Looking out: Racism and fascism: the wall
By Brandon Astor Jones
Many readers of this column will know that from time to time I share this space with readers who have written to me citing their personal views and/or experiences that relate to topics that have been published here. Special thanks to Phyllis Jean Russell of Dorking, Surrey, England, for the following thought provoking contribution.
"I met a young woman recently who told me she [had] left her job [because] she had been racially harassed by some of the staff.
"When she complained, she was not taken seriously by her immediate boss or senior management. As there was no trade union to support her, she had no choice but to leave.
"A black man went to his local police station in London recently to report a theft. He was arrested on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Even after producing his passport and birth certificate proving he is legally entitled to live [in London] he was not freed immediately. [Later] he complained to the police authorities and [was] awarded undisclosed damages in an out-of-court settlement. Not surprisingly, the police did not want any publicity, but fortunately the story got coverage on the national TV evening news.
"These incidents are typical of [the] racism in Britain today.
"Our present Conservative government must be the most right wing in living memory. Although they pay lip service to racial equality, I do wonder how committed they are to actually implementing it despite the Race Relations Act — making it illegal to discriminate on [the] grounds of colour or ethnic origin.
"I believe [that] many British right-wing tabloid newspapers play into peoples' racist views with their reporting of incidents involving racial minorities.
"Unfortunately even the Christian Church in Britain does not have a good track record on racial tolerance; [there are] a few notable exceptions such as the late Canon John Collins and Trevor Huddleston, both priests in the Church of England (which is not noted for its radicalism).
"It was John Pilger, in Distant Voices, who wrote, 'Racism and fascism are indivisible, one feeding off the other'. Let us be on our guard against both."
Phyllis Russell has given us clear and poignant examples that reveal how racism, fascism and sexism are all evil little bricks in the expanding political wall of social and economic exclusion.
We, the excluded, must unite and lay siege to that wall. Information is power. This column is but one of many rungs in the ladders that will be needed to scale that wall. I urge you to keep your letters, along with your view of your world, and ideas coming. Only through our endless support of one another can we hope to ever be able to scale, or better yet, take that wall apart brick by brick.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]