Racism Was, And Still Is, Never an Accident
Reading the newspapers today, including the Irish News which I have to admit is not the worst of them, readers are told that the racism we are seeing on our streets largely comes from ignorance, and that it is the result of bad ideas, bad people, or a failure of loyalists especially to learn tolerance. But if racism were simply ignorance, why has it appeared so consistently across the world, in particular in “developed” countries which claim to be modern, democratic and advanced, boasting high standards of education, human rights, and economic success?
That racism so often emerged alongside colonial conquest, land theft, slavery, resource extraction, and the exploitation of labour is not surprising. But that racism can manifest itself in Ireland today, a country lauded for its anti-colonial struggle and long history of opposition to oppression, is quite something.
That racist attacks across the border in the 6 occupied counties should occur, is perhaps less surprising.
This is both a comfortable and uncomfortable topic for many. Most will reduce racism to an individual tendency, and point fingers at culprits, but for those of us who must dig deeper, it forces us to look beyond individual attitudes and toward power. Racism was never random, or a mistake. Racism is a useful tool of the ruling class.
When European colonisers crossed oceans, they were not searching for racial superiority. They were searching for land, resources, slaves, and ultimately wealth.
Plantations needed workers.
Mines needed workers.
Colonies needed slaves.
Those who profited from these systems needed a way to justify them.
It is difficult to convince ordinary people today that millions should be enslaved, dispossessed, or ruled by force. However, it becomes much easier if victims can be portrayed as sub-human, less civilised, or a threat to “our women”, “our jobs”, “our culture” and “our identity”. It would appear that the race to the bottom is growing ever faster. But nothing happens by accident. We must ask how is this trending punch down mentality created, nurtured and sustained, even amongst some who identify as being left, and anti-racist?
Racism became the story that made exploitation look normal. The wealth of the British empire was built by working people, enslaved people, and colonised people. Yet the profits flowed upward while the suffering flowed downward. Of course this isn’t a flaw in the system. It just IS the system. And that system has a name: capitalism.
The greatest fear of every empire, whether that’s the British empire of last few centuries or the current Zionist controlled Western regime, is solidarity. A worker who sees another worker as an enemy because of race is far less dangerous than a worker who sees the boss, landlord, CEO, or imperial power as the source of their problems.
Again and again, history shows that divisions were encouraged between groups who had far more in common with each other than with those who ruled them. When our own James Connolly proved this, and workers in Belfast of both traditions began to unite, the church stepped in, and played its vital part for the ruling class. It divided workers. Religion was the tool. Today, it is race.
Workers are not born hating migrants. Workers are taught to blame migrants. Planters were not born hating Indigeous people, they are taught to fear Indigenous peoples. Poor whites are not born racist. They are encouraged to identify with wealthy whites rather than poor non-white workers.
Communities struggling under the same economic system are taught to compete against each other instead of organising together. Where or how are we taught this racist doctrine?
The aparatus that feeds racism today is much more covert than the brute force used of yesteryear, and much more sophisticated. Capitalism has sold us diversity packaged in many formats: from policies to colourful flags, the slogans and clichés of diversity are becoming tired. Efforts to mask structural racism mean that that which is actually responsible for creating racism cannot be touched.
When poverty is blamed on culture rather than exploitation, attention is diverted away from economic structures. When inequality is blamed on supposed deficiencies within a people, questions about land theft, colonial history, wage suppression, and political exclusion disappear. When it comes to making our public spaces anti-racist, policies designed in schools, universities, debating societies, government buildings, corporate boardrooms, sporting insitutions never ever address who owns what.
Anything and everything is discussed except:
who profits,
who decides,
And toward those with the least power to shape the system.
This is why racism has been such a valuable tool for the Epsteined ruling class. It transforms political questions into biological ones. It turns systems into stereotypes.
The struggle against racism is far too often presented as something done for the benefit of racial minorities alone. That is too narrow. Racism damages all working and poor people because it weakens our collective power needed to challenge exploitation and inequality.
Every time workers are divided into competing camps, the bosses gain leverage. Every time communities are encouraged to fear each other, those who control the wealth and power become less accountable, and fade into the background undisturbed and unperturbed, able to get on with their important business of laughing at us while we point fingers at the Other, bicker online, hurl classist insults, throw stones… or petrol bombs. Every time people are persuaded that their interests lie with elites who share their race rather than workers who share their conditions, the status-quo wins. This does not mean racism affects everyone equally. A system built on division will always protect those at the top while squeezing the power of those below.
It is a truth not universally acknowledged (in particular by the so-called Left) that the working-class has more in common with each other than they do with the powerful institutions that profit from their division. But when class-consciousness is so low, and delibetately so, how can we expect workers and the poor to understand this? Bourgeois democracy and its puppets, bourgeois politicians, certainly aren’t going to tell the masses. That is why we can also deduce that there is no Left in Ireland.
Empire and its NATO lackeys have taught people to see one another through hierarchy, and racial hierarchy is just one such hierarchy utilised by the ruling class.
Anti-imperialists understsnd that liberation, not liberal words like diversity, inclusion or peace, is our aim. Liberation requires learning to see each other through shared struggle. Our differences don’t have to be muted, they can be acknowledged, and still celebrated. But we must refuse to let those differences be weaponised, and used to divide our common cause, which is the struggle for justice.
Once we honestly ask the question who benefits from racism, the answer becomes clearer. Not ordinary people of different races, but the system of power that has always depended on keeping us apart. As comrade Tommy McKearney put it the other night on our podcast about a unionist demo in Scarva to counter a peaceful march for Gaza: “There is only one race; the human race.”