On pedestrian racism and why it’s a good time for artists to get out of bed!
Today I sat outside a cafe near Cathedral Square in Peterborough and watched a charged, verbal fight in the street. One man (with a baby-buggy, small child and a wife) had (for a reason unknown to me), annoyed another man passing him in the street. The passing man shouted a few ‘cuss’ words at the other man and his family before launching into ‘You think you can come to our country, take our jobs, just to fuck me off? ..etc etc.’
This was a third episode of racist rhetoric/attitudes I have heard over the last couple of days in this otherwise colourful and lovely city. The other two were issued from very well educated, to all eyes, ‘middle-class’ people, who I know to be mild-mannered and largely kind. One friend stated he would not go near a particular leisure centre in the city as it attracted immigrants and that as a long-term resident of the city, he knew what they could be like. The other jumped to the defense of the ‘cussing’ man, pointing out that you can ‘understand how people feel they are losing their culture, that there isn’t ‘Englishness’ any more’, that our cities aren’t the places we grew up in because of these invaders. In response, to the latter, I launched into a rant about how the bad behaviour of a few arse-holes allows the few arse-holes in the other camp to use the race of those behaving badly as a scapegoat for their own feelings of inadequacy….the depravity of the few, inadvertently ruins the reputation of a whole community. We have all heard the wave of hatred towards Islam and its denominations because of the actions of a fanatical minority.
Generalisations directed at other people help us to explain complex feelings within ourselves and the body politic, we know this. Since coming back to this area, having lived in London and Norwich among other cities, I have held the sneaky fear that there is a more tolerated complacency about racism in this midlands city than I experienced in the Metropolis or in the green, arts retreat that is Norwich. Maybe this is a generalisation. I have witnessed racism in London incense both aggression and fierce disapproval simultaneously. I have heard the X/Y generation good naturedly excuse the ‘generational’ attitudes of their grandparents, (and even parents), living on Norfolk/Suffolk farmland. But it ‘feels’ different here…is it possible that racism is ‘quiet’ and ‘pedestrian’? I suppose a form of prejudice based on very selective understanding of a community is at heart ‘complacency.’ And as for loss of ‘Englishness’ diaspora and migration is a natural consequence of the world turning right? I am in fact an Anglo-Irish-Jewish-Hugenot who moved here in 1789 to escape persecution. Increasing birth rates and survival rates will see islands congest and borders overflow…
Living at this juncture when the UK job market is more competitive than it has ever been, when austerity cuts are being made to services for the most vulnerable and life endangered (yesterday’s cuts to mental health benefits for instance) and when an elite portion of society is still profiting from the bank bail outs of the crash, tempers are heated, fingers are pointed towards possible reasons for the gap between our aspirations and realities. That is the longest sentence I have ever written.
But weirdly for artists (and let’s pride ourselves on maintaining the existence of weirdness), this is the right time to get out of bed in the morning. In all our recent histories (unless we’ve been fortunate enough to be born privileged…yawn) there have been social economic barriers to achieving what we desire. It would be a great thing if we could channel this personal sense of striving and restlessness into reflecting on the barriers of others in this climate of accusation. Do artists have responsibility? If we take up the challenge… more so now than ever. T
