#08 - Why do people say an incident is a result of "white supremacy" when no white people are involved?

Language Matters Memo, a monthly newsletter from Sadia Siddiqui, focused on fostering more progressive and inclusive language.

Sep 21, 2023

Hello and welcome to the September issue of The Language Matters Memo. The focus of this month’s newsletter is a topic I've wanted to write about for a while - it's an exploration of why activists may state an incident is the result of "white supremacy" even when no white people are involved. It's a complex narrative for many people, so I hope to shed some light on this for you.

This month’s guide features suggested wording to use if someone says something homophobic, ageist, ableist, misogynistic or racist in your presence. It can be challenging to speak up ‘in the moment’, but hopefully, this wording helps give you the confidence to disrupt that narrative. Before I get into these topics, I have a lovely podcast recommendation for you.

You must listen to How I Became

This podcast explores the life and career journeys of influential leaders from the world's tech and creative industries. The goal of the conversations is to understand how they became the successes they are today and shed light on how you can follow in their footsteps.

Interview-led business-focused podcasts are not new, but what’s particularly engaging about this relatively new series is the depth of the conversation and the willingness of the guests to be vulnerable about challenging life experiences they’ve faced.

The hosts, Ashley Samuels-McKenzie and Charles Parkinson, make a great duo. Their questioning is open but pretty forensic as they help demystify these leaders' paths to the top of their fields.

The episodes are, on average, over an hour long, and whilst that would usually put me off, the extended discussions help you understand what makes their guests tick and inspire you to use the insights they share to shape your career.

Each of the guests has their own story to tell, but what unites them all is a wish to improve these industries for the better - be that meaningful mental health support for their teams, helping navigate the current cost of living crisis or tangible ways in which we can create greater diversity in the workplace.

Delightfully, each episode concludes with a poem that Samuels-McKenzie has composed during the conversation, which often leaves the guests feeling quite emotional as he poetically sums up their lives to date.

I recommend the following two episodes as a starting point: the conversations with Nishma Robb, Senior Marketing Director at Google and Xavier Rees, UK Group CEO of the comms agency Havas Creative. These were beautiful discussions - the type that I wish I'd heard when coming through the creative industry ranks. Leaders being candid and open about their journeys wasn’t the norm, so it's lovely to listen to people be so open and understand how they have turned their adversities into opportunities.

Although the podcast is pitched at those wanting to make it to a C-Suite level role, regardless of your industry or job title, I think you’ll come away with quite a few nuggets of gold.

You can listen to 'How I Became’ wherever you get your podcasts. Do let me know if you do give the show a listen.

Image copyright: The NewYorker.

Although I’ve tackled this topic on the Language Matters Instagram account previously, the nature of that platform means that the discussions have been quite surface-level. I’m glad, therefore, to have the opportunity to explore it in more detail here and give it the depth and consideration it deserves.

I hope the deconstruction I provide below helps shed light on a phenomenon that may not make sense the first time you encounter it.

Increased representation does not necessarily equal progress:

When Rishi Sunak, the UK’s first Prime Minister of South Asian heritage, was appointed by the Conservative Party, it was held up as an example of just how much progress the UK had made in terms of diversity and inclusion. His appointment and that of Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, meant that two people of colour were at the helm of the most important political offices in the land.

While the mainstream media celebrated the appointments, many South Asians, like myself, were reluctant to do so. For us, Sunak’s appointment was not the progressive victory it was being lauded as. The idea that hardcore racism was no longer a problem in the UK is laughable when you consider the wave of racist hate crimes triggered by the Brexit referendum, a policy Sunak has repeatedly said he was “proud” to support. It’s also confusing to see Sunak support policies such as the Rwanda Project, which would probably have prevented his parents from even settling in the UK. Cleary Sunak and Braverman are answerable to the British public as a whole, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. It’s just hard for those who share their skin tone to stomach that so many of their flagship policies - “Stop the Boats” and Voter ID - disproportionately impact Black and brown communities.

Similar accusations have been pitted against Kamala Harris, the USA's first Vice President of Black and South Asian descent. Again, this cause for celebration is overshadowed by the fact that as the former State Prosecutor in Oakland and later In San Francisco, she was at the helm of districts that enacted overzealous prosecutions that disproportionally impacted young Black men.

All things considered, I understand why people are confused when these political policies are described as acts that contribute to 'white supremacy' when the people primarily responsible for them aren't white.

White supremacy is a system that does not need the presence or participation of white people to sustain it.

Racial hierarchy and the pitting of races against each other is the cornerstone of white supremacy, a system created over 500 years ago to justify enslavement and colonialism.

If we fast forward to today, we see factions within communities of colour who will align themselves with white supremacist ideologies that they think will benefit them by their proximity to the privileges of assumed whiteness.

The most common example of this is one particular ethnicity citing the economic progress of their community compared to other ethnicities as evidence of a meritocratic society. Versus acknowledging that the other community may have been even more disproportionately disadvantaged by society.

