Intersectionality: a cure for "quiet" racism and bigotry

Whether it's sexual orientation, age, religion, race, gender or different levels of ability, every issue impacts different groups in different often unexpected ways. The social consequences of being gay for example vary significantly across ethnic, religious and even different age groups, and the solution to each “section’s” challenges needs specific consideration. One size, in this case, does not fit all. Intersectionality is the name given to the differentiated impacts of issues on different groups or sections of society, and the more each group finds its voice the more they articulate what their section's experiences are.

Intersectionality 
The more I go, the more important this seems, and to think I only started to think about intersectionality after a brilliant series of posts on Huffpost  around the time of Trump’s Presidential campaign. One article had a woman talking about feminism and how it is often just thought of in terms of the rights and opportunities for WHITE women without really addressing the special issues faced by non-white women.

Mono issue warriors

I suspect the important thing is to avoid a situation where your mono issue, framed in the narrative and needs of your specific section, is pursued at the cost of its negative impacts on other sections. There are very few homogenised societies in the world owing to migration, and it is patently unfair, even sometimes illegal, to deny the rights of any subsets of human beings. Yet I see Muslims who only pipe up when the Middle East is mentioned; Christians who have an almost familial attachment to Israel and the "holy lands" overlooking the injustices meted out to Palestinians; Brits who think primarily of the concerns of native born white Brits above those of other Brits; even men who moan about being discriminated against (when what they probably really mean is they can't behave like monsters to women with impunity​).

Red flag

What makes me suspicious of such people is that they seem to want to replace one hegemony with another. They're just sad their section is not top dog, and lacking sensitivity to others’ needs and rights would be every bit as oppressive to them should they have their issues resolved. Diversity is a multiple edged sword. You can't bang on about your issues without having sensitivity to those of others. Quiet racists, quiet religious bigots, quiet cultural bigots don't understand Intersectionality at all, and it's a big red flag.

BAFTA Diversity Changes Could Also Help Us Suspend Disbelief In Storylines

Idris Elba as DCI John Luther

BAFTA (The British Film Academy of Film and Television Arts ) has just changed its rules to increase diversity in its awards and membership. The changes are designed to ensure that both outstanding debut and film nominees demonstrate that they’ve increased opportunities for minority ethnic and disadvantaged film makers by reference to gender, and disability in front of and behind the camera. Well l applaud them for efforts in the right direction. But I’m writing about storylines and depictions reflecting the life we live and not the laudable dream we wish to achieve.

 
I remember the day I first watched BBC TV’s Luther starring Idris Elba as DCI John Luther (years after every one had been raving it) and was so impressed by it!!

No I didn’t delay watching the hit show because I was  jealous all my women friends became weak kneed at the mention of screen heart throb  Idris Elba's   name. Now I better understand what made me feel weird about the drama, why I could not suspend disbelief to really get into it.

The real dynamics of of race 

The truth is it didn’t portray the actual workings of racial dynamics like “white privilege” on screen when the black character is cast as the senior officer with people calling him "boss" or "guv'nor". It’s not that black bosses don’t exist, rather that when they do they don’t behave with the freedom and ease portrayed by Idris and his white colleagues around him on screen. In our popular culture the black guy who behaves as if in charge is acted as a screen fantasy. It's as rare in actual daily life as hen's teeth for many reasons. Firstly, the stereotype does not exist, and secondly people just have not been taught to react with ease to black men or women as characters in charge. Most black men that have executive titles in real life appear more there on sufferance than with the authority a real leader should have. That's why all these portrayals are such a huge fantasy, a picture of the world we might like to see but have not yet actually realised. This must be shocking to some because I’ve never read anyone else say this on any medium in the UK. But it’s the truth black folk won’t tell you because they judge society doesn’t want to hear it.

