The insidious logic of state racism
The weekend's International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was a great opportunity, Yohance writes, to reflect on the gains and losses we’ve seen on racism in recent decades.
On 21 March, we marked the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Such events are important times to accurately assess the gains and losses we’ve made on racism in the decades since the Sharpeville massacre - the event which instigated this commemoration.
Many of the institutional discriminatory practices such as apartheid, redlining, and unequal pay have been outlawed, if not eliminated, across the global north. Over the same period, concepts such as economic imperialism, unequal exchange, and institutional racism have been acknowledged by the mainstream as persistent issues affecting ethnic minorities.
Crudely, we can characterise these developments as a decline in interpersonal racial violence and discrimination, a decline that reveals the underlying structural nature of that violence and discrimination.
There have of course been notable advances. All in quick succession, we saw Rishi Sunak become the first non-white UK prime minister, Vaughan Gething the first Black head of a European government, and Kemi Badenoch the first Black head of a major British political party.
We have also seen a dizzying array of ethnic minority MPs hold the main offices of state: only two of the past eight home secretaries have been white (and Grant Shapps only remained in post a week).
These advances in representation have, unfortunately, come with a resurgence in state racism domestically, and far-right nationalism globally.
In an effort to satisfy right-wing populists who are increasingly demanding the deportation of non-white people from this country, the government has proposed sweeping visa changes that would directly threaten the livelihoods of thousands of civil servants.
Many public sector workers - nurses, teachers, council employees - who have built careers serving this country would face renewed uncertainty about their right to remain, their families, and their futures. The message this sends is unmistakable: your contribution is conditional, your belonging provisional.
This is the insidious logic of state racism. It does not always arrive with street violence; sometimes it arrives in a white paper, a consultation document, a quietly amended immigration rule. Each concession to the politics of exclusion makes the next one easier.
So, we must be clear: representation without protection is hollow. We must organise in our workplaces, our unions, and our communities to oppose these proposals and refuse the normalisation of discrimination from those who govern us.