Say it with me: This is Britain, and it has an undeniable racism problem

While people scrabble to suggest Saturday’s violent rioting is far from representative of the UK, people of colour have an entirely different impression

Racist Britain is itching to pass the buck. This weekend, the gift of self-absolution came by way of a moment that far-right groups and racism deniers alike immediately began to circulate as soon as it landed on our screens: the swiftly deified image of a black anti-racist protester carrying the full weight of an injured far-right, likely staunch statue defender to “safety”, as that oft-shared caption read.

It’s an undeniably striking image. For those who understand what it’s like to shoulder the load of a lifetime of racial abuse and discrimination, as well as what it’s like to be gaslit when it’s brought to light, it’s heartbreaking to see yet another black person have to do the same, physically, at a protest that was solely intended to intimidate and silence resistance against racism.

For those who are shielded from that reality, either because of their race or unwillingness to empathise, it seems a healing image, not dissimilar to the naive promotion of the photo of a teenage Devonte Hart hugging a police officer at protests in 2014 (the backstory of which we now know is dark, and devastating, as opposed to unifying).

Comments from MPs and some public figures have since suggested the scenes we all saw yesterday were far from representative of the UK, with Labour MP Jess Phillips tweeting (and later deleting) the following: “Remember that violent scenes do not represent our country. Go outside your house, pop to the shops and watch how people actually are.”

Commentator Julia Hartley-Brewer echoed similar thoughts, tweeting:

“A few hundred far-right skinheads don’t represent 66 million people. If they did, the BNP would have elected MPs and today’s protest would be hundreds of thousands strong. It isn’t. And for a very good reason. This country isn’t, by and large, on every metric, a racist country.”

Curiously, the black/indigenous people of colour (BIPOC) I know and know of, seem to have a very different impression.

I was, as I have written about in the past, called the N-word in the playground. It has been shouted at me repeatedly by white men in fast cars as I walked to uni. In previous jobs, colleagues have used it in my presence without a second thought. I have been turned away from restaurants in this country; suffered panic attacks, cried in toilets, raged with people who have endured the same.

That’s the extent of the proof I’m willing to offer at this moment. It is too painful to have to dredge it all up each time someone denies what is in plain sight. There is a wealth of proof out there, from my perspective and millions of others, both residing in the UK and those surviving in its former colonies – you’ve just spent years ignoring it all.

Though the government has taken steps to match the harsh – and arguably coded – language it used to describe Black Lives Matter protests, describing the Cenotaph defenders’ behaviour as “thuggery” too, there’s no denying who and what galvanised the people it is now condemning. Boris Johnson’s bizarre and indignant eight-tweet-long thread defence of his idol, Winston Churchill, on Twitter last week, isn’t as far removed from the arguments the far-right rioters were spouting both at the clashes on Saturday and in the run-up to the event as he’d like to admit.

The initial framing of the clashes, in which parts of the media tripped over itself to avoid using the term “racist” to describe these people, didn’t help either. It led to people such as the Runnymede Trust’s Kimberly McIntosh pointing out that describing the violence as “scuffles” and “counter-protests” only served to diminish the seriousness of what was unfolding.

If this all sounds ugly, that’s because it is. Believe me, no one relishes having to point out the sheer awfulness of racism in the UK as often as we have to. But with such widespread belief that the hatred that encouraged those groups to travel across the country is minute, we have no choice but to speak up. Each time something like this happens, white Britain’s shame of being unearthed as anything other than upstanding overshadows the truth. It has to stop.

If there’s something positive that can come out of this – not by way of attempts to push empty sentiments of “racial harmony” at a time when some people have finally woken up to their anti-racism responsibilities – it should be the realisation that we need to accept what is blatantly before our eyes as indicative of how things work here. Say it with me: This. Is. Britain. And we have an undeniable problem with racism.