(© Eddie Chambers, Destruction of the National Front, 1979-80)

We don’t wear our racism out loud in the UK, we see it as very uncouth, quite crass in fact, because that would make us American, and we are not America. We prefer more covert techniques like quizzing someone from where they are really from, digging until they satisfy our ‘curiosity.’ There we go, not British. We also demand individuals to leave their racial identities at the proverbial front door, expect them to assimilate into whiteness but exclude them at the office after work drinks. They are ‘different’ to us, you see. We even send out email notices kindly asking staff not to bring in ‘smelly food’ because it offends their colleague’s sensibilities. We are polite with our racism, and this is how we like it.  Subtle so you can’t call us out on it, but enough to make its presence known. Otherwise, that would make us America, and we are not Americans.

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A whitelash describes white rage as a result of racial and social progress, it’s a reaction to whiteness losing its equilibrium as global majority communities gain social and political power. In the last 4 years we have seen the optics of racial progress, national organisations (and then amnesia) advocating anti-racism (a la Black Lives Matters), England’s most ethnically diverse football team to date, we even had a Black Chancellor and a Brown Prime Minister courtesy of the Tories. Vastitudes of racial progress, right?

We have also seen the right-winged media’s diatribe against decolonisation (and trans identities), the rise of racist pundits like Laurence Fox and most recently Nigel Farage’s coveted place in Westminster. The symbolism of racial progression (albeit non-existent) alongside the respectability of racism, was a match waiting to be ignited.  

However, behind the whites working classes are politicians and middleclass armchair racists (who will never riot, it’s too demeaning) whose rhetoric has fuelled their inferiority complex. And behind all of them sits centuries of coloniality and anti-immigrant sentiment, that has manifested itself across 15 years of a hostile environment pervading every aspect of British life. Vicious accounts of police brutality, the dehumanisation of Black school children, the denial of institutional racism via state sponsored reports, revoking a groomed Brown young woman’s citizenship, online harassment of Britain’s Black female MP, state’s complicity in the unlawful deportation of Caribbean peoples, the outsourcing of refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda, Brexit, and now 48 hours of racist rioting. It is violent, it is visceral, it is volatile, however, it is no different to the countless examples that precedes it.

Those of us who live with white racism were not surprised by the weekend’s events, many have waited anxiously for an overt smoke signal. Fascism has come home. ‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming, fascism coming home!’  Forgive the Freudian slip, I meant football. But even then, racism strikes an own goal, especially when the Black players lose.

The full display of white terrorism this past weekend is enough to have well-meaning white liberals in full despair. You are never meant to show the racism, but just have it linger pungently in the air. Enough to make global majority communities sick (quite literally), but not enough to evidence the probable causes of their sickness. This whitelash finally clothed the empire.

In a few weeks’ time, these race riots will be a memory of the distant past. (Did it even happen?) We will all go back to the racism that blames People of Colour, where presence is policed, our speech interrupted, we are followed around, assumed to be the aggressor, require developing, made the diversity champion, denied promotions all whilst remaining under paid. We will go back to the racism that whispers racial epithets with a pursed-lip smile, whilst being gaslight that they meant no harm. We will go back to the racism that feigns social change, whilst being shocked at the ferocity of this weekend’s events. We will go back to the racism that we know, that feels familiar and intimate. We will go back to being quiet. We will go back to… We will go back to being Britain, because this is what makes us British.