On August 3rd, as I walked down the street I heard a shout.
"Are you a half-caste?!" they cried.
I stood in disbelief.
They continued to ask for my identity
"Are you a dirty half-caste?!"
As if my ambiguous face made them confused whether I was one of them or not.
Or, as if they could not decide what racial slur to call me.
Turns out, this was an EDL white supremacist.
While still used as a common phrase in many countries, in the UK it isn't typically used in common contemporary discourse.
If you don't know, as no one has really used this slur since the 50's, 'half caste' is a derogatory term used to refer to individuals of multiracial descent to describe their 'impure' blood. White blood that has been diluted by any non-white ethnicity.
This turned my attention to the way these EDL ‘rioters’ (aka terrorists) saw race and ethnicity.
EDL racists and their perpetuation of Eugenics
EDL stands for the English Defense League, an organisation of far-right racists who perpetuate the notion that English identities can only be white, mostly associating themselves with Islamophobic beliefs.
There have been organised riots all over the UK over the past weekend, including an attack of an immigrant asylum in Rotherham and further targeted attacks on Muslim communities, In total, there were 56 gathering across the UK over that weekend alone.
What I also found horrific was the racist actions of the general public, in particular the attacks in Middlesbrough. A video surfaced of the racist actions of the far-right who were stopping cars in Middlesbrough if they were driven by someone not white.
In the video, you see many young people physically stopping cars and checking if the driver was white. If they were white, they let them through, if not, they attacked the car.
Going back to my first comments of being called a half-caste, I wondered what would have happened to be if I was a driver in that car.
Would they stop me and continue to question my identity?
Would there be some sort of court hearing where some people argue I am a white woman who can gain access, or a woman of colour who is a disgrace to Britain?
Would my whiteness protect me? That, I do not know.
What I do know, is these actions perpetuate the purely stupid and illogical beliefs of Eugenics.
A continuation of UK racism
These events have not appeared from no where, but are a continuation of racist beliefs that have been prevalent in this country for centuries.
The history of Eugenics asserts the incorrect notion that 'race' is biological, and therefore humans can be 'improved' through selective breeding. Perpetuated through the 1800s, leaders and intellectuals worldwide would place legal policies that spread harm to people of colour, LGBTQ+ communities, and spread ablest agendas.
The most common association of Eugenics is with Germany post-WWII and the racially motivated genocide of Jewish identities by the Third Reich, but was also a widely-held belief across the globe.
For example, in the 1920s, the National Birth-Rate Commission as part of the National Council of Public Morals argued they pushed for a 'Great and Greater Britain' by submitting to the Ministry of Health about the importance of social hygiene in society, specifically referencing miscegenation. While never made illegal in the UK, there was a strong belief that the British white identity must remain 'pure'.
After WWII, even institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford and Glasgow were part of the Eugenics Education Society, a popular 20th century group that campaigned for marriage restrictions to prevent racial mixing and creating impurities such as myself (sorry for that).
Revealing EDL illogicality through mixedness
No matter what side of the issue you rest on, you have to admit - it makes no f**king sense.
The people who are supposedly taking out country back are the ones setting it alight. That they are destroying the places of work that immigrants are supposedly taking? What this showed was that 'loving Britain' means 'hating foreigners'.
That man who was asking if I was a half-caste was not calling me that necessity, but checking my eligibility to walk through the street.
If I answered "no sir, I am a white person just like you! Don't worry!" there could have been a parade of flowers celebrating my 'pure' identity, and if I said "no sir, I am a Chinese woman" I could have been killed.
As mixed-race identities sit between the boundaries of what racists are able to comprehend, I do not know what they would do to me - would they beat me up but like, only a little bit?
Moments like this require us to really critically reflect on who is being attacked and why.
Videos like the one in Middlesbrough also require us to critically observe how they enact themselves, how they choose to attack, and how it is sometimes purely based on religious wear or racist assumptions of skin colour.
It does not matter who you are, what you believe, or what you have done, all they saw in that moment was the colour of the drivers skin, and that deemed whether they deserved harm or not.
This means, the main victims of these racist attacks are Muslim communities of colour, who we must fight to protect against both overt and covert racism in Britain,
We must question how we also perpetuate the notion that skin colour tells us all we need to know about a person, when someone is mixed people often get confused as to which racist assumption they should be making about them.
I hope everyone remains safe, and that we continue to protect each other in counter-protests and the perpetuation of love and support I have been seeing online.
Also, f**k Suella Braverman, these ARE hate marches,
Comments
Post a Comment