Hanif Kureishi - Collected Essays

It was interesting to see that the British working class (and not only the working class, of course) used the same vocabulary of contempt about Pakistanis — the charges of ignorance, laziness, fecklessness, uncleanliness — that their own, British middle class used about them. And they weren’t able to see the similarity.

Racism goes hand-in-hand with class inequality. Among other things, racism is a kind of snobbery, a desire to see onself as superior culturally and economically, and a desire to actively experience and enjoy that superiority by hostility or violence. And when that superiority of class and culture is unsure or not acknowledged by the Other — as it would be acknowledged by the servant and master in class-stable Pakistan — but is in doubt, as with the British working class and Pakistanis in England, then it has to be demonstrated physically. Everyone knows where they stand then — the class inequality is displayed, just as any other snob demonstrates superiority by exhibiting wealth or learning or ancestry.

So some of the middle class of Pakistan, who also used the familiar vocabulary of contempt about their own poor (and, incidentally, about the British poor), couldn’t understand when I explained that British racists weren’t discriminating in their racial discrimination: they loathed all Pakistanis and kicked whoever was nearest. To the English all Pakistanis were the same; racists didn’t ask whether you had a chauffeur, TV and private education before they set fire to your house. But for some Pakistanis, it was their own poor who had brought this upon them.

It has been an arduous journey. Since Enoch Powell in the 1960s, there have been racist marches through south London approved by the Labour Home Secretary; attacks by busloads of racists on Southall, which the Asians violently and successfully repelled; and the complicated affair of young Asians burned to death and Asian shops razed to the ground by young blacks in Handsworth, Birmingham. The insults, the beatings, the murders continue. Although there has been white anger and various race relations legislation, Pakistanis are discriminated against in all areas.

Powell’s awful prophecy was fulfilled: the hate he worked to create and the party of which he was a member brought about his prediction. The River Tiber has indeed overflowed with much blood — Pakistani blood. And seventeen years later Powell has once more called for repatriation, giving succour to those who hate.

The fight back is under way. The defence committees, vigilante groups, study groups, trade union and women’s groups are flourishing. People have changed, become united, through struggle and self-defence. My white friends, like Bog Brush, didn’t enjoy fighting Pakistanis. They had a reputation for premature sobbing and cowardice. You didn’t get your money’s worth fighting a Paki. That’s quite different now.

The fierce truculent pride of the Black Panthers is here now, as is the separatism, the violence, the bitterness and pathetic elevation of an imaginary homeland. This is directly spawned by racism.

Our cities are full of Asian shops. Where one would want black united with black, there are class differences as with all groups. Those Pakistanis who have worked hard to establish businesses, now vote Tory and give money to the Conservative Party. Their interests are the same as those of middle-class business people everywhere, though they are subject to more jealousy and violence. They have wanted to elevate themselves out of the maelstrom and by gaining economic power and the opportunity and dignity it brings, they have made themselves safe — safer. They have taken advantage of England.

But what is the Conservative view of them? Roger Scruton in his book The Meaning Of Conservatism sets out the case against mutual respect and understanding.

Firstly he deplores all race relations legislation and tries to justify certain kinds of racism by making it seem a harmless preference for certain kinds of people. He calls this preference a ‘natural offshoot’ of allegiance. Secondly, and more tellingly, he says that ‘illiberal sentiments … arise inevitably from social consciousness: they involve natural prejudice, and a desire for the company of one’s kind. That is hardly sufficient ground to condemn them as “racist”.’

The crucial Conservative idea here is Scruton’s notion of ‘the company of one’s kind’. What is the company of one’s kind? Who exactly is of one’s kind and what kind of people are they? Are they only those of the same ‘nation’, of the same colour, race and background? I suspect that that is what Scruton intends. But what a feeble, bloodless, narrow conception of human relationships and the possibilities of love and communication that he can only see ‘one’s kind’ in this exclusive and complacent way!

One does seek the company of one’s kind, of those in the same street, in the same club, in the same office. But the idea that these are the only people one can get along with or identify with, that one’s humanity is such a held-back thing that it can’t extend beyond this, leads to the denigration of those unlike onself. It leads to the idea that others have less humanity than oneself or one’s own group or ‘kind’; and to the idea of the Enemy, of the alien, of the Other. As Baldwin says: ‘this inevitably leads to murder’, and of course it has often done so in England recently.

Scruton quotes approvingly those who call this view ‘death camp chic’. He would argue, I suppose, that loyalty and allegiance to one’s kind doesn’t necessarily lead to loathing of those not of one’s kind. But Scruton himself talks of the ‘alien wedge’ and says that ‘immigration cannot be an object of merely passive contemplation on the part of the present citizenship’.

The evil of racism is that it is a violation not only of another’s dignity, but also of one’s own person or soul; the failure of connection with others is a failure to understand or feel what it is one’s own humanity consists in, what it is to be alive, and what it is to see both oneself and others as being ends not means, and as having souls. However much anodyne talk there is of ‘one’s kind’, a society that is racist is a society that cannot accept itself, that hates parts of itself so deeply that it cannot see, does not want to see — because of its spiritual and political nullity and inanition — how much people have in common with each other. And the whole society and every element in it is reduced and degraded because of it. This is why racism isn’t a minor or sub-problem: it reflects on the whole and weighs the entire society in the balance.

Therefore, in the end, one’s feeling for others, one’s understanding of their humanity cannot be anything to do with their being of ‘one’s kind’ in the narrow way Scruton specifies. It can’t be to do with others having any personal qualities at all. For paradoxically, as Simone Weil says: ‘So far from its being his person, what is sacred in a human being is the impersonal in him. Everything which is impersonal in man is sacred, and nothing else.’

What of Labour?

The Pakistani working class is as unprotected politically as it has ever been. Despite various paternalistic efforts and an attempt at a kind of ‘Raj decency’, racism is the Trojan Horse within the Labour movement. The Labour Party has failed to show that it is serious about combating racism and serious in representing the black working class. There are few black councillors, few black Parliamentary candidates, few blacks on the General Management Committees of constituency Labour Parties, no blacks on the NEC and so on, right through the Labour and trade union movement.

In my own ward and management committee, I have seen racist attitudes that would shame some Tories. People have stood up at Labour Party meetings I have attended and delivered racist diatribes. I have seen blacks discouraged from joining the Labour Party, and when they have joined, actively discouraged from canvassing in case they discouraged white racists from voting Labour.