The Vicious Cycle In The Causes For Racism

I would suggest that the vast majority of racism in the world could trace its way back to fear and to the reaction to fear in the end. It is perfectly natural to fear the unknown and to have some anxiety around people with a visible difference to yourself. This is something genetic which has been bred into us over the years to help our genes survive. So when two groups of people with an obvious physical difference - such as skin colour for example but including many things (think of red heads, who have always suffered more abuse than any racial group in the UK) there is always going to be a level of fear and anxiety, and the problem is that this causes mistakes which then provoke the other side.

But what many people do not seem to realize is that this cycle of fear cuts both ways. We often have a tendency when it comes to things such as racism to always assume that the larger group is the one in the wrong, and the little group the ones who are the victims. To do so contains the innate assumption that power corrupts, and that the more powerful a group is the more corrupt that they are therefore likley to be. That is a pretty miserable, pessimistic, and generally not very pleasant way to look at the world. Good people can and do have power, love is not weakness and oppression is not strength. But yet the premise falls down completely without this spectacular piece of misanthropy, because the only difference in the beginning is that one is larger and one is smaller.

Now of course the larger group, having more power, has more opportunity to be the agent of oppression than does a smaller group, but yet life always seeks a balance, and I think that if we are going to understand what is happening in our country people must at the very least understand that there are two sides to every story. If not you are choosing to head down a very dangerous road.

When something is repressed. When a particular perspective is held down and not given expression then it tends to build, to ferment, and to become even more forceful and extreme. That is only natural after all - if you feel that your voice is not being heard then you shout a bit louder. Well if people deny half of the story about racism then what you find is that you are giving a gift to the far right. You are giving a gift to groups of violent extremists which you really, really do not want to give to a people like that - you are giving them a righteous cause. What I guess I am saying is that the racism of the majority which has and does occur against the minority may have more scope to occur because the majority may have more power (although that is by no means always the case), that which happens against the larger group may be aggravated by the fact that they are being blamed for both their own suffering and that of the other group.

I think that this has happened in many ways in the United Kingdom between the indiginous population and the waves of immigrants that have come into country since the end of world war 2.

The ideal that I want to put forward in this article is forgiveness, it is about going beyond what divides, but I also want to say that in order to do that the demands of righteousness must be met. Both sides of the story must be heard more importantly must be respected which I do not see to be happening now.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how things work in both directions. Let us start with the black population coming from places like Jamaica who were one of the first large non-white groups to enter the country. A young black man coming in to an country full of white people would naturally feel nervous and anxious, as discussed earlier. So he projects an image of strength. A myth grows up about black men being tough guys. A big black man is something to be scared of. Alongside this a myth of them somehow having more sexual prowess develops. As these are images which a growing teenager just starting to be a man is most interested in - being the tough man instead of a little boy and exploring a new sexual awareness- you find that black somehow becomes cool. They become over represented in music and the popular culture which appeals to the teenager. These are all good things which black men enjoy. Men have a fear and respect for them being tough, they can use that to their advantage either to bully or to be incredibly charasmatic and influence people to exert power, as well as to seduce women who belief in this myth. Unfortunately this macho image also happens to be a great advantage in the world of crime, which far too much of the popular culture mentioned above seems to glamorize. What begins to happen is that through accepting the parts of racism that seem on the surface to have been good for them, the minority group reinforces and strengthens those that have kept them repressed. The vicious cycle continues, only more people start to get sucked in and pulled further into it.

Now we are used to hearing about how white people treated the indiginous peoples from the old empire as inferior. That as black people were, in the early times at least, thought of in negative terms they had less chances, were forced into lowlier lives, and then become victims again of the perception of them living the lives that go with those lowlier positions. This is the conventional story and it is true. Nothing I have said previously in any way contradicts this or deflects from it - because this is usually the argumnent that is brought forwards, at least implicitly, against looking at the other side of the story: that to do so would somehow be disloyal to the suffering of the minority, or would be somehow justifying or agreeing with prejudice against them. But that is false - to see both sides of the story is not to deny the facts, it is to look at the facts more openly and honestly and this is the only way to heal and move forwards. And the other side of this story is that black men are promoting racism because they like to be feared and they like to have stupid racist white girls to use for sex. They are not only supporting racism, but they are using it to attack the white community.

What people on the far right have been saying is in many ways true - some kind of twisted 'black' american gangsta culture is leading our children astray. Black people are disproportionately going into lives of crime, are delibeately intimidating the rest of the community by promoting this false (and racist) view of what it means to be black, and are poking sticks at frustrated and angry white men by the way that they are treating white women. Poking sticks at angry and frustrated young men is not a good idea.

Only the black community themselves can find something to replace this racist culture, this culture of racism against blacks which they have bought into and are using as a weapon, but the reason that I am writing this is because they need to do it. Not just for themselves and for their children, but because otherwise they are provoking something which would be better left alone.

People do break the vicious cycle all the time. And if in sufficient number then the issues can be addressed. To do so everyone must face up to every part of the problem, and the demands of righteousness must be met.

You can see the same thing in the relationships between Islam and British culture. Of course there has been a fair bit of Islamaphobia in Britain, and I am sure that many muslims will have not only been directly affected by this personally, but also hurt by the way that so many other people have come to see their religion. Once again I want to stress categorically that I do not want in any way to take away from the importance of that, deny it an any way, or contradict any rightful grievances that Muslim people in Britain may have. But it must be recognized that there are two sides to every story and one side cannot take all of the blame.

The first thing that most Britains will have even heard about Islam in the UK would have been the Salman Rushdie protests and muslims on the streets of this country burning books. Now I know that in Arab countries burning things is a very traditional form of protest. When there is a protest, someone generally burns something whether it be a flag or tyres or the thing which they are actually protesting against - such as a book.

But perhaps the people who took to the streets during that time should have not only thought about Arab tradition, the Arab way of looking at things and doing things, but also the British perspective. Burning books is about as close as you can get to a symbol of evil in modern, western, secular culture. Look at who has burned books in the past. When a western person sees book burning they think of the Nazi's, they think of Communism, they think of all the great evils which swept across Europe not so very long ago and killed so many people, destroyed so much, and light fires of war which engulfed the whole world. All this happened within living memory - it is not a long forgotten past it is a set on wounds which are still felt by people who were there. Even in literature, with classics such as Frenheit 451, burning books is used deliberately as a symbol of evil. So to say that a group from a different culture newly arrived into Britain (relatively) using this as a form of protest is culturally insensitive is something of an understatement. And when this is the first contact that many British people have with them, you can hardly be suprised that negative first impressions are made.

What I am saying here, and I repeat it again because I feel that it needs emphasis, is not that Muslims are to blame for any conflict between the two groups, but that the media seem to either portray the situation in according to the very liberal perspective that minority groups and ethnic issue are beyond any reproach or criticism, or the scare monger view which doesn't really look at what is actually happening, but just focusses on lurid stories which enflame fear. What I want to try to put across here is that a balanced view must be taken, and that means both sides understanding the causes of tensions (such as the above example, which can clearly be seen to have been a cultural misunderstanding and nothing more) and commiting to move on in a righteous way. Everyone has to examine themselves, as well as their percieved enemy. For a related discussion see this other article I have written on Islam And The West

I hope that what I have written above shows how the righteous cause needs to be brought into the open air and dealt with by righteous people, otherwise I fear that it must express itself someway, and if that if not a positive way then it would have to be a negative way. As Ice-T once said, justice or race war.