Thread by @KojoRTE

THREAD

Let's be real: Institutional racism is when an organisation's policies and actions result in racist and discriminatory outcomes. While organisational heads are influential, this remains true irrespective of who leads it or individual office holders.

So the Labour Party, Conservative and every other party that has been in national government enforcing violent immigration controls is institutionally racist.

Labour, Conservative etc do have an anti-semitism problem and its ubiquity does not make it less problematic.

2/

*interrupted by little people*

So today's #LabourSplit can point to real failings on anti-semitism and Chuka Umunna claims that this flies in the face of the party's record of fighting racism... But what is his record on fighting institutional racism and racist status quo?

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In January 2014, when Cameron was calling for curbs on EU migrants access for benefits. Umunna went further on BBC Question time and called the EU to ban Freedom of Movement for "low skilled" migrants.

4/

theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/j…

Later in 2014, UKIP made a historic achievement of topping the EU Parliamentary elections.

A week later Umunna as shadow Business Secretary, joined with then Culture Secretary Sajid Javid to argue in favour of voters "legitimate concerns"

5/

theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/m…

Chuka here goes at length to describe the anti-immigration sentiment as "not racist" and sock puppets ethnic minority constituents who allegedly raise them frequently with him. (As if racialised people cannot also express racist views). This helped shifted Labour's position.

*Resuming thread*

In 2015, Umunna made a speech at Labour Conf fringe meeting stating as a mixed-race MP it was his duty to condemn immigrants in his constituency for failing to learn English as his dad (an anglophone Nigerian businessman) was able to politicshome.com/news/uk/home-a…

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At Labour Conference 2016, Umunna repeated the same "good" vs "bad" immigrant trope by alleging that Streatham Somali shops were not serving "non-Somalis". Umunna echoed David Cameron's Munich speech, stating a needed "muscular" approach to immigration theguardian.com/politics/2016/…

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Chuka Umunna, the People's Vote champion has no strong principles in opposing institutional racism. Therefore he is not particularly different to most politicians. Liberals can disavow interpersonal prejudice while campaign for more institutional racialised violence.

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This is the state of mainstream anti-racist discourse: be against anti-semitic slurs but defend Israel's Prime Minister anti-semitic policies and practices. Claim to be pro-migration but wish to restrict movement of poor working class immigrants.

We need a structural lens.

10/

Interpersonal abuse is debilitating and needs strong opposition but if we ignore the structural forces of racism as liberals do, we miss where racism comes from. Umunna may have no real antipathy towards Somalis, but he will use it to gain power. This is what racism is for.

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Racism doesn't come from uneducated bigots, it comes from the top to create popular cleavages against "outsiders". Structural racism in its various forms is a key ideology that created the modern global world. To be misinformed about it helps maintain its usefulness.

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Focusing on interpersonal racism to the exclusion of structural racism, organisations can claim anti-racist positions while increasing state racialised violence. A principled anti-racism movement needs to be consistent on opposing it, whether it is Umunna, Javid or Corbyn.

/end