The furore around the Labour MP Diane Abbott and accusations of antisemitism, in which she equated the prejudice Jewish people face with the prejudice faced by redheads, hold important lessons for anyone considering how to talk about diversity, inclusion, equality, racism and (of course) antisemitism.
To explain, let me start with a story. A few years ago I was talking to a young black girl about the prejudice women face. She turned to me and said earnestly, “I understand it, it’s like racism against women.” I fought back a laugh and replied, “Yes, it’s called sexism.”
The beauty of the English language is that it is incredibly rich, with an enormous vocabulary. We have a specific term for the prejudice and bigotry that women face – sexism – and that in turn is different from misogyny.
We do Jewish people a disservice if we simply refer to the prejudice and bigotry they face as racism. It is antisemitism. Abbott was completely wrong to describe the prejudice that Travellers and Jewish people face as equivalent to the prejudice and bigotry people with red hair face: it was crass, offensive, and it was right for her to apologise.
When I read her original letter to the Observer, what I understood her underlying message to be – that the racism black people face and antisemitism are not the same – is one I have sympathy with, or at the very least one I believe should be discussed openly and calmly. But saying one is more or less important than the other is not something I have any sympathy with.
Race as we understand it is a social construct that was effectively “invented” during colonialism and transatlantic slavery, long after the prejudice, persecution and bigotry Jewish people face, which dates back millennia, began. Therefore, logically, the term racism is historically incorrect and doesn’t fully capture what Jewish people experience.
It should be noted at this point that “race” is different from “ethnicity” – that is the beauty of English, it is able to capture these nuances. Antisemitism is different from Islamophobia, and both are different from sectarianism.
We do the people facing these varied and difficult issues a disservice if we describe it all as racism. We also do a disservice to the English language. And herein lies an important lesson. We need to be precise in our language. We should not create false equivalence or hierarchies of victimhood, or we end up offending everyone.
When a journalist asks the seemingly simple question, “Are Jewish people white?”, it is giving far too much credit (and logic) to a system to classify people that was born out of prejudice and illogicality. For me the “racial” status of Jewish people beautifully exposes the lie that race actually makes any sense at all. As one Jewish friend once said to me, when I naively asked the same question, “Jewish people are the Schrödinger’s cat of racism, we are both white and not white at the same time.”
Antisemitism is terrible and needs to be addressed. Islamophobia is terrible and needs to be addressed. Racism is terrible and needs to be addressed. But we cannot properly fight them if we think they are all one and the same thing. Or, as my young friend at the beginning of this article did, use the same lens and framing to understand different forms of prejudice.
The English language gives us the tools to properly describe, understand and analyse the world around us in all its beauty and ugliness. We should use them.
Marcus Ryder is the head of external consultancies at the Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, chair of Rada and host of the podcast Black British Lives Matter
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