I spent about five years in Cambridge in a very multinational,
multicultural college. There were students from all over the world. It’s is
hard to think of a race, nationality or faith that was not represented. I never
once witnessed an incident that even hinted at religious or racial prejudice. It
is hard to even imagine a more liberal environment. If there were a place less
likely to have racist microaggressions, it could only be a place where everyone
was from the same religious, national and racial group.
The fact that I didn’t witness something doesn’t mean
that it didn’t exist. Perhaps the African students and Indian students were
continually racially abused when I wasn’t there, but they never told me about
it. But in those days, we thought that racism was about using insulting
language, or treating someone worse because of their race or religion. We
thought that the ideal was to treat everyone the same and not to pay much
attention to things like skin colour and religion. The task was to get rid of
prejudice and unpleasantness between all people no matter where they were from.
Now I discover that Cambridge University thinks that
it is a hotbed of racism with students and staff continually behaving in a
racist fashion. It is a place so full of discrimination that it thinks it
necessary that staff and students can report each other for both micro and macroaggressions.
I would be surprised if there is really more racism in Cambridge now than there
was some years ago. Who would dare make an off-colour joke? Who would dare eat
a falafel? Who would dare even wear a keffiyeh in case someone accuses them of
cultural appropriation?
When I was in Cambridge racism was not a usual topic
of conversation. I mentioned neither race nor gender, nor sexuality in my dissertation.
These were simply non-issues in most subjects. But if even then before the
present Enlightenment there was minimal levels of discriminatory language, how
much less must there be now with everyone monitoring each other for the least
transgression. Yet still Cambridge is such an oppressive, unwelcoming and
discriminatory place that students and staff must tell tales on each other.
It isn’t Cambridge that has changed but rather the
definitions of what makes someone a racist.
Cambridge defines racism as
Racism is a system of
oppression, woven into the fabric of societies, institutions, processes,
procedures, people’s values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. It is a system
of advantage that sets whiteness as the norm, manifesting in societies’ valuing
and promoting (implicitly or explicitly) being white. It is a system where
people from racially minoritised backgrounds are more likely than white people
to face multiple obstacles in life, from being targets of direct or indirect
discrimination and micro-aggressions.
Did the University use either reason or experience to
come up with this definition? It’s hard to imagine an experiment that would
prove racism to amount to just these characteristics and none others. But it is
unclear that a native speaker of English would define racism in this way either.
This Cambridge definition does not follow logically from the OED dictionary
definition of racism which says nothing about whiteness. But if the Cambridge
definition of racism follows neither from reason nor experience, why should anyone
believe it to be true? We could cast it to the flames along with Hume except he
has already been cancelled.
I’ve only ever met or heard about racist individuals,
because only people rather than societies, institutions etc can be racist. To
suppose that the Manchester United team can be racist while none of the players
is racist is absurd. If the team is racist, it is only because the players are
racist. Institutional racism therefore makes little sense, because it is
pointless blaming an institution, when only the people who make up an
institution can be racist or can be persuaded to cease to be racist. Blaming
the group for the sins of the individual is unjust.
It becomes clear from the Cambridge definition that it
thinks that racism is only something that white people can do to other races. But
what if I lived in an overwhelmingly black society in Africa. In this society
blackness would be the norm quite reasonably, because nearly everyone would be
black. These black people would likewise most probably value and promote being
black and their black culture. It may well be that I would face some prejudice living
in this society. They might comment on my paleness and might be curious about
my hair. I might find it difficult to make friends and people might call me
names based on my skins colour. But according to Cambridge none of this would
be racist.
Unfortunately, also for the Cambridge definition those
countries with hardly any black people would be the least racist, because there
would be no one to be prejudiced about. But the rural Aberdeenshire of my childhood
was 100% white, but full of racist prejudices about the black people we had
never met. Muti-racial societies are far
less prejudiced.
Worse still because monoracial countries like Japan,
or parts of Eastern Europe are free from racism, the blame for racism in
Britain is obviously down to the arrival here of people from other races. But
if it was Windrush that brought racism to Britain, should we really be
celebrating it? If racism is caused by the presence of black people in a
society dominated by white people, the logical solution would appear to be
unfortunate for those black people.
The Cambridge definition implies that only white people can be racist, which means that black people cannot be racist against white people, even if they act towards them in a discriminatory way and even if they use racist language towards them. It also means that black people cannot be racist against other black people. This is no doubt the reason why Sasha Johnson the Black Lives Matter activist thought she could safely call another black person the short form of the word “racoon”.
She claimed that person she called this did not
understand what racism was when he objected. No doubt she was using something
similar to the Cambridge definition.
Racism as a moral issue must be an issue for everyone
equally. Why should white people be interested in not being racist if they
discover that only they can be racist, but that black people can avoid being
racist simply because of their skin colour. We are all human beings and all equally
capable of prejudice, discrimination and hurtful behaviour. To give one group of people the ability to describe
others as racist, which may have serious consequences for their lives, when
that group cannot itself be called racist is to have two classes of citizens.
It is to create a bench for the racists marked whites,
because the definition amounts to all whites are racist and cannot do anything
about it no matter how hard they try and a bench for everyone else marked colored.
This is how Cambridge has made progress since I was there.
