‘The waste of talent is the worst thing.’ Photo: by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash.
Pride and prejudice: Tony D’Souza probes populism
‘We have created an unequal society and, in the eyes of many, are being held to account.’
White people just don’t get racism. How could they when they have never suffered it? How can they understand when they belong to the tribe that perpetrates it every day all over the world? To understand it, you have to belong to a race other than the one that imagines it invented civilisation. You have to be insulted on a daily basis for decades. I am not talking about big insults. I am talking about the constant supply of subtle ones, the everyday racism that you grow up with, the casual, corrosive racism that informs your life. The sneer of the police officer, the condescension of your manager. The superior attitude of the academic who thinks you can’t be that smart. The white kid who is half your age and who has already learned to discount you because his parents told him he is better than you. Not for any reason, you understand. Not because he is better looking, brighter, or more gifted. It’s just because he is not the same colour as you. You are in the ‘wrong’ tribe.
The waste of talent is the worst thing. This is created by denied opportunity. I think of some black kids I have worked with who could have made something of their lives but are languishing in prison because the only way they could get out of the ghetto is through excelling in sport, music, or joining a vicious criminal gang dealing drugs. Listen, I know you didn’t hear it here first. The underlying problem is that the career opportunities for these kids are between slim and none. Their best hope for a normal job is minimum wage.
Nor am I going to make the mistake of taking sides between tribes. When it comes to opportunity denied, white working-class kids also have it bad. They are among the lowest achievers at school because they are not encouraged or expected to do well. The expectations of their family and their peers sets the bar low. Passing exams is not cool, and if you are a nerd you will get beaten up. It is far safer, far cooler, to fit in and be an underachiever, and when you leave school, you can get a zero hours contract.
All of this provides fertile ground for populist politics. The fundamental divide is not between races or classes, it is between those who pass exams and those who do not pass exams. When ‘ordinary’ people look at ‘the elites’ they do so with hatred and contempt. When the populists tell them that they are left behind and held back by a self-serving elite, think of this. We have created an unequal society and, in the eyes of many, are being held to account. The tribes don’t count anymore. When you see the baying mobs at the rallies of the aspiring populist demagogue, remember this. They are selling an idea, and plenty of people are buying it. They are not buying it because they are being duped. They are buying it because for them it is true.
Comments
It is not true to say that an educated white man who passed all his exams, like me, cannot know what it is like to live on the margins of a society, to be regarded as inferior on account of the colour my skin.
To walk down a street and realise that everyone is watching simply because of the colour of my skin and my eyes. To have my fingerprints taken because, and I quote the police officer directly, “everyone knows it’s you people that commit all the crime around here.” And so on. You only have to go and live in the East, in my case Japan. So I do have an idea of what you describe and I agree, even to the limited extent I experienced it, it is horrible.
The point of all religious faith, be it ours as Christians or any other faith, is to allow us to find ourselves in God (however we conceive God to be). Find that inner peace that comes from being present in the moment with God. The word ‘cell’ of course has the same root as ‘celestial’.
To be in that moment with God is to step away from the ‘climbing culture’ of the West in particular but also we see it really through the world. It is not a culture to aspire to, frankly. It causes misery and pain and a rather permanent low key dissatisfaction and discontent. We should renounce it. Be in it, but not of it. Use it as much as is necessary but as little as possible. Use it but not abuse ourselves by it.
Our souls have no colour bias. Neither does God. My point is our faith is founded in quiet contemplation. A stillness before God. Which can - and must if it is to do any good, just as your article does too - take us out of where we are and place us in to where are not.
By markrdibben@gmail.com on 12th November 2020 - 14:34
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