(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.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

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

[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.