BAFTA: British Film Academy of  Film and Television Arts

Shifting goal posts

I'm no shrinking violet and while for years I focussed on getting better at everything I do, the day I realised our social environment would keep shifting the goal posts to frustrate my goal strikes, I heaved an enormous sigh of relief. I knew at last I was not perfect, but not bad at all either. There was nothing wrong with ME. It was just that society was not yet ready to accept the best of me without reacting with defensiveness and the sense that it felt hugely threatened. My way of being, apparently, challenges white supremacy because I've never believed white folk innately better than me. White privilege is about subtly enforcing that falsehood. Of course, it is always denied.

Nikki Amuka-Bird as DCI Erin Gray

Real dramas not fantasy
So, I'm gagging for the drama that tells the story as it is NOW! The script that puts the black guy in charge and acknowledges that our philosophy or social working of white privilege means the character would be a snowball in a very hot room. That would be a real slice of life, and an uncomfortable but enlightening one for us all to watch. Till then I guess we must learn our lessons on this paradigm from the reality show running in America with Mr Trump and his followers who are happy to live in denial of how they are. If BAFTA has made the changes in personnel possible, I’m looking forward to the changes in output also!!

Blame Yourself If You Keep Buying The Snake Oil

When you’re buying the fifth bottle of Snake Oil it’s time to look at yourself, not blame the salesman for his product being a fraud.

Who to trust, Putin or the CIA?

When America is told by security services experts who have served both Republican and Democratic governments, some for decades, that a foreign power attempted to and possibly did influence elections to choose her leader, you’d have thought the President Elect would listen. When the same agencies questioned the inappropriate use of private emails for state business by Hillary Clinton, the then campaigning Donald Trump threatened to investigate and even put her in jail. But no. the same agencies are saying President Putin authorised or knew of the cyber-attack on the Democratic National Committee's emails, the same, now president Elect Trump, says their advice can’t be trusted. Weren’t they, he now says, the same people who claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq leading to that country’s invasion? But America, the nation that bought the snake oil from the salesman is caught in the headlights not knowing what to think, who to believe, their security services or their greatest adversary in President Putin.

Gaslighting

She can’t blame the salesman who conned her into the first bottle of snake oil now she has bought and consumed so many bottles. This is the sales man that buys 800 jobs for a $7million kickback to Carrier Corporation for keeping those jobs in the USA, and sells it as evidence of his economic wizardry. Set this against the 168,000 jobs that were legitimately created in the USA that month without crony capitalism, and that went almost unremarked in the media or by the voters.  Only a change in America and its people’s attitudes will stop her buying more and more of a product of highly dubious worth.

If America continues to lie to herself, she remains vulnerable to further gaslighting by her new elected leaders. All the snake oil salesmen are having to do is repeat the lies America tells herself and which she so desperately fears to confront.

The biggest lie of all 

The biggest of these lies is that America is egalitarian, that she values all people equally. America says she is not racist, that her institutions are not predicated on maintaining the social economic and political superiority of any white Americans over any other Americans. But that's exactly the opposite of the truth. Any policies or activities that will deliver the prime yet  vociferously denied need to maintain white privilege there will pass muster among the masses. The nation will continue to buy the oil from the salesman as she gets sicker and sicker. The promises to “drain the swamp of establishment insiders”, to control immigration, to control abortion, to maintain law and order - all are cyphers for maintaining the established heirarchy in the USA, especially if the ostracised parties can in any way be associated with the liberalism that diminished white power in America. Many women voters went for this pitch, sacrificing their dignity on the alter of their soon to be restored ethnic superiority.  Buyer beware. Wake up. The medicine you’re being sold certainly diminishes your perceived enemies but will undermine the sovereignty, ethics, morality, cohesion and international dignity of your nation. Everyone can see America is being conned. Her enemies will enable it all they can, but only Americans can start owning their truths and lies to change this situation. 

4 things I learned From Engaging With A Trump Supporter

It is in the face of ugliness that one recognises and yearns for beauty. It is when confronted by anti-value that one discerns the importance of creating value. I have learned 4 lessons from engaging with a Trump supporter, and all incline me more than ever to seek the beauty and goodness that is the potential in all us humans, for to be a Trump supporter one must abandon many of the higher aspirations that spring from our humanity. 

