I’ve been pulled over by the Police, I’ve been turned down for jobs, I’ve been stared at by strangers, called names, abused, mistaken for a criminal because of my colour, pigeonholed by society and even attacked in the street. I have had every one of the incidents cited by Black people as the things ‘they suffer because of their skin colour’ except my skin is white. I have no intersectional trait I can call upon as evidence for my victimisation. I am not part of the ever increasing LGBTQ groups, nor do I worship any type of sky wizard. No, I have no ‘oppression’ that could explain away my treatment in Britain over the last few decades.
I’ve often wondered, if I were black, would I assume that all of those negative things that happened to me were because of my skin colour? I am guessing I would, because that’s human nature. It neatly explains all the bad things that happened to me, whilst at the same time absolving me of any type of personal responsibility. Some of the things I experienced were my own fault, some were just bad luck and some were just because society can be shitty sometimes. But what I don’t have, is the luxury of an explanation that can be sweepingly applied to any negativity I’ve experienced in my life. If I had been born to Black parents who had suffered racism in their lives then they will have directly, or indirectly, passed on a hyper-vigilance to me.
But more worrying than that is the realisation we have an entire education system, from Primary schools to Universities, all teaching a distorted, one-sided, version of history where the “Evil White Man” is always the villain of the piece. Educators never mention the White slave trade perpetrated by North Africans on millions of Europeans that lasted over 200 years. Or how British medicines such as Antibiotics have save over 100 million African Lives and counting, or how British technology (trains, planes, computers, televisions, fridges etc) have transformed the lives of millions of Africans. Of how the application of industrial techniques invented right here in Britain, has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Or that ’reparations’ have already been paid, hundreds of times over, with the billions in aid given to Africa. With none of this being pointed out to me, and with only the negativity being drummed into me from the day of my birth, of course I am going to think that the times I was pulled over by the police for speeding, or having a broken light were really because of my skin colour, because that’s what I would expect. That’s what I’ve been lead to believe. That’s what I had been told by my parents, the media and even by the education system, and all of my friends have been given the same view of the world.
These types of anecdotes are often used as evidence, but, anecdotes are not evidence, they are just stories from an entirely personal perspective. Likewise, the surveys that are often touted are simply anecdotes totted-up before being twisted and destroyed to be hailed as ‘proof’ of Racist Britain today. When the numbers don’t stack-up the Race-baiters resort to using terms that can’t be disproved: ‘systemic’, ‘institutionalised’ and ‘unconscious’, what Ben Shapiro calls Ghost Hunting. This is essentially saying, “we can’t prove it, there is no real evidence, but we just know you’re secretly racist because you’re white” and so the onus is on White people to disprove the accusation, but you cannot prove a negative, however hard you try.
From the Editor of Vision News Online