On Wednesday Courage to call out the racists is vital
THE passage of time and the changes it brings – in everything from society to technology – becomes ever more obvious the older you get. That’s hardly surprising; the more of life you have lived, the more changes there are to reflect upon.
But sometimes a revelation of how much things have changed can bring you up short in a shocking kind of way. It happened to me last week, on a few days break from work when reading and listening to the news, as an ordinary consumer rather than a professional, which can often make stories far more meaningful.
As I drove up to Henley-onThames for a couple of nights away, the radio kept my wife and I updated, hourly, on the most significant stories of the day. One, which briefly led the bulletin, concerned allegations – vehemently denied – that the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, had ‘assaulted’ a woman at the Conservative party conference some years before by slapping her backside.
The other, which ran for several days and has caused huge and justifiable outrage all across the nation, told the harrowing story of former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq and the racist abuse he suffered while playing for the club.
In both cases, the modern me immediately identified that these were indeed significant and serious stories. Racism, for so long a pernicious blight across many areas of life, is at last being given the serious attention it needs and deserves. And the casual way some men disrespect women and think they can get away with it is finally being called out,
encouraging women to bravely come forward to report allegations.
But what shocked me almost as much as the stories was the realisation that when I started out in journalism, more than 40 years ago, it is hard to imagine that either item would have warranted coverage, let alone led the bulletins and the front pages. I am all too aware, as must be many others of my age, that the kind of cruel and belittling ‘jokes’ aimed at Azeem Rafiq were seen as exactly the ‘banter’ some of the perpetrators claimed them to be. In the same way, women would have been expected to laugh off sexist remarks, innuendo or worse. In neither case could either the victim of racist or sexist abuse have expected to be taken sufficiently seriously that their testimony made the news.
I say this not in any sly attempt to suggest that we’re all making too much of these incidents. Quite the reverse. It is profoundly important that racism is called out and sexual assault investigated and dealt with. But it is alarming to think that, just a relatively short time ago, even mainstream and outwardly respectable comedians would have resorted to the kind of totally unacceptable remarks that echo the comments made to Azeem Rafiq by some of his team-mates. And it is deeply worrying that the bottom-slapping liberties allegedly taken at the Conservative conference would have been considered nothing more than a bit of ‘Carry On’ style fun when it was, of course, anything but for the victims.
One of the reasons we still see this sort of behaviour, even today, is that it was covered up for too long, not called out – even by those who felt uncomfortable as they witnessed it going on – and, crucially, rarely carried as a serious item in news broadcasts and newspaper reports.
The fact that that has changed is just one example of how society has altered for the better in the past few decades and why – as more generations grow up knowing such behaviour is wrong – it will, surely, become less and less prevalent.
Getting older can make one nostalgic for how things used to be. And there is much to mourn in the changes wrought in society, from the break-up of communities, the grim impact of social media on the mental health of those on the receiving end of virtual attacks and the slow erosion of respect across so many areas of life. But when ‘banter’ is called out for the racism that it is and it tops the news bulletins, we know progress is being made.
‘Racism, for too long a pernicious blight on life, is at last getting the attention it deserves’