 They answer with questions

Trump supporters answer questions with questions leading one on a trail of disjointed issues all disconnected one from the other. At the end of the conversation you’re left empty, wondering what they really said, because there is no overarching logic or narrative that connects their thoughts. Thus, they themselves are unable to say what they stand for except on a few, mostly self-aggrandising issues. An example is when asked how they justify a dog whistle campaign that unleashed the legitimation of racism and misogyny, they won’t answer that question they’ll answer with the question, “what about making America great again?” or “why are all American jobs going abroad to Mexico?”

They see no big picture

Trump supporters being very disjointed in the issues they espouse are unable to draw a big picture of the world they will create. They are unable to connect the dots of their individual ideas to form a panorama anyone can examine as ugly or beautiful. Connected to this is their short termism in thought. They don’t consider the flow of history beyond a few years ago, and so are completely unable to draw from the lessons of history. While they know the facts of what happened before, they cannot string them together into a narrative that yield moral or other lessons. So, they’re confused when you ask them about how Hitler came to power, and any parallels they might see in the present. It’s irrelevant to them. They just don’t do “bigger” pictures.

The ends justify the means 

Trump supporters think the end justifies the means, implying that immoral acts are justified to achieve their personal goals. So, in an election it’s ok to demonise Mexicans as rapists, the disabled as freaks, blacks as criminally violent, women as fair game for predation, so long as these ideas play to existing stereotypes and get the vote out. They are a morality free zone when it comes to social and ethical values.

Extreme information sources

The final thing I learned was how ignorant they are, or appear to be. This is not because they are unintelligent, but because their human intelligence is applied to sources of information, oft repeated, that make them hold what seem to be bizarre views. Thus, climate change becomes a figment of the imagination, the mainstream media is an instrument of a conspiracy to bring them down, and Clinton is the demon that deserves to go to jail for email malfeasance she’s been cleared of by the FBI. Elsewhere, the advice of duly appointed security agents (The CIA) is shunned even when they warn of dire threats to the constitutional integrity of the united states as in Putin interfering with US Presidential elections.

The net effect of engaging with Trump supporters for the neurotypical person is emotionally bruising and intellectually draining. The former because it hurts to recognise a fellow human you want to respect is demonstrating a callous disregard for the humanity of others. And the latter because they are simply impervious to reason owing to the extreme sources from which they take their information and the shallowness of their analysis avoiding the big picture. So be prepared when you encounter a die-hard Trump supporter, it will be debilitating, though the up side is you will come away yearning for the light and fresh air of reason and humanity.

Being Seen But Not Heard: #BeingBlackInBritain

"The Cart that overturns on the road ahead is a warning to the one behind” said the Buddha in an ancient text. Sometimes we learn from the failures of others and by observing take lessons that could save us pain and anguish in the future.

The outpouring of racial tension in America this summer brought on in equal parts by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the shootings of young (and older) black men by uniformed white officers, shocked the world. Here is a country with a black President not just in his first but in his second term of office - how could things be so bad when the popularly elected chief executive himself is black? Then there is the apparent willingness to absolve Trump of wrongdoing in his core support (mostly white, non-college educated voters) group following his "Pussy Grabbing" live mike incident, in which he suggests you can do anything to women so long as you’re a star. Endless radio programmes have wondered how the “Teflon Don” has not yet had any accusations stick despite the loud calls of his unfitness for Presidential Office. 

As the Trump Clinton campaign has laid open the fault lines hidden but denied in American society, so we in the UK have also hidden fault lines in our social fabric. I’m going to lay bare some of these in my series #BeingBlackInBritain. The challenges I write about all hide in open sight but are cloaked by a web of public denial, personal censorship and minimisation.

