Common Sense Prejudice?

I was immensely privileged, aged eighteen, to sit in on a Black Consciousness workshop led by the anti-racism campaigner Sybil Phoenix. The participants were an all-age group of black Methodists from Dalston.

One young woman, a secretary, recounted how she had one day made some mistakes that had got her into trouble at work. She later heard her white boss muttering to a colleague, ‘that’s the last time I take on a black person’. Phoenix pressed the young woman on how this made her feel. She said that she could ‘see her boss’s point’. She had, after all, messed up, and it was ‘understandable’ that her boss would feel this way. Phoenix asked her a simple question: ‘Do you think that if a white woman had made the same mistakes, your boss would have said that she would never employ a white person again?’

Ridiculous notion – it would never happen. Phoenix had elicited a perfect example of how individual prejudice congeals into institutional racism. The penny dropped for that young woman. And for me.
When Harold Shipman killed hundreds of elderly women, did you ever hear anyone say, ‘I’m changing my GP. He’s an ageing white man with a beard. You know they can’t be trusted’? Or after the striking-off of Sir Roy Meadow for giving ‘misleading’ evidence in the Sally Clark case, did you ever hear, ‘that’s the last time we take expert evidence from a white middle-aged male professor’?
So why is it considered ‘common sense’ for people travelling on the tube suddenly to begin distrusting anyone who is Black or Asian or who looks like a Muslim? White people are not immune from inclinations to terrorism, as we know only too well from the lessons of Omagh and the Soho nailbomber. The tube suspects appear, so far, to come from a range of backgrounds. If the terrorists were to find some disaffected white lads to carry their bombs in a briefcase and slip under the net of our preconceptions – where would our ‘common sense’ have led us then? Anyway, that Asian young man sitting opposite you may be the plain-clothes police officer who is ensuring your safety, or the doctor who could save your life.

On September 11 we shall be renewing our commitment to racial justice at a special diocesan service in Reading Minster (3pm). After that, there will be opportunity to share an evening with the internationally renowned musician Ben Okafor at his ‘Love Justice’ gig at St Laurence’s (6pm). These two events are timely, but they must be reinforced by a renewed vigilance amongst us all to analyse, understand and resist the constantly shifting dynamics and manifestations of the racism that runs deep and strong in our nation.

Alison Webster is Diocesan Social Responsibility Adviser