Continuous denial of racism in the face of history and its daily effects in black and minority lives is dehumanising not just to those robbed of selfhood but also in those who are unable to make an honest admission that racism blights all lives, writes Fr Bobby Gilmore.
Racism is any act or institution that mocks, harms, assumes or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism. (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson)
Watching a tsunami of events, incidents and denials related to the presence of racism in the personal, public and institutional fora over the past several years from the street to the palace, it is difficult to understand why there cannot be some strategic confrontation of this issue resulting in an acceptance that racism is indelible in European heritage and its imperial and colonial reach across the globe.
In the Anglo sphere of influence has American segregation, South African apartheid, Penal Laws in Ireland, the Slave Trade, and other ethnic cleansing actions in the colonies come in on the wind? The answer is no.
Every time a blatant racist incident occurs whether on the street, television or cyberspace there are a plethora of voices for and against ranging from personal prejudicial alliances to objective fact. Defenders of the individual or institution range from the sublime, too cultured to be racist, to the ridiculous, raw emotional denial of such possibility, in the pin-striped class or aristocracy.
All these reactions, responses and rebuffs have been apparent and cringing to witness over the past several weeks arising out of the Oprah interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Many seem to be saying – we are too civilised to be racist as if dress, education or position somehow were armour against being uncivil, making unintentional impolite remarks. Some were even of the set opinion that the crown of royalty created an immunity to being or expressing racist innuendo lacking sensitivity among friends.
Like it or not, we are at an instant arising out of recurring events over the recent past when the veil of respectability gets torn exposing uncomfortable odours needing cleansing and fresh air. That being the case over the past year and recently, institutions and individuals are challenged to confront the legacies of history, admit their overhanging pernicious presence and strive to steer a pathway to a future of admission, reparation, repentance and reconciliation.
Continuous denial of racism in the face of history and its daily effects in black and minority lives is dehumanising not just to those robbed of selfhood but also in those who are unable to make an honest admission that racism blights all lives. For example, why should young royals today, decent people, have to deny “belonging to a racist family” when a racist ecosystem has been in existence in the ruling European institutions for the past half millennium?
Racism is a dormant viral barometer that views difference of whatever as deficit, easily awakened to justify one’s superiority in the rungs of social respectability by keeping others a rung below. It is used as a tool, advertently and inadvertently, to define ourselves not by our likes but by dis-like of others. Racism is as if a rainy day piggy bank hidden behind the glazed delph in a display cabinet to be used when normality is threatened by a different other person, event or circumstance. Constant vigilance is needed to keep it secret, hidden.
Admission of its presence is the beginning of a healing process always seeking humble forgiveness. Denial of history and incident are burdens needing constant deflective embarrassing smokescreens of covert humiliation. Constantly making excuses for oneself, institutions and the nation lacking a will to change is arrogance in the light of historical fact. Ignorance is not a virtue, prone to repeat, causes pain to others and self. When racism is evident in any of its mutations an admission is needed if it is to be purged from society.
It is pointless to say; I am not a racist, but…This applies to all institutions including the Christian churches. Is it too much to expect a thorough self-examination of the presence of racism and show leadership in its purging, being a dynamic witness to interculturalism. The Bible is an instrument of liberation not conquest.
Experiencing a racist remark, slogan, graffiti, usually comes as a shock, as in normal everyday life it is unexpected. No matter how raw, coarse or well-wrapped, it is firstly, a shock to one’s self-image, selfhood, dignity, sense of self, and secondly, one is left with a feeling of being robbed, pick-pocketed not of some external property but of internal property, sense of self, dignity.
A racist remark is theft of the image one has of oneself. It is theft of one’s dignity of being in the image and nature of a communitarian God. In any language, theft is both a personal and social sin, violent, de-creative, a crime, a felony, evil. Racism is an injustice against a person, persons, and a festering social wound if not healed by admission, seeking forgiveness and ongoing reconciliatory activities such as personal education as well as acknowledging historical roots. Ignorance is not a virtue.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. (Martin Luther King)