Is it possible to be a little bit racist? A group of racist white men ran riot in London leading to a number of comments suggesting the UK was racist.

This was immediately followed by a whole series of replies saying that actually the UK was not racist, they were British and not personally racist. The people rioting in London were nothing to do with them, did not represent them so it as, apparently unfair, to describe the UK as racist. Because they do not see themselves as racist, the country they live in cannot be described as racist even when clearly racist white men are running around the capital city looking for black people to lynch.

& it’s taking me some time to process all of this.

Clearly I don’t feel myself to be personally racist. Who does? Even the white men running around London looking for people to lynch probably don’t describe themselves as racist. They probably call themselves “patriots” or some other co-opted word.

As a white person, immensely privileged when living in a predominantly white country, I don’t think that I get to decide for myself whether I’m racist or not. I can decide to try not to be racist, todo my best to be positively fair, open and accepting of other people whatever their ethnicity but I don’t believe that I get to decide whether or not I’m succeeding in not being racist. I don’t get to mark my own scorecard.

Passively doing nothing cannot equate to not being racist.

Not charging around the streets of London looking for people to kick, people to spit on, people to abuse, is a pretty low bar to set as a minimum standard on not being racist. It’s really not good enough.

& it also doesn’t really seem good enough to say that the rioting racists are nothing to do with me, therefore I don’t need to worry, or worse still, you don’t need to worry. We’re not racist so everything is ok. Even as racist white men run around on the streets looking for someone to beat up.

“Yes, but…” seems a peculiarly inadequate response to a racist mob.

And suggesting racism is someone else’s problem because “I’m not racist” is just another way of trying to make the victims responsible for their own abuse and is in itself, intrinsically racist.

Because it just isn’t possible to be a little bit racist, anymore than a woman can be a little bit pregnant: racism is racism. And we are all responsible, responsible for identifying what we’ve done wrong that has allowed this to happen, as well as working out what we can do better to prevent it in the future.