The diversity of state racism

Let’s not get it twisted. The British state run by a black prime minister and Cabinet would practise benign apartheid no less than those who went before. And it really doesn’t matter whether it is the Conservative or Labour Party that’s running the country.

So, Boris Johnson is in the exit lounge, and those who fought hard to make sure he did not enter it suddenly discovered that the fellow had a habit of being economical with the truth and of displaying a chronic lack of integrity. In fact, some of them, Nadhim Zahawi, for example, accepted promotion from him at the eleventh hour, even when it was already clear that his fate was inevitable, only to round on him and tell him that his time was up and he should go.

There is much noise in the media and the commentariat about the fact that six of the 11 MPs who have aspirations to succeed Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister are ‘black or brown’. This is seen as the Conservative Party making history by taking concrete steps to tackle under-representation. One commentator even argued that “ethnic diversity is the new normal in the Conservative Party”. Ethnic diversity by skin pigmentation, no less and no more.

Of course, this raises fundamental questions: who is representing whom? And what does that ethnically diverse slate stand for? Leaving aside the fulfilment of their personal ambitions, how does their presence in Johnson’s Cabinet, or even at No.10 Downing Street, begin to represent progress for the majority of us who experience systemic racism daily in all areas of our life? Why should I rejoice because ‘Massa’ has recruited a bunch of house Negroes and handed them whips to keep me in bondage and under control?

Fanciful questions? Let’s look at the evidence.

In 2013, Theresa May had vans clad in massive billboards that screamed to all black people: Go home or face arrest. She was thereby sending a message to any racist or neo-fascist with murderous intent to target us, irrespective of the fact that the vast majority of us were living our daily lives without a thought as to whether we were documented or not. The spike in the number of racial attacks that followed was entirely predictable, as racists and neo-fascists felt they had been given the green light by their home secretary to indulge in the ‘nigger hunting’ and ‘Paki-bashing’ that they had practised in earlier decades. Worse yet, May and the Border Agency then lied to the nation about how successful that campaign to terrorise the black population and flush out ‘illegals’ had been.

The very next year, Cameron and May brought in legislation to create the ‘hostile environment’ and persecute that so-called ‘Windrush generation’ that had been building modern Britain for the previous 60-plus years.

THE REALITY

The reality, of course, is that the Conservative Party, under David Cameron and Theresa May, courted the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and had a shotgun marriage of convenience. UKIP impregnated the Conservative government, the 2016 Brexit vote was their offspring and the likes of Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League and National Action appointed themselves wet nurses.

Theresa May gave way to Sajid Javid, who could not have been unaware of all that. But what did he do? He kept in place the hostile environment and the legislation that underpinned it, but tinkered with the name. He announced that he was going to operate a ‘compliant environment’, as if that would somehow blunt the brutality and barbarism of the ‘hostile environment’. The illegal deportations continued; the brutal practices continued to take the lives of vulnerable elders and to destroy families. Yet, following the murder of George Floyd, Javid felt qualified to tell the nation that the Black Lives Matter movement was “not a force for good”.

And just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, Priti Patel waded in with purpose and determination. Not only did she ensure that the pain and suffering continued, she made it even more difficult for hostile environment victims to get the compensation they were due, while at the same time spending hundreds of thousands of pounds chartering fights to deport to Jamaica, and elsewhere, “ex-offenders who are foreign nationals”.

It is on Patel’s watch, of course, that the British government entered into a deal with the government of Rwanda to send to that country, people who risk life and limb to cross the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Britain. Patel and the Johnson government would have the public believe that they are acting in the best interest of such asylum seekers, while at the same time frustrating the people traffickers who bring them to British shores. So, they pay extortionate fees to the traffickers, only to be trafficked on by the British government to Rwanda, where the British bear no responsibility for their well-being and their human rights.

Organised opposition to the Rwanda scheme included legal challenges to the deportations organised by Priti Patel and a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in favour of those facing transportation to Rwanda. As the Conservative Party sets out to find a replacement for Boris Johnson, that scheme is up in the air, pending more legal ruling in the autumn. At the time of writing, Priti Patel has not declared her intention to run for the leadership.

Meanwhile, Suella Braverman, the attorney general, has thrown her hat into the leadership ring and has announced that her priority is to remove Britain from the jurisdiction of the ECHR. As far as she is concerned, no one should be able to appeal to an external court once the British courts have ruled on a matter. Although the ECHR is not part of the European Union’s architecture, the assumption is that the Brexit objective of ‘taking our country back’ would make her move popular with the Tory membership.The fact that the ECHR is the only forum left in which citizens could hold Britain to account for violation of human rights is clearly of no consequence to Braverman and the Tory party.

As equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch targeted ‘critical race theory’ as a pernicious practice that had no place in schools, nor did associate writings of proponents of that theory. In other words, children should not be encouraged to think that racism operates in society at systemic and structural levels. So utterly bizarre were her pronouncements that we were left to wonder whether she had a clue as to what critical race theory was.

Patel, Badenoch and Braverman are all on the right of the Conservative Party and proud of it. The implications of that for black people in Britain and our struggle for racial equality and social justice are already very evident. I suppose it is one interpretation of representation that ‘black and brown’ politicians have an equal right to be represented on the right wing of a nasty party that sustains systemic racism and a benign system of apartheid through its policies and practices.

- Professor Augustine John is a human-rights campaigner and honorary Fellow and associate professor at the UCL Institute of Education, University of London. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.