Brexit: trawling for racism proves prejudice against the white working class
The Indy has news that Britain is in the grip of an explosion of post-Brexit race crimes.
The website “reveals: the “shocking scale of racist hate since the Brexit vote”. After “painstaking” research, the Indy found 500 incidents in the past “weeks”.
We soon discover that the painstaking research was not carried out by the Indy, It was merely granted “access to a database”
A picture of nationwide hatred emerged after The Independent was allowed exclusive access to a database of accounts collected by the social media sites PostRefRacism, Worrying Signs and iStreetWatch.
All verified racist incidents, then, right? You can post an incident anonymously on the site Worrying Signs. The Moderators will then moderate it. How can they check if it happened or not without a witness and evidence?
These are some incidents on the Worrying Signs blog:
London – 22 July
I was on the platform of the central line in Tottenham Court Road tube station, and I saw a woman wearing a veil in front of me looking at her shoulder. I noticed it was wet. I asked her was she ok, she said someone spilt alcohol on her. I asked if she thought it might be an accident, she didn’t think so. I didn’t see the incident but I believe her. I said I was really sorry that happened to her. I wish I had asked her if she wanted to report it. But I was too shocked. I left the station and then returned to report it to staff,
Did anyone speak up or offer support?
I asked her if she was ok, and we had a brief chat. I also reported it to staff.
Bridlington – 13 July
Called a Pole
Did anyone speak up or offer support?
No
Racism is hateful. One offence is revolting. But is the Indy cranking up isolated incidents and linking it to Brexit to fit an agenda that holds Leave voters as bigots? A post-Brexit ComRes poll found that only 34 per cent said immigration was their main concern.
Racism is manifest in many ways. We’ve argued that favouring Europeans within the EU over Africans is a form of racism. Making Bulgarians and Romanians wait seven years to join the EU was bigotry in action.
It is not hard to think that Brexit has given a few numbskulls the confidence to says nasty things to people. But there is a whiff of another kind of prejudice at play in the Indy’s story and the aforesaid campaign groups’ activism, one that says people who voted out – a large majority of the white working class did – are driven by racism.
That’s an abhorrent view.
Trawl for examples of racism and use the stats to prove you’re right. Pre-judge an incident and chalk it down one as driven by racism. Is it really like the 1970s and 1980s, when the police and the state sanctioned racism? Is the Indy right to speak of “Comparisons with 1930s Nazi Germany” and not at all hyperbolic in doing so?
Rather than speaking up and taking a stand against racism, the Indy is undermining the ugliness of racism, making light of past horrors and demeaning victims.
Britain is not a country infected by a race hate epidemic. But seeking ways to define 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit as racist is prejudiced.
Posted: 29th, July 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews Comments (8) | TrackBack | Permalink
