Postmodern Racism and ‘The Voice’: Join the Club

Every commuters nightmare, the London rush hour that I frequently have the benefit of entertaining decided that I would yet again leave the tube station and like so many times before watch in slow motion as my bus departs before me without me on it. Should I walk to my destination and burn off the Nandos from lunchtime? I think not. So like a prisoner awaiting his sentence I stand and wait for the next bus. I usually enjoy people watching - mums, dads, children, students, business men and women, people from all backgrounds and cultures mingle seamlessly going about their daily business. I spot the local Asian-manned stall selling newspapers and chocolate bars and the Johnny 5 within me demands ‘input, input’ and a sugar fix.

Scanning over the newspapers, The Times, The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, I pick The Voice with the headline ‘Under Siege’. Intrigued and in desperate need of ‘input’, I read further: ‘This respectable family has faced constant police harassment, but have never been charged. Is their story commonplace in Britain today?’.

‘That is a Caribbean paper, you sure you want it?’ asks the stall keeper in a thick South Asian accent (Sri Lankan methinks but then how would I know? The only Lankan I know is M.I.A and Apu from The Simpsons).
‘Yes I can read, just because I’m a turban wearing brown man, doesn’t mean I have no interest in the affairs of my fellow ethnic brothers’ I said (in my mind) while I retorted in a rather inquisitive manner – ‘Yes that is fine’.

So with eyes fixated on me and my paper, I scan through the pages of The Voice while the Caribbean lady next to me watches on quizzically. Is it really that weird to see me reading The Voice? Come on. If my mate Winston, a 6ft black man picked up a copy of the Des Pardes (a landmark Punjabi newspaper) I would congratulate him on his choice of broadsheet and his ability to read Punjabi. What a guy.

A mixture of hard hitting stories affecting the black community as well positive messages from the community folk who make up the paper’s readership. The race stories struck a chord with me. For example the following headline: 'Nine year old girl left in tears over park’s ‘n**gger’ gravestone'. What the hell?

A mum in Coventry is angry with her council for allowing a pet cemetery to hold a gravestone with the word ‘nigger’ inscribed on it. The nine year old girl was in tears after the gravestone was seen by her who thought that the stone marked the burial ground of a murdered black person. Who on earth would name their pet nigger? In the early 1900’s they would. The stone was first erected in 1902. Rather shameful that a racist word of the most extreme variety can be left in public view today.

In ‘Student in school protest over ‘racially offensive’ classic novel’, a young lad studying for his GCSE’s walked out of his school protesting that he abhorred the use of the novel ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ because it used the word nigger. Claiming he suffered as a result of the racial negativity the book generated, Tinashe Makunike asked to study an alternative novel that wasn’t racially offensive. Good on the lad for doing what he believed was right. There is no way on earth he should be forced to read or partake in activities that openly cause offence for him or anyone else on the grounds of race. It’s just wrong.

‘You’d have to blind not to see the police are racist’ says Darcus Howe (He’s not mad, just angry… is his one liner). In recent race related stories, senior officers have apparently allowed a "culture of apartheid" where white officers have threatened black colleagues and refused to travel with them in the same vehicles. Asad Saeed was ordered into 'the black van' by a fellow white officer.

Darcus Howe makes reference to Chief Constable of Kent Mike Fuller’s quote: ‘If you are not a member of the club… then you can find yourself excluded’. Fuller, who once contested the title of being the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police as well as being a black man, was overlooked for the vacancy. Howe argues how the police force remains racist with black people continuing to bare the brunt of racial victimisation.

For me, a new type of racism prevails today - Postmodern Racism as I have seen it called. The 21st-century version of old-school racism. Those guilty of practicing this new type of race discrimination are often higher ranking individuals and members of the higher echelons of the policing establishments and according to the BBC ‘know the right sound bites in order to impress the critics’. Sounds like many well educated people I know personally who can fight their way out of any situation. The racist nowadays is a more intelligent, often educated individual. Not the brute-force, violent racist we commonly associate with the latter half of the 20th century. "Race proofing" where postmodern racists do enough to appear as though they are doing something about the problem – hiring a likely black or Asian right hand man and appearing to be all-inclusive yet simultaneously re-enforcing racial victimisation. It’s more deadly and more difficult to see.

I must admit I was shocked and scared into thinking Britain was a racial hotbed after reading The Voice. But the stories within it's pages are real, true and affect many of us. Postmodern racism is also here and it's a clever guise that shrouds blatant racism as it used to be. And it doesn't stop there, whose to say it doesn't exist in institutions other than the police force? Frightening.

The Voice is a great newspaper and I for one thoroughly enjoyed reading it once my blood pressure returned to normal (it was the anger you see). A concentration of race related stories cover the pages and in this way may indicate that the UK has a massive problem with race issues. Most of the cases and stories however are those that do upset but happen nevertheless and often infrequently. Mix this in with the images of Dancehall hotties shaking their booties and positive stories about black achievements and we have a newspaper worthy of applause. Even, Jasmine Dotiwala (from MTV Base) has her own column discussing her latest interviews with music stars and her new pet hate which in this issue was public transport! How ironic – my bus still hadn’t arrived and when it did the driver had the audacity to park up the double decker and read his newspaper for a short while (it wasn't The Voice sadly) before deciding to collect his multic-cultural passengers and take them further on their journies.

Just written by and for Caribbean people eh Mr Tube station shopwala? You were wrong! To join the club, you have to have the right skills, attributes, characteristics and above all a passion to do the right thing. Correct? I'm sure Mike Fuller would agree.

So the join the club that allows entry by merit only, put forward your Voice and all is else becomes secondary.

Source: The Voice [www.voice-online.co.uk]. March 9 – 15 2009.