Ismail Y Syed إسماعيل. ي. سيد Profile picture
Scholar | Columnist | Religion Islamic Law Arabic & Urdu Literature | Ex London banker. RT/Like ≠ endorsement. الحديث والفقه والأدب | اعادة تغريد لايعني التأييد

Apr 25, 2023, 16 tweets

Important THREAD on UK’s Black woman MP @HackneyAbbott’s letter to @theobserver/@guardian and White Britain unleashing opportunistic attacks on the MP.
Buckle up🧵
1/
#DianeAbbott #Racism #Antisemitism #WhiteSupremacy #WhitePrivilege #BlackLivesMatter #HierarchyOfRacism #CRT

White British establishment has been way too racist and harsh towards #DianeAbbott (“DA”) among #BlackWomen—not denying many of their points—compared to others. Issues of DA erasing #GTR or #Holocaust memories or not—not denying the importance of it—is a separate issue than… 2/

…the main topic pointed out in the subject of the letter: White #HierarchyOfRacism that exists to date. Having worked as a London-based banker who was involved with diversity, I’ve seen Black was 9x more, Muslims up to 8x more discriminated at institutional & security levels…3/

…compared with *White* Jews (NOT Mizrahi/Sephardi/Afro-Black Jews), White Irish and those of White GTR background smartly dressed in suits at workplace or client facing roles. Same with law firms, government and judiciary. Same with the pro-White criminal justice system. 4/

#DianeAbbott’s letter’s context—as understood by silent majority (if not all) of #BAME communities—is she is NOT denying White-against-White racism (“WaWR”) from within incl White antisemitism per se that peaked in the pre-postwar era and for a period in post-postwar era,…
5/

… although DA acknowledged WaWR passively which she could’ve better-correctly worded, BUT the main context was and is: in modern postwar era, #racism and violence faced by Black and wider BIPOC/BAME communities in White societies in West & Russia—more so in the 21st century,…6/

…has been terribly heinous as part of the living colonial and #slavery legacies on the non-Whites. Statistically speaking (not the ones carried out by white-dominated agencies or the equality watchdog eg @EHRC that refused to investigate Islamophobia in @Conservatives Party…7/

…yet wasted no time—rightly so—to investigate antisemitism in the Labour Party but per statistics by diverse BAME and White board-led members and BAME academic community), is that Black community is subjected to racism 9 x higher and face racism at institutional & gov levels. 8/

To #BAME, #slavery sufferings in post-18th century era and colonial genocides incl policy-induced slow killings eg 1943 Bengal Famine which killed up to 5M under #Churchill and overall 100million Indians killed within short span of 40 years in living colonial legacy, lives on. 9/

And sadly, those colonial genocides and White Europeans-induced mass killings in non-Europe all are deliberately overshadowed and ignored in favour of white-against-white atrocities in mainland Europe, as the lives and living White colonial legacies don’t count. 10/
#racism #BAME

The real debate should’ve been and the real issue is, does #HierarchyOfRacism exist in modern #Britain and other white settler colonialism-legacy countries? To #BAME/#BIPOC/#Black people, based on living memory and living colonial legacy, it is an absolutely resounding YES. 11/

It is this (#HierarchyOfRacism) that have triggered what many say #WhiteFragility going into an overdrive and to great extent, among WaWR victims an understandable fear of having their victimhood/memories or insecurities undermined. Comparing atrocities doesn’t mean erasure. 12/

But here is an underlying important issue: #race, #ethnicity and #nation are both social and legal constructs, in the nature of evolving and can differ, depending on inter/intra basis of relativeness, underpinned by socio-religio-lingo-geo-legal norms. Read the thread below. 13/

In this sphere, #Mizrahi/#Sephardi/#ArabJews & #BlackJews are included within the larger #BAME/#BIPOC/Black group vis-à-vis White groups (eg #WhiteChristian, #WhiteJew etc) yet #racism can exist even within groups categorised as part of larger groups ie #IntraRacism eg WaWR. 14/

Racist Britain has come out in full display of textbook example of white fragility. Worse, @thetimes’s far right article calling for revival for Anglo-#WhiteSupremacy/White Superiority post-Brexit is deflected by whipping up #DianeAbbot’s letter on #HierarchyOfRacism. 15/
#Racism

Thank you for patience for being with me until now. This is not academic piece hence may lack citations/and or may contain margin of error. As a columnist for a foreign newspaper, my piece will be out soon so do follow me for updates. If you enjoyed reading, pls like & share! 16/

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