The campaign for racism...

Around 1,000 people set off on a march against racism in Glasgow today and yesterday. Their cause was vocally supported by a plethora of politicos - Alex Salmond, Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, Annabel Goldie, Tavish Scott, Patrick Harvie and Grahame Smith (to name a few) - all eager to ensure that they are not branded with the politically suicidal ‘R-word’.

Racism is, of course, deplorable and must be dealt with in any free-thinking society, not just to benefit any specific minority (ethnic or otherwise) but for the good of the whole populace. However, a lot of white middle-class people are actively publicising how ‘not-racist’ they are, without really understanding what the racism they are so adamantly against is.

When I speak of a lack of understanding, I include myself in this group. I don’t feel like a racist, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I might be, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to tell. I am vehemently against discriminating against any person because of heritable characteristics, culture, religion, background, place of birth or any other taxonomic concept of race, but I find casual racism is rarely a simple case of black and white.

When the media create a new celebrity racist, I find myself often wondering if racism is really the underlying cause. The whole furore surrounding some of the more notable wacky racists (like Jade Goody, Carol Thatcher and Anton du Beke) left me feeling, well...nothing. I found it difficult to believe that they were being genuinely racist, more ill educated, ill informed, and ill mannered than jackboot wearing xenophobes...

While alive, Saint Jade Goody was way down at the ore-ish end of the animal-vegetable-mineral scale and, as such, her comments can quite easily be considered stupid and ignorant, but racist? I’m not so sure... Carol Thatcher is a product of a different generation, many kids of a certain age grew-up with Robertson’s jams and had ‘Golliwog’ toys and, despite the term having been a racial slur for about 60-years, I don’t really believe that many people of a similar vantage and vintage think of a ‘Golly’ without their brain adding a silent letter ‘wog’ at the end. Most chose to keep it safely tucked away in their heads, but the white moral outrage smacks a bit of ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’, either that or an excuse to tar Carol with the same ‘evil-bitch’ brush as her mummy. As for Anton du Beke, his problem is even easier to understand – he’s a cunt.

No matter what progress is made towards societal harmony, terms of abuse will never go away. You will always have people pointing out obvious differences and using it to insult and hurt, whether it’s paki and nigger, muzzie and yid, or even specky and fatty. I believe the terms themselves are not important, it’s the intent behind it that causes the wounds. But, of course, the words then take on a life of their own and signify all the hate, spite and fear of the original intent. Simply pointing a difference is not a slur, but the inference that this makes them inferior is.

The problem now is knowing when a seemingly innocuous word could be misconstrued. I don’t mean the big, scary, obvious ones, but the more everyday words that can get confused in the context.

My social group (friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, etc) includes a wonderfully diverse bunch of people, with equally diverse backgrounds, cultures, religions and skin colour. Those who chose to spend time with me tend (by necessity or otherwise) to have a bit of a sense of humour, and, if you have read any of my blogs before, you will probably realise that this can tend towards the...black.

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching colleagues torture themselves while trying to describe someone they don’t know to a black co-worker, describing their sex, age, height, build, hair colour, facial features, clothing and so on, desperately wanting to point out the big black guy without at any point mentioning that the subject of their mental gymnastics is in fact a ‘big black guy’:


White guy: “Someone was looking for you while you were away from your desk”
Black guy: “Who was it?”
White guy: “I don’t know their name”
Black guy: “Can you describe them?”
White guy: Thought: “AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Why the fuck did I open my mouth?”
White guy: “It was a guy, I’ve seen you talking to him before”
Black guy: “What does he look like?”
White guy: Thought: “fuck, Fuck, FUCK!!!”
White guy: “He’s tall and quite big built”
Black guy: “...no, don’t know who you mean...”
White guy: “He’s got a mustache”
Black guy: “...nope, still don’t know...”
White guy: “Black curly hair, brown eyes...”
White guy: Thought: “Shit! I said black! Was that racist? Oh, please don’t let him think I’m racist”
Black guy: “...did they have any distinguishing features that might help?”
White guy: Thought: “If I say the big black guy with the foot-long afro he’ll think I’m a racist, what the hell else can I point out?”
White guy: “Nah. Sorry, mate. Hopefully, he’ll come back again later...”

Being a not particularly PC kind of guy, I admit I like to say things amongst the people who know me that will create an effect, whether it’s casual swearing, sarcasm or generally being offensive, my puerile little brain enjoys the ‘laugh followed by tut’ or ‘teeth sucking’ that invariably follows.

I call an esteemed co-conspirator a nigger and in return he calls me a honky,(actually while he does often call me a honky, he more usually just calls me a cunt, but we both know that it’s meant with a great pulsating affection). There is a back story to all this that can be enjoyed fully here, but suffice to say, I would never think about using a racial slur towards anyone else, and I would be beyond anger if I ever heard anyone else calling him this, or any other, racial epithet. The context, the history, and crucially, the intent is important. We have a shorthand that is mutually agreed, and anyway, he’s my nigger...

