When she spoke on BBC Radio 4 at 9:30am on 17 July, Diane Abbott was a Labour party member of over 40 years, a political veteran and the Mother of the House of Commons. By the evening of the same day, she had been suspended from the party and had been forced into a defensive crouch, saying it “is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out”. Somewhere in the middle, we have an argument about race, racism and hierarchies of racism. Not for the first time in recent years, a debate once relegated to academic sociology departments has rocked British public life.
On the radio, Abbott doubled down on a letter she wrote to the Observer in 2023 which distinguished the racism black people experience from the prejudice suffered by Irish, Jewish and Traveller people, and which previously saw her suspended from the Labour Party. Speaking to James Naughtie, Abbott said: “Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know… I just think that it’s silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism. I don’t know why people would say that.”
Considering her original letter compared racism and anti-Semitism to the “prejudice” faced by redheads, these comments were comparably nuanced. Surely Abbott’s claim is a truism: people’s experience of racism differs depending on their visible difference from whiteness, the prevailing racial identity of our society. But at the same time, carving racism into fiefdoms of oppression will always be counterproductive. And this speaks to a larger problem with these debates: the personal and the political are never more closely entwined than on the subject of race.
As a black woman, I am keenly aware that my outward appearance will affect the way people view me. Whether this is conscious or unconscious, the most conspicuous thing about me is the colour of my skin. Only 4 per cent of people in England and Wales identify as black according to the 2021 census. I exist as a minority within the UK as a whole and that has an impact on my identity, my personality, the decisions I make and the way I move through the world. This is not a question of self-consciousness but material reality. The maternal mortality rate for black women is 2.9 times higher than it is for white women in the UK. Black boys in London are far more likely to be dead before 18 than white boys. This is due to a number of factors, but bias, and stereotyping are part of the same unsettling reality.
But it is always short-sighted to minimise the oppression that other racial groups face, as Abbott cack-handedly did in her letter. Travellers and Jewish people also face challenges unique to their ethnic identities, as well as those that are similar to my own. And even within the black community there are discrepancies in terms of the oppression we experience. Colourism is a particular form of discrimination within racial groups, where people with a lighter skin tone are likely to receive preferential treatment over those with a darker skin tone. The layers of nuance – and the level of care required in unpicking them – are infinite.
Equivocating over which form of racism is worse is unhelpful; what’s more important is acknowledging that these experiences are diverse. The issue with Abbott’s words is that they dilute the debate this argument deserves. Her ill-phrased 131-word letter and her brittle answer to this week’s questioning lack the scope to explore the ideas gestured towards in her initial statement. They ignore the role that displaying cultural and religious identity play in society, such as those identities that are overt due to religious attire. A Hasidic Jew, perhaps even one in Abbott’s constituency of north Hackney, is visibly indentifiable on the street.
But Abbott is also a victim of the same tendencies of erasure. Those who have attacked her disregard her personal experiences with racism, the discrimination and prejudice she faced growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, in 2024, it was reported that Frank Hester, a Conservative Party donor, had said Abbott made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”. Even today, Abbott’s position and prominence put her in the firing line for racist abuse.
Both Abbott’s initial letter and comments on BBC Radio 4 fail to acknowledge the personal experiences of racism that people across ethnic minorities face. But that’s what most of our discussions around racism do. Ethnic minorities are often seen as monoliths rather than individuals. Abbott’s statement simply adopts what is a common posture: to homogenise rather then recognising the push-and-pull factors that influence one’s identity and experiences. Our debate shouldn’t be about what is wrong with Abbott’s statement but rather what is wrong with the way our society perceives, discusses and approaches issues of racism.
There are no winners at the oppression Olympics, only losers. The way people talk, the religious attire they wear, and their socio-economic background all affect the way they experience prejudice – and racism. We can’t remove individuality and culture from the discussion because instances of racism are always both individual and cultural. That goes for Jewish people, Travellers and people of colour. It also goes for Diane Abbott.
[Further reading: Inside Diane Abbott’s war with Labour]
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