Challenging racism

Last night, I watched the BBC documentary, What Ron Said, about Ron Atkinson’s racist comments about Chelsea footballer Marcel Desailly.

The film was meant to take Ron on a journey (literal and metaphorical) to “find out why his words caused so much offence, and asks whether it's not only Ron who should be examining his true beliefs towards race”. I don’t know what impact it had on Ron - from the conversations I overheard on the train this morning, I think the public perception of him has gone from bad to worse, but that’s another matter.

What interested me was his attitude which my girlfriend and I interpreted as being that he recognised that racism exists and that it is inherently wrong to be racist - it’s just that he didn’t quite understand what racism is. For example, when he was taken round the museum in America, he just didn’t understand why those grotesque caricatures are offensive - and he certainly didn’t understand the difference between direct and indirect discrimination.

But it’s not just Ron that seems to have problems with this. For the last Women’s Committee meeting in Preston, I went up on the Saturday night, and had the unfortunate experience of catching a very busy train from Manchester. There were no seats, so I had to stand by the doors, and was kept company by a large group of very drunk and extremely loud men, all in their forties and fifties. I already was fed up with them for being loud, drunk and under the impression that they were in a massive room, instead of a packed train, but I couldn’t believe it when the train conductor got on and tried to get people to move down the carriage to make a bit of room - I expected them to get a bit aggressive, but I did not expect the torrent of racist abuse that they launched at him.

He didn’t say anything (I don’t know if he heard) but I spoke up and challenged them, asked them how dare they say anything like that, that I found it disgusting and racist, that they should apologise immediately, but their reaction wasn’t exactly positive. They couldn’t see that what they had done was racist - a couple of them got really angry with me for calling them racist! It was as though making a racist comment was different to being racist, and that if people laughed at the comment, it made it a joke and not a racist slur.

Of course, they were totally off their faces, so a constructive discussion was never going to happen, but in addition to really p***ing me off, it made me feel so helpless. There I was, staunchly opposing them for making racist comments, and it had about as much impact as if I had tried to empty the Atlantic with a teaspoon. They just didn’t believe that what they had said was racist - and were prepared to defend themselves with an extremely vicious attack on me instead (not that they were happy when I then challenged them for racist AND sexist comments…)

There isn’t really a point to sum up this blog - other than to say that we’ve all got a duty to challenge discrimination wherever we find it - be that on a train or in our own hearts and minds.

Enjoy the winter break - NUS is closed from 21 December until 4 January so I’ll be blogging again in the New Year.

Enjoy!

Jo Salmon
jo.salmon@nus.org.uk

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/josalmon/270248.aspx