(no subject)

[f4f3]

Welcome to International Blog Against Racism Week!

If you would like to participate, here's what to do:

1. Announce the week in your blog.

2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAR icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAR icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so, or ask oyceter to do so as she has agreed to be the Official Iconmaker of the Revolution, or hop over to her LJ and pick up one of the general-use ones she's put up.

3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc.


Well why not? When I was a little bitty boy, racism in Scotland didn't exist.

Oh, all right, I suppose it must have, and that there were individuals having a hell of a time for being black or brown or what was unashamedly described as yellow (why yellow? not even close) back in the 60's, in some part of Scotland, but in the area of Glasgow I grew up in it wasn't an issue because we were solidly milk-bottle white Scots. Whatever "Scot" means, since we were mostly, actually, Irish immigrants. We'd also brought the quaint Irish custom of religious hatred and intolerance which the Scots exported to Ulster back with us - the divide between Catholic and Protestant was more immediately apparent than any racial divide (we had a girl from Cyprus in my class in primary six. I quite fancied her).

The divide was much more, and much more obviously, between rich and poor - the poor were good, the rich bad. And in Maryhill we were very good indeed.

Am I being misty eyed and nostalgic in remembering Glasgow that way? I'm not sure. I grew up twenty years after WWII ended, but the adults around had participated in a war against fascism, where they fought alongside the soldiers of Empire against our fellow white Europeans. The distinction between good and evil, or them and us, was much more based on actions than appearances. War comics, of course, were a rich mine of stories about Japs, Krauts, and Eyties. But they were also full of stories about Chinks (on our side, more or less, and good) Sikhs (bloody good), Gurkhas (good and crafty too - crafty in a good way, not a Richard III way) and even the odd Yank (a bit late, but basically good once they'd met a few Brits and learned about modesty and fair play - Indians already knew all about modesty and fair play, but generally kept themselves to themselves except in prison camps were they were the only prisoners more stoic than the Brits). Hmm. That was a bit of a digression.

I suppose we were all anti-English, but this was in a generic, undirtected way. There were no English folk around for us to be racist towards. It was a violently homo-phobic culture, too, with "poof" an all purpose insult for anyone displaying a tenedency towards being in touch with their more sensitive side. It was more or less a given that all of the English were poofs, as were all of their passtimes - Rugby, despite physical evidence to the contrary, was poofy. Boys with glasses who liked reading were inevitably poofs, which is one reason I didn't decide to curb my episodes of homicidal violence until I left school - it was far too useful as a defence mechanism, and meant I only got beaten up by groups, never individuals.

I know this is a long ramble, but it's mostly to say that since I grew up, through no merit of my own, in a millieu largely bereft of racism, it comes as even more of a shock and an affront to me when I come across it now. It's a behaviour that diminishes us all.

I've no horror stories of how I've been affected by racism. I haven't even got any tales where I'm an appalled bystander. But I do feel that most effective weapon against racism is the casual assumption that all men are equal (pace, my female friends), and the willingness to expect that assumption from our society in the way it behaves.

So let uas pray that come it may
As come it will for aw that
That sense o worth o'er aw the earth
Shall bear the grie for aw that
For aw that an' aw that
It's comin yet for aw that
That man tae man the world ow'r
Shall brothers be for aw that.

or, and even if it doesn't scan as well...


That person tae person the world ow'r
Shall siblings be for aw that.

Comments

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Like you, I was not at all aware of racism in Scotland when I was growing up (there's a proviso to that below) - but boy, was I aware of sectarianism. I remember one of the first times I was allowed to go to the corner shop for some sweeties, at the age of about 6-7, and a big boy stopped me and asked me aggressively if I was a Protestant or a Cafflic. I had no idea. We lived on the top floor of a tenement overlooking Hampden Park, and most Saturday afternoons we locked the door to the close.

We supported Partick Thistle, with the strange effect that to this day I have problems remembering which denomination is which within Rangers and Celtic. Because their aggressive milk-bottle white religious hatred was identical.

I went to a private Protestant secondary school which had quite a racial mix, and racism was not even on the radar; my husband, who grew up in the West Country, has much stronger memories of casual racism.

On the other hand my Auntie Jean from Partick was extremely racist, and wouldn't buy chocolate from the corner shop ('the Pakis'). Karmic retribution: my dad got married again to my stepmother, who is Ghanaian. She runs an Afro hairdressers on the rough end of the Maryhill Rd., and she gets a whole mixture of reaction, from the swearing of the drunks who weave past (sorry, passers-by, total myth obviously, there are no drunk people in Glasgow), to warm protection.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I decided that the sectarianism was a whole other post - because I grew up in Maryhill I supported Partick Thistle, but because I went to a Catholic school it was generally accepted that I "really" supported Celtic, and was only at Firhill through some accident of circumstance.