The truth hides in plain sight

If black folk in Britain act as society expects and say only what is “welcomed” by society, the faults lay hidden, incubating to burst forth in unhealthy ways later. Black folk can even act in a criminal way, especially the younger ones, and be absorbed. They are acting out the stereotype script. They can fail educationally and be absorbed, again acting right on script. Above all the most important thing that ensures our societal status quo is for blacks to be silent - not engage too vociferously with the democratic process or social relations in terms that white Britons don’t approve of. That would include talk of issues like white privilege or the unspoken but presumed greater value of white lives in all ways than black lives. The statistics from the judicial educational and economic systems don’t lie.  All put black Brits far behind other ethnic groups. So long as this silence is maintained, our social fault lines remain well hidden in plain sight.

Blacks can’t lead, the stereotype does not exist.

The immediate result of this law of silence, this mafia style social Omerta , is to give a false sense of normality, even progress. However, the current silence hides the fact that a stereotype or role of a black Brit as a leadership figure does not yet exist in any group activity. In individual sports and creative endeavours like music you do find exceptions, but wherever recognition depends on the support or cooperation of others, blacks must play the invisibility card; they advance best when they are silent or saying ONLY that which society wants them to say. But of course the most important thing about being an executive is to be a little more visionary, to go beyond what everyone else says does or thinks, and so open new vistas and pathways. If the stereotype of a black person at the helm of affairs, does not exist, even talented black folk must be limited by the imaginations of their judges and appointers – a mostly white society. The second big effect of the great silence is that it stifles creativity. Who even knows what black folk can do if they are disapproved of, for speaking freely.  

Society “assumes” what black folk think

Finally, society by so dumbing down thought and expression in the minority group act on repeated assumptions of what black folk think and want.  My experience shows that the best advocate for the individual is themselves. We end up with people who have no idea what black folk actually think and feel speaking on their behalf. Because of the social pressure to dumb down public expression of their experience, such expression from blacks when it finally bubbles over is loud, angry, and sometimes destructive.  Meanwhile a stitch in time could have the saved the nine that are required following say radicalisation into a terrorist cause, crime, a riot or even mental health problems brought on by the social pressure to be mute. In another post I will explain why Black folk do not speak up, but even in social relationships, blacks don’t typically talk to their white friends about how they feel. Such talk leaves people uneasy and is quickly disabled. So even when white Brits and black Brits are friends, the former don’t discover what the other knows thinks or feels.  They only know what they ALLOW black Brits to tell them. Conversation is censored to avoid embarrassment on both sides, but mostly the white side because, being dominant, it sets the agenda for what is on the menu of "appropriate" talk. All of this is unspoken, unacknowledged and usually just denied.

So, until black Brits rise beyond being seen and not heard, we store a world of unease for our society, block social mobility, destroy creativity and exclude many from the social mainstream, then wring our hands in wide eyed disbelief that this could be happening. It happens because in this case society has decided silence is golden.

Ignorance Not Immigration Caused Brexit

The chattering classes don't speak up

A historic change in the future of one of the world's most powerful countries has been made on the basis of what many now acknowledge was a series of half truths fed to the whole nation at the EU Referendum. They were swallowed hook line and sinker by the nation's least informed and voted for. Ignorance of: macro economics, the EU, our place in the world, what underpins it, and the wider implications of our votes, has put Britain out of the EU.

Chattering classes

I do not blame the ill informed. Macro economics is a total yawn to most except economics nerds. The complex linkages between growth, governance, security, immigration, is like solving a Rubik cube even for the informed. I think it is the middle classes, the relatively well-travelled, the relatively well informed who pulled the stunt of not speaking loudly enough (for fear of causing offence or intruding on others' points of view, even exposing their own privileged positions perhaps?). The only people in Britain who EXPLICITLY talk to their children about racism and immigration are the fascists, extremists and racists. "Decent" people talk parenthetically and think they've covered it off! Like talk of drugs, sex education and pornography, if you dont discuss these things clearly and offer young people steers, they will grow up to be informed by a media and public opinion we absolutely cannot trust. We will grow ignoramuses in very important areas of life even among the chattering classes.

