Dear Chrissie - my final word on the subject! Written on Sunday; checked over on Monday.
My group has suffered more than your group.
That anti-Semitic letter - she had to actually write that anti-Semitism was and is racism, to be safe
Racism is black and white. SELF: We are all responsible for doing it and being on the receiving end. Part of the human condition.
Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable. SELF: All three groups have experienced both prejudice and racism. But, Abbott has not properly spelled it out that Jewish people, at least, also suffer from racism, as well as prejudice. Therefore, believes Starmer, she is anti-Semitic and must be drummed out of the Labour Party and Parliament, like Corbyn.
It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships. SELF: Blacks have suffered the most out of the four groups, implies Abbott. I don't think any of this can be called anti-Semitic. Keir Starmer has it wrong, I think. But, Tomiwa Owolade says Diane Abbott is wrong about race and prejudice and, I infer from that, that he believes she is anti-Semitic.
Diane Abbott
Thanks for this article that I have read. I have also read over the past week other comments to try and understand the last few years of the rise in anti-Semitism that coincided with the election of a life-long, left wing MP who does not have a racist bone in his body. Or, do you think he has, Chrissie? Keir Starmer got rid of him not because of the EHRC report but because of his short comments about it. Comments that seemed fair enough to me, at the time.
It seems that anti-Semitism has been weaponised to make it harder for some to be outspoken in being horrified by the behaviour of the State of Israel. It has made it easier to oust left wing members from the Labour Party and, since Keir Starmer was elected leader, to cement the rise of the right in Labour to help its election prospects.
Diane Abbott's letter was short and shallow. Probably, too hastily written and without reflection. It should have just been ignored - by everyone. It appeared to express her concern that anti-Semitism has overshadowed prejudice, discrimination, racism towards her own black tribe. I saw the letter as reminding the reader of how black people in the USA and South Africa, for centuries, seem to have suffered much more hate, prejudice, discrimination, racism than Jewish, Irish, Travellers people. Whether or not that is correct, her opinion should not have been quashed, dismissed, vilified. The true outrage and scandal is that, like Corbyn, she is now very likely to have her MP career ended.
Even the 'Guardian', this morning has had to apologise for anti-Semitism imagery in a cartoon! "Contemptible and vile" said Nicholas Soames on 'Laura Kuenssberg' this morning. This is getting ridiculous. Do Jewish people really have no sense of satire/humour or ability to laugh at themselves? And just writing this, definitely makes me an anti-Semite, too. No platforming is also ending free speech and the wish to hear another point of view to enable mutual learning, enlightenment and a shift away from one's own precious convictions and beliefs.
Abbott was not discounting prejudice, discrimination, racism towards the Irish, Jewish and Travellers over many centuries. She was simply playing up black prejudice, discrimination, racism over many centuries (300 years of European, American, Arabic slavery affecting only/mainly black people). Perfectly understandable, I think, for a black woman to write but not for Starmer to get rid of another left winger who all her life has fought prejudice, discrimination, racism.
Was her real crime in having the impertinence to place Jewish people in the same group as Irish and Travellers? Writing this puts me in the anti-Semite brigade. I'm so glad that Jesus Christ was a Jew/non-white and that Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr were black. I'm sorry I'm white. My colour skin and tribe and ancestors have brought the most suffering and human misery on our fellow humans. Not black people like Diane Abbott.
