The Mythology of Racism will be a regular feature in the Mythologies podcast. This is a subject which has a lot of traction right now but is also accompanied by astonishing ignorance and deadly complacency. This opening episode is about the last time I left Australia and my many friends there. Perhaps this will seem a little off track in regard to the subject but this is the first episode in what, I can assure you, will be a long-running part of this podcast. I am just starting to lay down a marker if you will.
This marker needs to be visible from the start. As a consequence, I will declare my own position here. I am a 65 year old white male who was born in London, England. When I was at my comprehensive school in the 1970s there were no black pupils, we were all white. Recently, I passed by my old school and stopped just to take a look. All the pupils I could see were black.
Now my school was a good school with a certain amount of prestige being that it was run by Jesuits, a priestly order of Catholicism known for centuries for their intellectual prowess. I cannot say that I was not a bit taken aback by seeing the demographic of the pupils but that emotive hesitation said more about myself and the cultural changes I have lived through than the young scholars I was observing.
The feeling was quickly replaced by one of pride in my old school. As a single-sex school, historically based on a religious order of devout educationalists, there had always been a discipline of uniform and standards. High expectation of the students in their academic achievements was always part of that school's reputation. This was why my parents sent me there in 1968. We had a school in the next street to where we lived but my mother insisted that I needed to take three buses and travel across London in a journey taking an hour and a half to go to 'a good school'.
In this memory and looking at the students then kicking a football around the playground as I had done, I realised that what I was looking at was the aspiration of mothers and fathers across north London to send their children to that 'good school'. I felt a kinship with those young boys who were all striving to do their best and make their families proud. At that moment I felt pride in my old school to see that it was keeping up the traditions of giving kids a chance to make the best of themselves. How can that possibly be a bad thing?
The point I am making here is that in the moment of emotive hesitation I was guilty of institutional racism. This is no surprise. I am an old white man who grew up in a racist culture, I cannot expect to simply shrug it off. Institutional racism is insidious and it poisons the mind of the good man as much as it does the bad man. This week, on Talk Sport, a national sports radio station, one of the main commentators claimed that there is no institutional racism in the UK. This has to be challenged and it should not be left to be challenged by black people in my opinion.
As a white man it is not my place or task to stand up for black people and their rights; that voice has to be theirs and as a white man I have to respect their voice and support it being heard but I must not speak for them in some foolish sense of being a 'liberal non-racist'. White men as a demographic are feeling isolated, this is well known. We are feeling that our power and influence is being undermined and that is a dangerous situation for it allows mythologies of racist propaganda to thrive. When they thrive ignorant people then start inciting crowds. This is not the sort of leadership we white men need right now.
We need to take responsibility for our history of institutional racism and confront that in our society. We need to become role models in our white constituency and speak of the damage institutional racism does to us as human beings. We need to educate ourselves and that is how we best serve humanity.
