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In what context do I mean?
Like these:
Here are three recent examples where fear of being labeled racist might have influenced the handling or reporting of crimes or corruption:
Rotherham Grooming Scandal (1997-2013) – In Rotherham, UK, there was significant delay and inaction by authorities in addressing the grooming and sexual exploitation of young girls, largely due to the perpetrators being of Pakistani descent. The Jay Report from 2014 highlighted that fear of appearing racist slowed down the response to these crimes, allowing them to continue for years with minimal intervention.
Telford Child Sexual Exploitation – Similar to Rotherham, the Telford case involved the sexual abuse of hundreds of children over several decades, with local authorities and police reportedly hesitant to act decisively due to fears of being accused of racism. The victims were primarily white girls, and the perpetrators were predominantly from the British Pakistani community. The council’s reluctance to enforce regulations on taxi drivers, some of whom were involved in the abuse, was noted as an example of this hesitancy.
Grooming Gangs in the UK – There have been multiple instances across the UK where grooming gangs operated with a significant delay in intervention by law enforcement or social services, reportedly due to concerns about racial sensitivity. These cases often involved British Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white girls, and the fear of backlash or being labeled racist has been suggested as a reason for the slow response. General posts on social media platforms like X have highlighted this issue, pointing out how political and law enforcement officials avoided confronting the issue to dodge accusations of racism.
These examples illustrate a pattern where cultural sensitivity and the fear of racial accusations have potentially influenced the speed and effectiveness of institutional responses to serious crimes.
This quote is from Howard Zinn’s article called the Force of Nonviolence which appeared in The Nation in the 1960’s. Identifying one of the precursors to violent action is information useful in arming oneself in a myriad of situations – the process of rationalizing the unjust treatment of ‘those people’ happens in all of us, almost unconsciously most of the time. Hopefully we can arm ourselves against our violent tendencies toward others or at least be aware of the process and move to intercede before we act.
“The human ability to abstract, to create symbols standing for reality, has enabled man to compound his material possessions, to split the atom and orbit the earth. It also enables him to compound his hatreds, and expands his capacity for violence. But while there is no incentive to distort in the scientific process which changes reality to symbol for purposes of manipulation, and back to reality for purposes of realization, there is incentive, in social relations, for distorting the symbols of communication. With man’s use of symbols, the potentiality for hatred and therefore violence is enormously, logarithmically, magnified. And with word-symbols the possibility for distortion is infinite. In fact, distortion is inherent here, for while particles of light are sufficiently similar so we can express the speed of all of them in a useful mathematical equation, human beings are so complex and particular, and their relationships so varied, that no generalized world can do justice to reality.
War is symbolic violence, with all people who happen to reside within the geographical boundaries of a nation-state constituting “the enemy”. Race persecution is symbolic violence directed against all individuals, regardless of their specific characteristics, who can be identified with an abstracted physical type. In the execution chamber, the state puts to death anyone, regardless of individual circumstance, who fits the legal symbol: murderer. The law forcibly deprives of freedom everyone who falls within the symbolic definition of a criminal; sentences are sometimes meted out to individuals, but mostly to dehumanized lawbreakers whose acts match an abstract list of punishments. “
-Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn on War p.14-15.
“Power is not a mistake in which the powerful can be educated, it’s not a misunderstanding, and it’s not a disagreement. Justice is not won by moral argument, or exertion, or individual transformation, and it’s not won by spiritual epiphany – It’s won by taking power away from the powerful and dismantling the institutions.”
– Lierre Keith
“The real world of capitalism is one in which capitalists demand state intervention on their behalf while opposing government intervention on behalf of their employees or the poor. In a broader sense, the state is the guarantor of the capitalist system, providing the framework of laws and protections it needs to exist. Taxpayers fund the state, thereby ensuring capitalism’s viability. Capitalism cannot exist without a host state, just as corporations cannot exist without property laws, state charters, copyrights and patent protections, and a host of other government “interventions.”
— Brian Oliver Sheppard, The Inefficiency of Capitalism
People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.
—Jason Read
It is a new year. Some small sliver of optimism remains –
If you look at the world and say “Yes, there are enough homes for people, yes, there is enough food for people, but if we give it away for free they won’t have earned it and the economy will collapse.” Then you have chosen money (a constructed medium of exchange) over living beings who only want to continue living in peace and safety.
And I have no qualms telling you, that is the wrong choice, and you have been brainwashed by this destructive, exploitative system.
From markusbones on Tumblr.
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