Related Post: Brexit - A New Dawn Or A Long Night

How ignorance grows

Speak directly to children with guidance on race

Finally the biggest lie of all...Britons are too great to be ignorant , that being English willy nilly, ipso facto means you are savvy with the world. Neither are true! Being British gives you a fantastic opportunity to be savvy with the world because Britain has so many connections with the entire world. However this is so only if you avoid the know-it-all sense of entitlement, or the "let's take it all for granted" attitudes which are the greatest incubators of ignorance. Again it's the literate, chattering classes who are best placed to lead this charge, but do they? No! They sit on their hands, feel embarrassed or ashamed to call the issues and act on their RESPONSIBILITY to themselves and their society based on what they know.

Denial has a price

Brexit Leader Boris Johnson - Half truths

Sometimes I think we've had it too good for too long. We feel our privileges will remain forever without attention. Or we act to maintain the narrow privileges assured to mostly white Britons which they take for granted yet often deny. It's this casual denial and avoidance that puts us in the pickle we are in today, and enables a few strongly motivated totally self interested Britons to present themselves as social saviours when their falsehoods border on the treasonous. Treasonous because their popular but false claims have facilitated the disintegration of the nation and its status. Well now we shall see the price of denial and minimisation. And no, wringing our hands won't be good enough in response! We are going to have to engage with the mess we are in and at last call a spade a spade.

Brexit - A New Dawn Or A Long Night ?

Cameron resigns at No.10 via Daily Telegraph

The British people have just taken their country out of the EU by a narrow margin of 52% to 48% on a huge turnout of 72% of the electorate. Donald Trump has called it a great result because "people everywhere are angry!" The result flew in the face of early polls all of which predicted a narrow Remain win.

Rebellious north

It seems traditional labour voting areas like the North East and Wales handed the Leavers this referendum. They are not nuts. They, like many leavers acted on the information they were most credibly fed. Economic decline in their regions was painted as the result of an influx of foreign migrants, giving rise to a sense that we had lost control of our borders, and with that our national character and even independence. So the pitch to call this referendum a vote for independence or taking back control sounded not only appealing , but a way to kick back at the migrants, their patrons (read political elite on all sides), and the cosmopolitan rather effete and even dilettante urban well to do in places like London, who had neither listened to or responded to the pain of the poor.

Related post : Ignorance Not Immigration Caused Brexit

Election Results via BBC

Ugly campaign

The campaigns took on an increasingly ugly, border-line xenophobic, sometimes crypto-racist , tone on the one hand; and rather out of touch, pie in the sky, we know better than you ordinary folk (despite your experience of recent government policy) tone on the Remain side. No one could own up to the fact that austerity for the many presented as economic success for the few was the main cause of the anger. The scapegoating of migrants who make a NET contribution to our country was totally overlooked. To defend migrants was seen as unpatriotic. The rest of the claims about the Brussels gravy train and unaccountability of un-elected officials were easy to present and make stick.Especially in a country like the UK with centuries of Empire in its past , and used to being looked up to everywhere, our language spoken in most of the world, the call for a return to past glory , freedom and the economic privileges this country once enjoyed easily found traction. Even if not consciously, I am certain these thoughts played strongly in the subconscious of many, particularly older, Leave voters.

New dawn or long night for the UK?

Reaping what we sow

This referendum was won on a lie. But life is lived on the bases of truth and reality. We are about to discover which of our attitudes were political and media manufactured fantasies and which were really true of life. There will be consequences which have started already. The PM has gone, Corbyn and the Labour leadership can expect to pay a price for the rebellion of their voters. The Kingdom has moved steps closer to losing one of its parts (Scotland), and the international economy will act on facts not emotion. Sterling has dived, and Banks like Barclays have lost 30% of their share value within minutes of the results. The anti migrant rhetoric has been legitimated by the result and it will become more "ok" to be fearful or nervous of people who look and sound un-British.

I think Britain just became a smaller country and it hurts. Yet no one can buck the law of cause and effect. You reap what you sow. We shall see in short order what crop we shall harvest