{"id":255,"date":"2020-06-26T13:34:57","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T12:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/?p=255"},"modified":"2021-04-29T14:55:49","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T13:55:49","slug":"reverse-racism-is-not-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/2020\/06\/26\/reverse-racism-is-not-a-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverse racism is not a thing."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lucy Butcher<\/a><\/b> (@lucyebutcher1<\/a>) is a Newcastle Politics and Sociology grad<\/i>uate who, in the fifth blog of our <\/em>Black Lives Matter<\/strong> series, takes on the idea of ‘reverse racism’.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Black Lives Matter protests in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 13th May 2020
Photo credit: <\/em>Jack Raistrick Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the UK, protests against George Floyd\u2019s murder and a resurgence of support for the Black Lives Matter movement have sparked waves of education about the country\u2019s historical and systemic racism. The public are learning of the UK\u2019s repressive colonial past through, for example, the tearing down of a slave trader\u2019s statue<\/strong><\/a>, which, in London, has led Mayor Sadiq Khan to set up a Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm <\/strong><\/a>and for local authorities across the country to review<\/strong><\/a> statues that arguably idolise slavery, colonialism, and racism in the UK. Recent petitions following George Floyd\u2019s murder have highlighted the deep-rooted and inherently unequal systems in the UK including the ethnicity pay gap<\/strong><\/a>; the latter has since been debated in parliament. The protests have also pressured Boris Johnson into establishing a cross-governmental commission on \u2018all aspects of inequality\u2019<\/strong><\/a> in the UK. Whilst each of these political motions are at risk of being only gestures, and not markers of systematic change, it is nevertheless worth acknowledging how the power of protest has put these agendas to the forefront. Racism is at least being discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, these recent\nBlack Lives Matter protests have also been met with resentment across\nthe country. Viewing this backlash on social media platforms within my local\nNorthern working-class community of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, I have witnessed attempts\nto undermine the anti-racist movement by misunderstanding the concept of \u2018white\nprivilege\u2019, through arguments that poorer white people have had a difficult\nlife, are subject to \u2018reverse racism\u2019 or consider themselves to be a minority\ndue to the ethnic makeup of the area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dewsbury, my hometown, has a population with more South Asian people than the UK\u2019s average<\/a>. This fact is used to justify far-right racist beliefs such as segregation and the belief that majority Asian areas such as Saville Town are \u2018no-go\u2019 zones<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> which have led to hate crimes<\/strong><\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Building on these existing prejudices, I have seen a flurry of comments from family and friends decrying that \u201cAll Lives Matter\u201d, arguing that by focusing on Black lives, the movement is attacking white people and disregarding their hardships. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the systemic racism that instigated the Black Lives Matter movement, which tries to bring attention to the way that Black people are constantly being treated like their lives matter less<\/a> than their white counterparts\u2019. The Black Lives Matter movement has never been about saying that some lives don\u2019t matter, rather, that all lives can only matter when Black lives matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For example, these views disregard how the anti-racist movement\nis one that seeks class solidarities; the working class is not only white. The three words \u2018white\nworking class\u2019 mean that working class ethnic minorities are excluded from the\npossibility of forming class solidarities. White people can still be\ndiscriminated against based on social class, age, gender, or sexual\norientation, but having white skin means that we have more advantages in\neveryday life. People of\ncolour are also more likely to be working class than\nnot<\/a> in the North of\nEngland, and have been part of working class communities since post-world war<\/a>. To state that as a working-class\nindividual you face more discrimination than people of colour is to state that\nyou do not even consider them to be capable of being working class, a rhetoric\nthat distracts politicians from finding solutions\nto help working class people of all races.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further\nto this, the idea of \u2018reverse racism\u2019 simply does not make sense because there is\nno systemic privilege afforded to ethnic minorities. For instance, people of\ncolour in England are disproportionately more likely to die from COVID-19<\/a>, have worse housing<\/a> conditions, find it\nmore difficult to gain senior positions in workplaces<\/a> including education<\/a>, are more likely to be stopped and\nsearched for drugs<\/a>, are more likely to live in poverty<\/a>, are\nunderrepresented in literature<\/a> or fashion<\/a>, and even find it\nharder to get a good haircut<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nExcerpt from a mixed-race individual on Twitter highlighting everyday racism they have experienced in West Yorkshire.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Some\nmay argue that this doesn\u2019t apply to working class areas within Northern England\nthat have levels of poverty and deprivation (e.g. see above Facebook post). Yet\nin Northern England, deep racial and ethnic\ninequalities<\/a> have\nbeen highlighted in the labour market, education, home ownership and employment.\nEven within West Yorkshire, within the last month<\/em>, we have seen multiple\nreports of racism such as an assault by two white teenagers\non a young black teenager<\/a>\nin Holmfirth, racial abuse of an employee at a\npopular donut shop<\/a>\nin Leeds, allegations of lack of due action and support for\ntwo young black girls who were racially abused at a Leeds school<\/a>, and figures that show that West\nYorkshire Police use force against black people three times more than white people<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary\nto the suggestion that it is segregation that creates racial tension in\nDewsbury, it is actually the rhetoric and criticism of anti-racism by white\nresidents. It has justified extreme right-wing beliefs as seen in the regular\nfar-right demos held in the area by the Yorkshire Patriots<\/a>, Britain First<\/a> and the English Defence League<\/a>. This normalisation of racist ideas\nin the local area can have dangerous effects on the community. It contributed to the murder of local MP\nJo Cox by Thomas Mair<\/a>, whose neighbours believed that he \u201cwouldn\u2019t hurt a fly\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nthe people of Dewsbury, and the whole of the UK, really think that All Lives Matter\nthey should stop spouting discriminatory ideas like \u2018reverse racism\u2019 and criticism\nof anti-racism protests, and try to listen to the experiences of their black\nand brown neighbours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucy Butcher (@lucyebutcher1) is a Newcastle Politics and Sociology graduate who, in the fifth blog of our Black Lives Matter series, takes on the idea of ‘reverse racism’. In the UK, protests against George Floyd\u2019s murder and a resurgence of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blm-series","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}