To tackle racism we must accept it exists
RACISM is wrong and has no place in modern society. That should really be the beginning and end of the column there, job done.
But of course not. Of course it’s more complex than that because, despite black and minority ethnic communities telling their white neighbours and white friends and white colleagues there is a problem in this country, not everyone is willing to listen.
On Friday last week alternative street names appeared in Glasgow city centre – under Buchanan Street a sign had been placed reading George Floyd Street. Ingram Street was labelled Harriet Tubman Street; Wilson Street rebranded Rosa Parks Street and Cochrane Street to Sheku Bayoh Street.
Of course, the impetus for this is the international swelling of Black Lives Matter campaigning, a response to the horrific killing of unarmed black American George Floyd, who died of asphyxiation as a police officer knelt on his neck.
I shared the images on Twitter and the response was, well, mixed. Largely, the response was positive – praise for the bold sign makers. Others were concerned about damage to historic buildings and other again unhappy at matters being taken into hand without official civic approval.
Then there was a change. When a group aligned to a Glasgow football team claimed responsibility for putting up the signs, my Twitter notifications became a mess of fury from supporters of the rival football team who suddenly emerged to rage about the street signs when they had been silent before.
If you are against attempts to address racism because you’re automatically not keen on who’s making those attempts, then maybe you need to rethink your principles.
But the pushback from certain quarters is interesting and I wonder how or if it can be tackled.
Racism is undoubtedly a problem in Scotland and Britain.
If you are black in this country you have a higher chance of living in poverty, being unemployed, being incarcerated.
You are more likely to have been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, both in health terms and financial impact.
As the writer Clare Heughan pointed out in an excellent column at the weekend, only 1.8 per cent of civil servants in Scotland are people of colour. There are only 10 ethnic minority civil servants at the top level.
We live in a city built on money made on the back of slaves. And yet, as a society, we seem to know little about the colonial legacy, despite it being all around us. In a short space of less than a mile in Glasgow’s city centre there are street names and buildings called after five plantation owners.
Glasgow City Council is looking to address this gap in our collective knowledge by funding a research project looking at how the city’s slavery and slave trade history might be incorporated into its culture plan. Glasgow University will raise and spend £20 million as an acknowledgement the institution benefited from the slave trade. These reparations will go to setting up the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research.
The vice-chancellor