(...wait’s for the tutting and tooth sucking.... yup, there it is...! Nice!)

I don’t believe that there is an excuse for racism other than ignorance, but between consenting adults of any creed, colour or ethnicity, casual racism can be socially and if the parties are happy with the shorthand, and the intent is to bond rather than to hurt, it can even be a good thing.

While we shy away from recognising that there are obvious differences between people, we also shy away from accepting and celebrating the important similarities. We are missing out on an opportunity to enjoy having a great multicultural society. We are not all the same, but who wants a homogeneous McCulture? These same differences can make for a stronger, healthier society.

We seem to focus more on educating people against using the words themselves, and less on educating people not to feel the intent. If we work towards removing the hate and harm behind the words, perhaps we can get back to black being just a colour.

Ding, Dong! The witch is injured...

I had a very brief flicker of doubt about my social conscience this afternoon.

I found myself strangely cheered by the thought of an 83 year-old woman falling over in her home and breaking her arm. The old woman in question has dimentia and a history of strokes, but yet the thought of her falling over and breaking her upper arm briefly brought a warm glow and a sense of peace to what was turning out to be a reasonably ordinary day of work, work and work.

“What the fuck is wrong with you!”, I hear you say.

Where could I possibly begin to answer that...

Luckily, in my mind, an imaginary someone helps me to find a possible answer; “Are you some kind of sociopath?”

Possibly... Given the evidence to date, I couldn’t in good faith rule it out...

“She’s just a defenceless and senile old woman in a state of distress. And you find that heartwarming?!?”

Yup! A little. I’m not jumping for joy, but I’m not crying for our damaged society, either.

I could say I don’t feel good about myself for it, but I’d be lying. I don’t feel anything about myself for it. But I still feel... not exactly happy... but certainly content.

“Sick cunt!”

True. But I suppose I should give a bit of context to this before the authorities are called, or you decide you have happened across some strange, niche market, fucked-up blog about geriatric cage-fighting. The old woman in question is not an elderly relative or some kindly old spinster helping out at the local Oxfam. She’s not even a neighbour with deliveries of milk spoiling outside her door while I amuse myself at the thought of her slowly wasting away alone and forgotten by the world she was once a vibrant part of thanks to the wonderful policy of ‘care in the community’.

The old woman in question is Margaret Thatcher.

The news report stated that “she had tripped and fallen at about 0800BST. An ambulance was called and she was transferred under police escort, with her special branch protection detail, to the hospital”. Most of us will never receive anywhere near that kind of special treatment in our dotage, partly thanks to the privitisation of the NHS in the 1980’s, but I presume that Baroness Maggie will be in the best of hands.

So, back to the brief concern for my social conscience. Should I feel bad for her or not? After all, “There is no such thing as 'society', there are individual men and women, and there are families."

I was in primary school when she became the first (and, to date, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. My formative years were against a backdrop of New Wave and New Romantics in the charts, big hair and shoulderpads in the streets, and the A-Team and Knight Rider on the rented Rumbelows TV in the living room. My young self knew little of politics in the early 1980’s, but I knew that the bogeyman was real - and her name was ‘Maggie’, ‘The Iron Lady’ or simply ‘Thatcher’. She was the one who stole the milk and caused Santa not to visit my friend’s whose parents were forced out of work from the industry we used to have.

I grew into a teenager through her reign, to a background of social unrest, industrial strife and high unemployment. The attitude of the country was that ‘Greed is Good’ and through monetarist economic policy and economic liberalism, this was reinforced by our country’s leaders until it helped us into the economic crash of the of the late 1980's and recession of the very early 1990’s – all under the rule of that same wandered, frail and injured old lady.

Even years later, long after she had departed from power, when, as an adult, I had to pay my poll tax and student loans, I realised I was still suffering for being one of ‘Maggies children’.

It would be naive and churlish to say any of the current recession and economic crisis is due to Thatcher’s policies, we have had almost 20-years and a succession of governments to right the political wrongs, if not the memory of the fashion wrongs, of the 1980’s. But we don’t appear to be able to learn from history.

Our current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Mandelson once claimed of New Labour that “we are all Thatcherites now”, and in terms of economic policy this seems scarily accurate – history has a habit of repeating itself.

In the long term, it will be interesting to see how history remembers Margaret Thatcher. I, like many of my generation, will not remember her fondly. But now there’s an outside chance that one day in the future, once they finally stake her into her casket, I will remember a day way back in 2009 when she did something to bring a smile to my face and a warm feeling to my soul.

“To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.”