Is Britain Institutionally Racist?

The Sh*t Show of Racism!

People can feel as if they are racist these days for not integrating much, or by having no friends outside their group comprised of the same ethnicity. 

For years, however, science has told us we all have an own-race bias. A bias for recognising the faces of other people who share our own ethnicity, this has shown to start when we are babies. It's natural. Holistic based explanations are not uncommon: we bond to what faces we see frequently, recognise familiarities and take pleasure in people in whom we can relate—is it fair to call this racism? 

Maybe this factors in on people's choice to auto segregate, Mandaeism and Islam, for instance, both show that endogamy preserves culture. Though, for all accusations, is Britain really institutionally racist? Historians such as David Olusoga and Kehinde Andrews might refer to Britain as a country for white privileged benefactors of colonial slavery. Professor Andrews —who narrated the documentary 'The Psychosis of Whiteness'—speaks up against the racism he sees. His books are clearly defined; the latest called, 'The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule The World.

If you take a 'what about' stance to challenge the professors points on race, or refer to historical occurrences of when white people were being booted out of their homes, it won't remove the historical racism of Britain. It cannot be undone. 

All of Europe has a dark history and it lingers. In the years following George Floyd's murder in the USA, British Policing was exposed to have a useless vetting system; what came next was high profile murder, MET corruption and toxic police chauvinism featured on national news, it led to resignations. 

On the other hand, if everyone takes a 'what about' stance and points the finger; we'll see humans from every walk of life fostering some kind of racial animosity towards each other.

The United Kingdom does have it's share of Danny Bakers; the disgraced broadcaster who compared the Sussex's newborn baby to a monkey in a picture he posted on twitter. 

The country also has it's portion of Azeem Rafiq's, who rightly exposed Yorkshire Cricket's racial bullying, only to land himself in trouble for antisemitism.

Sasha Johnson's voice stood against racism via Black Live's Matter. Someone filmed her and posted her baiting violence and verbally abusing a black man in social media. The woman was clearly intimidating him with a racially loaded name denoting a black person who is culturally more like white people—doesn't this imply racism is beyond institution? 

When there is hypocrisy and bias, racial signalling always becomes an insult to injury. Attempts to allocate a specific ancestral, national or cultural origin of racism is also futile. The general idea is to blame white people for historical horrors committed against black people as well as modern institutional racism. Numerous factors come into play in modern hate crimes other than race, such as sexual matters, religious hatred or misogyny, mental health stigma or intimate relationships etcetera. The crown prosecution service (2022) said, 'many members of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities and faith communities do not report what they consider to be racist or religious crime to the police because of low confidence in the criminal justice system. This is not a declaration of institutional racism, it is low confidence in a public service. 

British classism is the greatest cultivator of inequality and it has it's roots in history, reflected in the feudal system and its medieval use of torture. Christian rulers permitted nasty devices such as the iron maiden, the bone crushing wheel, and the Judas cradle, they destroyed suspected heretics, witches, as well as homosexual people, Jews and military prisoners. Countless civilians suffered this madness which served to pacify religious based schemes of powerful people. Racism is another vice of the wicked, found in the layman's dichotomy of Good and Bad; as with crime, phobias, and it's other ism's—our conscience recognises racism as bad. A deficiency. How should it be tackled? 

Moving out of Britain for a moment, consider the racially discriminatory evictions that occurred in African countries under Robert Mugabe. He deliberately changed land ownership rules in Zimbabwe against the interests of the majority of white farmers. This is reminiscent of the Windrush scandal under Teresa May, in Britain; again, this highlights our collective human deficiency of morality. Idi Amin ridded himself of many Indian and Pakistani citizens and famously said Hitler was right. Google images show him demeaning his white subordinates. The communist Vietnamese expelled their French citizens. Societal hierarchy, power is the beast. Today, classist discriminatory thinking only serves to widen the poverty gap in the UK, genuinely, social equality won't thrive when racial games divide people. 

