To commemorate 200 years since the abolition of slavery, we intend to produce a series of posts throughout 2007 addressing the current state of racism both in football and in wider society.
RACISM IN ENGLAND
While I have been in England over the holiday period, I cannot help but notice three very clear attitudes on race politics. Firstly, there is the racist in denial ("I'm not racist but..."). Secondly, there are the chattering classes who believe that they have exorcised all "ism" demons. Thirdly, there are the fully fledged racists. This is not a good collective island mentality. Huge burdens of expectation are placed on any individual who wishes to settle in England - a sort of cultural reclassification. And yet, the English abroard exist in their little enclaves and totally shun the local cultures. In some ways, the chattering classes are the main problem. Once they feel that they have done their bit, they relax into an abusive globalised system that brutalises those unfortunate enough to live in the Third World. These were the same individuals who were active enough in Wilberforce's day to create real change - reading the Guardian, being aware of ethnic clothing, listening to both the Today programme and World Music doesn't change anything. A previous partner of mine was Su Andi MBE (the Black Performance Poet) and I was always astonished at the degree of racism that she/we experienced when we were together - mutterings in restaurants, being turned away from hotels when it was seen that we were a mixed race couple etc etc. Much of this racism was minor and/or subliminal but it was a permanent presence nonetheless. It totally taints your existence. I could step away from this racism but she can't ever expect to - that is criminal. And, it is not just in England. While waiting in Athens airport recently, the police approached only three individuals to check their identities - the only three Black people in the lounge...
RACISM IN CAPITALISM
Capitalists, both here and in the USA, complain bitterly about the impact that positive discrimination (PD) has on their ability to exploit the system for their own ends. It matters not in their eyes that PD was established in the first place to address historical inequities in society's structure. And yet, you never hear these same capitalists mention their own tilting of the hierarchy in their favour via the freemasons, the catenians (catholic masons), highly selective trade and industry associations (eg Institute of Directors), cultural elitism, nepotism, the public school system and Oxbridge etc. I have read the Economist for 20 years and have not once seen the word freemason mentioned which is a little peculiar considering the omnipresence of masonic handshakes in business. There is no meritocracy.
Globalisation is slavery for the 21st Century. The current issue of The Economist clearly boasts "Globalisation has shifted the balance of power firmly in favour of the corporate sector and away from labour". Poverty in Africa has increased in the last decade while the major capitalist players - the Hedge Funds, the Private Equity firms, the Investment banks - are bathing in excessive liquidity none of which is to be returned to the workers. There are a considerable proportion of people globally who are directly enslaved in their work conditions and there are probably an equal number who must maintain constant real-time mobility to eke out a living. The Asian and East European workhouses typify the former and the Senegal - Canarias - Italy route typifies the latter. In fact, the Mourides of Senegal have adapted to the new rigours of globalisation in a successful manner but such success depends on taking great risks with your life in over-crowded boats, splitting families and having no employment or government protection or rights. In the last 200 years, capitalism has merely developed more refined structures to impose it's elitist and racist agenda. In the same manner that the US government gave Blacks the vote in the 1960's and then promptly took it off them again by criminalising huge swathes of the Black population, capitalism banned slavery and has now reintroduced it via the back door. Are the thousands of people that are dying in refugee camps, in war zones or in geopolitical and mineral hotspots, indications of the success of globalisation? The huge numbers of Mexicans and Africans who die trying to get into the US and Europe respectively, are they also a sign of that success? AIDS in Africa then? The modern day horrors of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Iraq, Palestine have moral equivalence with the Congo, Barbados, Jamaica, India and the US two hundred years ago. All that the capitalists have done is to rebrand their slavery as globalisation. And through it's choice of target, globalisation is a racist system. "The color line" of W.E.B. Du Bois has become a permanent global barrier.
