before we begin more productive work.
Our white liberal gang learnt, eventually, that racism and misogyny and homophobia came in all shapes and sizes, could be internalised and institutional, could be your aunt and uncle at Christmas, could be the security guard following your black Twitter friend around her local department store. We listened to these stories, and we gradually, piece by piece, started to begin to be able to slightly conceive of what life is like if you aren’t white, straight, able-bodied, let alone male etc etc. Turns out: straight white people, collectively, often treat everyone else below them on the ladder of privilege pretty badly. Surprise!
But it’s hard to address police racism. It’s tricky to question why your company seems to promote only young men. It’s difficult to get parliament to answer why ethnic minorities are three times less likely to crop up as MPs than as average British citizens. But it is easy to stop visiting your racist aunt and uncle. You can go drinking with someone other than the uni friend who still makes ironic jokes about women in the kitchen. You can avoid the parents in the playground who make reference to ‘Gyppos’. It’s easy. And ahhhhhhhhhhhh, doesn’t it feel better? Isn’t it nice to be on a high-horse, unsullied by relationships with those ignorant, bigoted, Torygraph-reading stress-triggers? Ooooh, that’s good.
The trouble is, as Marco Rogers said in his brief and pithy tweets: it doesn’t actually help. In fact, it makes things worse.
If you’re engaged with gently by people you trust and respect — the People Like Us of the white world :( — and you share conversations, and anecdotes, and are shown different ideas, and asked, quietly, privately, to imagine the life of someone very different to you, and it’s pointed out to you very softly to name the last black UK party leader, or the last panel show that featured more than one ethnic minority at once, or to look at the way newspaper front pages frame and feature white middle-class people compared to working-class, or Pakistani, or gay, or disabled, or women, or eastern European, and you start to talk about immigration history in your family history, maybe — JUST MAYBE — you might start to absorb little tiny fractions of new ideas and thoughts and feelings. Maybe.
On the other hand, if you’re constantly told you’re racist, and misogynist, and homophobic, and all the other tropes and memes that might well be totally true, but whatever, because would you listen? Would you google that meme to even get the facts hidden in it? Would you engage thoughtfully and with an open mind to your Facebook pages filled with friends and relatives spitting bile and fury? And I get it, I really do. I feel that bile and fury, and I burn inside with the injustice of the world, but still. It’s our fault.
Because it’s not the job of those who are suffering to comfort those stamping them down. It’s not the job of the people who systematically or individually get paid less, arrested more, are offered fewer opportunities, and receive more physical and verbal abuse, to educate the white Western world about how shittily we behave almost all the time. It’s our job. To talk to our friends, our neighbours, our family, those people we’ve fenced ourselves off from because they say things we morally disagree with — we need to start talking again. Our echo chambers do nothing. It makes us feel good, but it doesn’t actually change minds. We need to rebuild our communities, and make them inclusive, this time. Of everybody. ♫We, white liberals, don’t get to walk away from this♫
And — side note — every journo publishing a piece about how we’re heading into WW3 and all its attendant horrors: we might WELL be, yes, god, probably, but do you know what fear does? It paralyses. It makes us unable to think properly, to make sensible, long-term decisions, it makes it harder to put others first, it makes our brains freeze and nothing gets changed. Instead of focusing on the echoes of the 1930s, why don’t we put our heads together to work out how we can do things differently! Talk to our neighbours about what we’re scared of! Let them talk about what they’re scared of! Even if it’s nonsense! Build up a relationship! I know it’s draining but it’s a hell of a lot better than strengthening our bubbles and calling out ‘Hope you minorities are ok out there!’ while we raise solidarity fists through the walls!
And — new but related side note — I love Twitter, I love it, but I also think that for the last year or so, it’s not the greatest place in the world in which to hang out. It’s wonderful for raising awareness of big, sweeping issues like #BlackLivesMatter, and for trivial, wonderful, hilarious things like the Olympics opening ceremony, and Eurovision — my god, Eurovision on Twitter is everything good in the world — but Twitter is 140 characters per tweet. Even if you link tweets together, you’re still standing on a street corner with a megaphone. Which sometimes is great! Sometimes that’s what those situations demand! But in terms of nuance, and debate, and subtlety, and learning something completely contradictory to your previous beliefs, it’s not ideal. It’s the same behaviour that makes me want to weep when I watch PMQs, or Question Time, or even just the news these days. Stop shouting just to show you’re cleverest! Stop confusing one-liners with communication! Stop trying to win this conversation! And again: I’m guilty of all of this. Retweeting articles that made me furious. Laughing at bigots. Unfollowing or blocking Tories in my timeline. And in my life.
It doesn’t actually make sense.
I don’t know. I’m exhausted, and frightened, and angry, and my hope sometimes feels like naivety, but come on, guys: passing around articles about the awfulness of our enemies doesn’t seem to be working for anyone, does it? If you’re in a position of privilege, at any level, use your spider senses and admit that with that great privilege comes great responsibility. And maybe it’s time to accept ours.