I find the term “multiracial whiteness”, coined by the academic Christina Beltran, particularly useful to help unpack this phenomenon. The act whereby some groups typically held in disdain by white supremacists uphold those very systems as they can see the benefits proximity to whiteness brings them.

A seemingly benign example of white supremacy is our society’s beauty standards, with those more closely resembling the Eurocentric ideals of beauty being afforded more access, privileges and success in life. This “beauty bias” may seem surface-level, but when it intersects with someone’s race and social class, you can very quickly see how this would impact their life outcomes and the prosperity of others from their community.

Ok, I still don’t get it!

If there is still an element of confusion in your minds about what these policies and prejudices have to do with white supremacy, I will draw a parallel with the everyday sexism and misogyny women encounter in our society.

Despite being on the receiving end of these behaviours, this is a system that is, on some levels, perpetuated by women's participation. From slut-shaming, to women at the helm of the Pro-Life movement, to mothers telling themselves that some of what Andrew Tate has to say is “good for their sons to hear”, to the former Spanish World Cup Football Coach Luis Rubiales’s mother going on hunger strike in protest over the calls for his resignation. These are all examples of where women have, to varying degrees, participated in the discrimination of other women. Just as we will not be free of the patriarchy until we are all feminists, we will not be free of white supremacy until we are all actively anti-racist and crucially not participating in anti-Blackness.

Okay, let’s talk about the Peckham Black Hair Shop.

I decided to focus this month’s newsletter on this topic after watching the video captured at Peckham Hair & Cosmetics, a Black hair shop based in Peckham, an area located in South East London.

Given the nature of the video, I’m not going to link it here, but for those unfamiliar with the news story, a thirty-something Black woman was assaulted by a South Asian shopkeeper when she attempted to take replacement items from the shop after being denied a refund. The shopkeeper physically restrained her to stop her from leaving, including putting her in a headlock, placing his hands around her throat, and beating her around the head. Another customer filmed the assault, and it soon went viral, leading to organised protests outside the store and calls to boycott Black hair shops owned by South Asians in favour of those that are Black-owned.

I’ve watched the events unfold closely, and I’ve been shocked by members of the South Asian community defending the actions of the shopkeeper and, in these defences, revealing their anti-Blackness and prejudice.

This man was not protecting his business; it was an act of male violence - specifically misogynoir and contempt for his predominantly Black customer base. As the BBC and Daily Mail reported, he has since gone into hiding and expressed “regret” for his actions. The future of his business is also unclear as the protests continue.

As someone who shares his ethnicity, I’ve asked myself whether I would want a business run by South Asians - a marginalised community to fail. Whilst it’s not something I relish - your business should not succeed if it’s based in a community it does not serve with dignity and respect. There is no other conclusion for me.

As a side note, seeing how quickly the far right has moved in to stoke the divisions between the two communities has been really depressing. Communities, let’s remember that they hold in equal disdain. Communities that should be united in a quest for equality.

So, where do we go from here?

Language Matters is focused on inclusivity across the board, but in this case, I’m calling on fellow non-Black people of colour and specifically the South Asian community to amplify the importance of solidarity with Black communities and play our part in disrupting anti-Blackness whenever it rears its head.

This requires examining how aligning ourselves with white supremacist ideals harms all people of colour. When we participate in anti-Blackness, we are complicit and contributing to a system of oppression that hurts us all, and to be liberated from that, we need to work together. That’s the goal I want to instil for anyone who watched that video and thought, “I don’t blame him; she was trying to steal something”.

Sit with why you think that is acceptable behaviour and examine why you’re comfortable with such an act of violence. There’s a reason he felt emboldened to do what he did, and that is the central issue at play here.

What do I do when someone says something problematic?

Speaking up when you’ve heard something problematic can be difficult, especially when a power dynamic is at play. But if we don’t speak up, our silence can be interpreted as not caring or, worse still, agreeing with the statements being made.

Scenario: Someone has told a homophobic/racist/misogynistic/ageist “joke” in your presence.

What not to do:

Laugh
Ignore it
Change the subject without an acknowledgement
Be fobbed off by the “it’s just a joke, lighten up” defence

What to do:

Firstly, Use your body language and facial expressions to signify what was said wasn’t acceptable - frown and show disdain for what’s been said.

Secondly, disrupt the conversation - by using the following suggested wording:

Sorry, I don’t understand that joke. Can you explain it to me? [This usually results in person backtracking.]
That isn’t funny. It’s ageist/ableist/racist/homophobic/etc. Please don’t say something like that again, as it peddles stereotypes, and it isn’t acceptable to say things like that.
I’m saying something because I’ve learnt that it’s inappropriate to make comments like that, so it’s important to me to say something. Please don’t say something like that around me again.

Change the subject once you’ve made your view clear and discussed it. The other person must know that (depending on the severity of what they have said) they can return from it if they apologise properly and understand that it was a problematic transgression.

Do let me know if there are any other difficult conversations you’d like more support on navigating.

The Language Matters Memo