Undeniably, skin colour is widely identified as the sole target of racial abuse, but, is racism always down to this? The term white supremacy or white privilege doesn't work with Anglo-Celtic racism, which, in all fairness, didn't require physical differences to incite hatred. The same goes with Russian and Ukrainian racism. Again, nasty intentions manifest in all towns, countries and empires alike. 

Definitely, any government department or public service might do something we call racist. However, when a big e-commerce company started to promote shops owned by black people, internet users called it racism, because of the exclusivity to one particular skin colour—nothing changed. This pales in comparison to the racist institutions of World War 2 for example.

However, it is good to know that policies for apartheid, edicts of expulsion are unlikely to be drafted when the equality act (2010) and the Race Relations act (2000) exist. The abolition of slavery act (1835) was only recently paid off. Race is a protected characteristic in the U.K. The country has it's share of multi-cultural tension. Sadly, inequality continues to grow; education figures show that the children of white working class families have been down prioritised beneath those of other racial backgrounds, this is an example of institutional racism. 

Higher death rates for women of colour in maternity units was not sufficiently addressed and was called a racial issue. Health figures show, black women experience more chronic health conditions such as hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease than women who are not black. All of these problems can significantly increase chances of pregnancy complications and maternal mortality. It seems feasible that commonly found conditions like eclampsia or pre-eclampsia are more responsible for mortality figures than a racial issue. I hope this maternity care can be improved. 

It doesn't seem easy to explore all of the benefactors of slavery, it reached far and wide. Even West African Monarchy had dealings in it. The Velekete markets traded African countrymen with Europe—sometimes exchanging their own men for guns! Central and Eastern Europeans were enslaved by the Ottoman empire, Barbary Pirates made Eunuchs of the men and sex slaves of the young females. If legal historical reparations are ever introduced, everyone would be claiming from everyone else. What has long gone can't make modern Britain a racist institution. 

The crown prosecution define racism as: 

'Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race'

or

'Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion.' 

In everyday language do these definitions mean you can phone the police on anyone of a different background if they have been rude to you, or do only serious racial slurs suffice? If British justice is chasing up many perceived racial hostility, when will unfair accusations drain police provision? How would Harry and Meghan look:

Racist art in the Palace. 

Episode three claims racist art is in the Palace, but according to reporters, all of the items shown are situated elsewhere:

York Mansion House, 

Bristol Museum, 

The National Trust,

The Cliveden Estate,

Wentworth Castle in South Yorkshire,

Dyrham Park, Gloucs.

Historian Afua Hirsch says, “If you go into a palace or a stately home or anywhere that represents tradition you are likely to be faced with racist imagery.” She informed millions of viewers that the murals and statues “glorify the institution of slavery”. How is this not liable or racist? Classism and equality seem to have their own rules. 

If false vexatious racial accusations lead to legal action or psychological stress why shouldn't they be considered a crime? Historians seen in Harry and Meghan's docu-series may well have portrayed the Commonwealth as the new colonial-esque empire but, Meghan Markle's wedding veil was decorated with flowers representing the Commonwealth, countries to which she was to become a willing servant. 

With respect to the Sussex's, they once presided over Queen Elizabeth's Commonwealth Trust; equality of gender and support of it's youth was central to the job, but then, their Netflix historians pushed opposing views to the fact finding; both can't be correct—the Sussex's wouldn't have knowingly presided over a regime they knew was racist or colonial. They never stood for empire 2.0. Be that as it is, they did feel vexatious at the monarchy. 

The focus of the Commonwealth is to maintain peace and to facilitate trade between member countries. It values democracy, promotes cooperation on environmental and economic issues, and finally, when a leader dies they vote for the next one. They all chose to vote for King Charles III. 

Out of all the 56 independent members, 36 are republics. 

It begs the question: why would the Sussex's go to such great lengths with a Netflix PR production to smear the Monarchy, but, at the same time, withhold direct conversation with a senior royal who they perceived as racially hostile? What sort of message does this send to people who stand up against racism?