Playing the Race Card

This week's conviction and sentencing of two men for the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 should have been a proud moment for all of those people who have campaigned for justice for almost twenty years. Lawrence's parents, Doreen and Neville, expressed relief that their son's killers had been held to account after a long and flawed police investigation. Many people would be forgiven for thinking that this event represented a watershed point in UK race relations.

Any benefits this case could have produced, however, were dampened by the comments of politicians and writers in the media following the trial. The most notorious of those has been the remarks of Labour MP Diane Abbott, who discouraged a black journalist from questioning the merits of referring to 'one black community'. Abbott said that this 'divide and rule' tactic was something white people love to employ and that black thinkers should not engage with this approach.

For this she has been roundly criticised. Labour leader Ed Miliband forced her to issue an immediate apology for issuing an 'unacceptable' comment. Deputy PM Nick Clegg called her remark 'stupid and crass'. Unsurprisingly, Abbott's political opponents jumped at the chance to brand her a racist and to call for her sacking.

The interesting thing about race is how it makes people forget their principles. Despite general criticism in the mainstream media, Abbott was largely defended by writers on the left. Feminist commentator Laurie Penny, for example, argued that us ordinary folk had failed to understand that Abbott was reflecting on a history of structural racial politics. Samira Shackle of the New Statesman claimed that Abbott was not intending to make a general comment about the attitudes of white people as a whole.

Really? The comment 'white people love playing divide and rule' looks pretty general to me. An intelligent MP, she could have said 'racist white people' or 'oppressive white people'. She didn't. She said 'white people' meaning precisely that: white people in general.

Granted, I may not have an in depth understanding of structural racial politics, but that seems like racism to me.

It's not just the Diane Abbott row that has exposed hypocrisy on the part of certain commentators. Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was quick to use the Lawrence verdicts as a vindication of the actions of his newspaper back in 1997 when it ran a headline accusing a number of men, including Dobson and Norris, of Lawrence's murder. These men had not yet been convicted of any crime relating to Stephen Lawrence and were therefore innocent in the eyes of the law.

Despite this flagrant perversion of the ordinary course of justice, liberal commentators took the chance to forgive the Daily Mail, an otherwise right-wing, xenophobic publication, and support the headline claiming innocent men were murderers. Instead of reserving judgment until the outcome of a fair trial, these commentators just assumed these aggressive, racially intolerant, working class white men were responsible for the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Human rights barrister (someone who should understand the presumption of innocence better than anyone) David Malone, posted a link on twitter to a post claiming the headline amounted to brave and bold journalism. I doubt he would have reacted in the same way had the Mail accused a number of young Muslim men of acts of terrorism. Would that be bold and brave journalism? Or would it be an example of feral media distorting the correct legal process?

I was delighted for the Lawrence family when I saw that these disgusting individuals had been brought to justice for a cowardly, racist murder of an innocent young man. I was equally pleased to read commentary from the likes of Trevor Phillips, someone who has done more for race relations in this country than most, claiming that the UK was now a better, more tolerant country in which to live. The hypocrisy of certain people on this issue though is further evidence that we are still some way from being able to have a sensible discussion on race.