Nice to know that there is an Afro hairdressers in Maryhill Road, but I think you're wrong about it being at the rough end - Maryhill Road has no smooth ends. I suppose St George's Cross is better than Ruchill (about the middle, where I was born) and it then gets less rough out towards Summerston, which is no garden spot.

There are no drunk people in Glasgow because Thatcher had them all shot...

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was joking about Maryhill Rd...It's near St George's Cross, next to a pub and a bookie's. Legions of little old drunk men, specially bred in Glasgow, weave from one to the other and then accidentally fall onto her (locked) shop door.

My stepmum is interesting in that her speech rhythms and body language are very, very different from what's expected in Britain or in Europe. Initially it's very disconcerting. Still is at times, which I find kind of personally shameful as a supposed card-carrying liberal. It's a whole plane of Otherness, I think.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Otherness is a good word for it - I'm working with a Bostonian this week, and I'm finding it very hard to mesh with his speech rhythms (which annoys the hell out of me, since I'm usually pretty good at that).

There is still a bit of cognitive dissonance around seeing African norms in Scotland - for a start, we're such a bloody grey country. Everything is low key and concentrated in keeping a small personal space inviolate. Drop someone who's default is openness into that culture, and you have a huge and obvious difference, setting aside skin colour. I think it's only to be expected that your brain jumps the points occasionally.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I think of sectarianism as racism; I could be wrong!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting point - I tend to think that racism must have an element of ethnicity, but your approach might be more valid since once we start logic chopping we go down the path that led to an American acquaintance solemnly assuring me that black Americans could not be racist, since they were the victimes of racism. So much for equal opportunities...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

It is possible to be both victim and perpetrator.

Ethnicity is hard to define; how different do people need to be before it counts? And if racism requires ethnic clear differences, does that mean the Scots and English can't be racist to each other?

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Of course, Mr Hitler knew this with his "certain ratio".

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

That was my stand on the victim.perpetrator thing too.

Scots and English can definitely be racist to each other - as can Scots and Irish, Welsh and Icelandic. The clear difference there is nationality, rather than ethnicity.

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

It is possible to be both victim and perpetrator.

Very true. One of the most shocking incidents of racism I've ever seen was amongst the different groups at the asylum seeker hostel I used to do voluntary work in....

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Lots of West Africans hate Nigerians (in a Scotland/England sort of way, for being arrogant bastards who think they own the world).

And everybody hates... but it's too early for Tom Lehrer.

Can I add some sort of disclaimer to my posts today?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Yup - no posts made today are warrantied against offence caused, where that offence could not be reasonably foreseen by an educated, liberal milk-white person raised in Scotland in the 60's and 70's.

How's that?

[munchkinstein.livejournal.com]

I'd say the difference is that a racist judges the book by its cover. i.e. they see a black person, or an Indian and instantly hate them. Sectarianism has the rather odd thing of, as a rule, everyone looking the same. There being people who will happily go shopping in town and mingle with people that, if they were to see them outside a particular football ground or wearing a particular top, they would attack elsewise.
Or, in the case or Iraq, blowing people up because they are near a particular mosque rather than anything to do with where they actually come from.
Its still all shite (no pun intended, honest) though and I could happily see these sort of people chemically castrated, but that is probably my own -ism.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I think I share your phobia against racists - and religious bigots. I think that's the key word, though: religion is the basis of sectarianism as far as I'm concerned.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think you are painting an extremely rosy view. I have no experience of Glasgow but racism was very real in Bradford when I was a kid. By the 1970s most major English cities were suffering from organised racists aided and abetted by the police. Don't get me going on the British establishment's attitudes to immibration, South Africa or Rhodesia. I wrote about this at somewhat greater length in a discussion a view days ago.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I think it's a matter of where you were - Glasgow didn't have an Asian population on the scale of Bradford or other English cities - the National Front were also almost unknown, and seen as an offshoot of English toryism. I was very aware of the anti-Nazi league by the end of the 70's, (wore the t-shirt, bought the badge, went to some terrible Rock Against Racism gigs), but if we wanted to march we normally had to go to England.

I know there's a tendency to think of Glasgow (and Belfast, as the big-nosed bard of Barking had it) as Just a Northern Industrial Town but that ignores major cultural, political and societal differences.

[deililly.livejournal.com]

I think you would probably be surprised by the way West Central Scotland was and to a certain extent still is. The sectarianism is such an entrenched thing and there is still very few coloured faces so it took quite a long while for the racist attitudes to grow. My mothers family were so unusual in the late 60's here they actually ended up the local newspaper more than once. They were more a curiosity than a target of racism for the most part. I won't say they got no hassle at all but much less than they could have had. It was only when they started getting married it came out really.