Lessons of Obama: Race in the UK

Published: 27/10/2008

Lessons of Obama: Race In the UK
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

We need to talk about race. Here, in the UK. Now that our influentials, as they are known, have become adept experts on race relations in the US where whites on average still have a household wealth nine times higher than black citizens, and nearly half of young male prison inmates are black or Latino. From right to left, there is now ostensibly a deep understanding of how much prejudice Obama has managed to overcome to get this far, and the dangers now stalking him because he is the colour he is. Some attribute it to his skilful appeal to all Americans regardless of what colour they ( ITALS PREVIOUS) are; others believe that the previously inconceivable elevation of such an aspirant to the highest office is a sign that Jim Crow America is history.

I wrote recently that Britain is a very different country from the US. But that shouldn’t stop us making some legitimate comparisons between the two nations.
The euphoric, white anti-racist, Obama groupies in the UK fail to ask the obvious questions- would we have such a figure? Is it easier or harder here for someone like him? What is the nature of British racism? Truth to tell we do not talk this talk any more. We would rather not, please. If compelled to, best dismiss it lightly, or blame the victims for unsettling the nation unduly, such a tolerant nation, so put upon by those mad, bad and ugly Muslims and darkies in hoodies.

Day after day I am abused by email bullies who hate me because I write on the continuing prejudice experienced by immigrants and their families. Day after day I get other emails from bewildered, hopeless black and Asian Britons facing debilitating discrimination. This week came a plea for help from a young Somali man at a top acting school where he says ‘they are not treating me like they are treating my peers’. Another from an Asian social worker sacked because she disagreed with ‘prejudiced’ decisions to take away the children of a lone black mother, then information about a barrister who has grotesque comments about black people on his blog and one from a suicidal probation officer trying to get justice through an employment tribunal.

Spoke at a conference on diversity and local councillors on Saturday,. The number of non-white local councillors has actually fallen in the last five years. Only 4% have made it into town hall chambers and 0.9 % are black or Asian women. Delegates evoked Obama with wistful sighs. For all its many injustices, America does in the end value the human not his or her labels.

Here under New Labour parliament did change hue slightly. Some highfliers emerged and I guess the nearest we have to Obama’s success is the Attorney General Patricia Scotland. However, the electorate was never called upon to choose her. Most black and Asian MPs would not win without the votes of black and Asian constituents. To reflect our numbers in the population, there would need to be at least 60 such MPs. Keith Richburg, African American, and New York bureau chief of the Washington Post wrote this weekend:’ It is pretty difficult, if not impossible to imagine Barak Obama emerging in Europe soon’. Damned with faint criticism.

One reason for this failure is that Britons think Enough Already. At the Tory party conference, one MP tanked up on wine and lobster ( free at the event) trapped me in a corner and said, sincerely:’ How much of this PC are you going to push? You press against us and you know we Brits don’t take kindly to that.’ Indeed. The second problem may be that social cohesion and exclusion – vital challlenges that the government is rightly tackling – have diverted attention and resources away from racism which is now a neglected policy issue.

Some of the blame must also fall on the state of disarray and disunity among Afro-Caribbean, African, Asian, Chinese, Arab, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim Britons. They have fallen apart, compete against each other in claims of oppression, have no empathy with those outside their tribes ( certainly not white Britons) and seem to wholly to reject commonalities, the ties that bind us all. The greatest achievement of Barak Obama has been to rise above ‘crude identity politics’ says Andrew Sullivan, the ex editor of the right leaning New Republic. Here, crude identity politics have banished collective dreams.

In a persuasive new book, How Race Survived US History, American Professor Kendrick Babcock writes on Obama: ’Eloquently summing up the ways in which the idea of race has and has not changed, the most important aspect of his campaign has been to show how many people desire peace and want to find a way to move beyond race.’ Here too. But first we need to examine, confront and combat racism that still blights too many lives. Without this hard reckoning there can be no post-race Britain, no peace and certainly not the hope that Obama brings to his coalescing nation.

Published in The Independent