Thread by @soniasodha

This is a shockingly bad piece by Neil O’Brien. It conflates legitimate journalism with disgusting racist abuse on Twitter, and that a Black journalist doing her job bears some sort of responsibility for the latter.

https://twitter.com/jessbrammar/status/1359541480726102024

O’Brien reveals an appalling lack of understanding about anti-Black racism and how it manifests here. This is absolutely *not* the point that was being made about Patel trying to silence a Black MP from talking about her experiences of anti-Black racism.

O’Brien makes a common mistake here: he assumes non-white people can never be racist. But there’s eg a long history of anti-Black racism in the East African Asian community. I wrote about this - and why Patel was indeed gaslighting Flo Eshalomi - here.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Also: I hate this line. If you’re a self-described “middle-aged white guy” mocking yourself for your lack of sensitivity to racism (think this is what he is doing?) please try & understand that which you have zero experience of before firing off a piece attacking people of colour