Why racism is not just an American problem
“To exist as a historically conscious black or Asian person in Britain is to exist knowing that a majority of your white counterparts do not acknowledge your history. They have not been forced to adopt centuries of trauma, or been subjected to the racialised perceptions created over that time. They have not originated from mother countries gradually drying from the imperialism they were soaked in, and do not have to live in recognition of slavery and colonialism and the impact these have had on their countries and people.” – Jude Yawson
Last week, the United States celebrated Juneteenth, a day dedicated to remembering the 19th June 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation reached the state of Texas. Whilst the day should be a symbol of America’s progress since the time of slavery, it is hard to feel a sense of change with celebrations taking place against the backdrop of anti-racism protests following the death of George Floyd. Though slavery may have come to an end, the institutional racism that governed the practice is still very much alive today and not just in the United States.
The problem of racism and the history of slavery is often thought (ignorantly so) to be confined to America, an issue that is being tackled over the pond. Throughout secondary school, students are often taught about the United States long-standing relationship with racism; Martin Luther King, the international Slave Trade, the uprising of the KKK and the Jim Crow Laws are among popular topics. As such, Britain’s dark history of violence against people of colour is largely neglected, filed away along with many other inconvenient truths about the way in which our society was built.
Image: James Eades
Britain is quick to push the name William Wilberforce around and pepper the discourse around racism with proclamations that it freed its slaves much earlier than America. However, despite passing legislation abolishing slavery in 1833, 32 years ahead of the US, this was not the end of the practice in Britain. The UK government was forced to spend roughly £20 million on buying the freedom of slaves in which slave owners were compensated for their loss of ‘property’. Shockingly, this was the largest bailout in British history until the government committed £500 billion in bailing out the big banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In addition, slaves were required to continue working for their ‘owners’ as unpaid apprentices for up to twelve years after.
What relevance does this have to 2020? More than you’d think. Initially, the UK only finished paying off the loans taken out to pay slave owners in 2015. Secondly, there are still people alive today who have benefitted from those loans with a list being published on Twitter citing former Prime Minister David Cameron as one of the benefactors. As a result of this hidden history, the government has been able to continually prop up a system of institutional racism that still disadvantages Black people.
On a large scale, we’ve seen how this system has worked through the Windrush Scandal, an event that will be remembered this week as celebrations for Windrush Day take place on the 22nd of June. The date celebrates the first arrival of Caribbean migrants to the UK in 1948 after the British Nationality Act of 1948 was passed, allowing people from Commonwealth states the right to settle in the UK. As they were already members of a British colony, the UK did not provide documentation to immigrants upon entering the UK. In 1971, the Immigration Act was passed which only granted temporary residence to people arriving from Commonwealth countries. However, those who already resided in the UK were permitted to stay. However, a turning point came when Theresa May was made Home Secretary in 2012 in which she declared a ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants disallowing them access to the NHS and other welfare services unless they could prove they had the right to be in the UK. For those of the Windrush generation, this became an issue as they had not been provided with the paperwork proving their right to reside. As a result, the UK government threatened deportation and people were made redundant from their jobs and denied access to state services. This was particularly an issue for the descendants of Windrush immigrants. The scandal highlighted a deep suspicion of immigrants and deeply entrenched racism within the government.
It is not just political scandals that highlight the racism that exists within the UK today. Numerous examples come to mind from ones that have attracted national attention such as the treatment of Meghan Markle in the press through to the microaggressions Black people experience every day, ‘but where do you actually come from?’ being a question asked all too frequently to non-white people. The question implies that to have darker skin means you can’t be British.
There will be those who dismiss claims that British institutions prop up racism as people “playing the race card”, a phrase Afua Hirsch discusses in an article for The Guardian. Hirsch states: “But it seems that when I thought I was offering either a structural or personal analysis of how racism has affected black people’s lives, what I was actually doing was merely playing cards. Yet these magical cards don’t actually work.”
So for the sceptics, I provide several cold hard facts. If you’re Black, you’re significantly more likely to be stopped by the police. Data between April 2018 and May 2019 shows that for every 1,000 people in the Black Other group, 100 would be stopped by police. Comparatively, this number sits at 4 in every 1,000 for white people. Secondly, the Race Disparity Audit conducted by the Cabinet Office in 2017 acknowledges that ‘Asian and Black households’ are ‘more likely to be poor’ and are ‘the most likely to be in persistent poverty’. The report later goes on to the link poverty with poor educational attainment highlighting the knock-on effects of structural racism in later life. Another report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission shows that just 6% of Black school leavers go on to attend Russell Group universities in comparison with 11% of white school leavers.
Although these facts are often stated, British society has failed to acknowledge that they exist as a result of a long history of oppression against Black people. Due to racist structures such as slavery, Black people have been forced into poorer economic conditions which has had a knock-on effect. It is not simply about identifying the modern-day circumstances of the Black community but considering how its history has enabled there to be such a strong divide between Black and white people.
Britain’s hidden history has a lot to answer for, not just in terms of how the practice of slavery was dismantled (and indeed how many Conservative party members benefit today) but why structures that were set up to depict Black people as being less significant than white people have been allowed to continue to inform our society. Pressure must be put on our government to start healing the divide through initially acknowledging the issue and then beginning to heal the divide. Through re-educating the nation and being honest about the country’s history, Britain can start to fix this ever-growing problem.
Words by Emma Chadwick
