Nothing’s Black&White.

The Guardian 30/3/2012: “Police face racism scandal after black man records abuse.” Police officer: 'The problem with you is you will always be a nigger.' Hold on, look at the headline. Even the Guardian doesn’t report this as an English man or a young man or simply a man, he’s a black man. I presume the officer involved was also English and an older man, who called the younger man a nigger and went on to say, “Don’t hide behind your black skin.” What was in his mind to say that? Now imagine some twat accosts you in the street: Do you remonstrate? And might you be accused of racism if he’s black? There’s a sort of mutual collusion throughout society, even including the Guardian, that there is a divide, blacks and whites. It began in the fifties when immigrants began to appear and were shunned because of their difference, the most demonstrable being colour. They spoke differently often with poor English, they lived differently with different food, smells, music and customs. Most rose to the challenge of acclimatising to their new homeland and have enriched our culture but some took their difficulties as a badge difference. They began to class themselves as different, the most demonstrable being colour, taking pride in being a black man in a white society. The successful ones simply took pride in being themselves, in the genuine nobility of overcoming the many obstacles their own choice had put in their way. So some took pride in their inclusion and some in their exclusion. Now the task of the police is to police society, which includes everyone living and visiting this country whatever their feelings, beliefs or allegiances, so how is this background reflected in this recorded conversation?  Both are playing out this sixty-year drama. The young Englishman is playing out the ‘proud to be an excluded black man’ and the policeman is offensively and clumsily pointing this out to him. In saying, “Don’t hide behind your black skin,” he’s saying don’t exclude yourself because of it. True this drama has been sixty years in the making and true the youth probably has good reason to feel excluded but there comes a point where we must all lose our own exclusivity of exclusion and join in, otherwise we’ll ‘always be an n-word.’