This week, as my lovely festive treat for you, I'm going to solve racism with religion. You’re welcome.
After some in-depth head-scratching, I’ve had a rethink about racists. I no longer think that every single one of them is a hate-fuelled, repugnant waste of skin. I now think that some are just stone cold idiots who've never really thought about why they believe what they believe. Essentially, they are sheep with swastikas.
Some people have rationalised the indefensible, muttering misquoted old todge from Winston Churchill or dragging out the British Empire as evidence of supremacy; as if a shameful history of glibly striding into other countries to inform the people that their culture is simply not cricket is a good thing. They have analysed their hate and decided that they are right. That is some scary shit right there, ladies and gents.
'Hate is wrong'
Other people, however, just don't have the mental capacity to understand why the hate they learned as a child, passed down from generation to generation, is wrong. They are unable to ask themselves difficult questions about their own beliefs, or consider the creation of their views, and perhaps give words to the rationale, so that the opinion can then be explored and challenged. It’s just a part of their heritage and something that hasn't occurred to them to be anything but true. With that strain of racist, on a good day, there is potential for conversation.
Racists basically believe that they are superior to other people based simply on the amount of pigment in their skin, the language they speak, the traditions, foods, outfits or location in which they happened to be born. I mean, it sounds friggin’ nutzo, because it is. As soon as you ask even a simple question about ideas of racial superiority like, for example, “Why?” the argument flops about in a breathless panic.
In the past few years, racists have become increasingly bold. Comments that used to be conspiratorially hissed behind closed doors are now brazenly slapped on the table as an opinion that has a right to be there. It doesn’t.
Behaviour management
Most people have a relative along the lines of what Peter Kay termed an "Uncle Knobhead" somewhere in the extended family, who over Christmas will share their unwelcome views on race, sex, gender and anything else considered “political correctness gone mad” or a “pendulum swung too far”. Any teacher with an ounce of behaviour management experience who’s unlucky enough to encounter such noise will know that it’s just attention-seeking in its most tedious form, but it’s impossible not to get drawn in. The conversation might start on a genial foot but you know it will soon be crashing into dangerous territory. I’m in the camp that says, “If you don't condemn, you condone," so have had lots of conversations about the big stuff over the years with lots of different people, both in a teaching context and in a personal one.
I've had two such discussions on prejudice recently. One started off as a reply to someone who had made an overtly racist comment, but I accidentally got carried away and launched into an impromptu speech. I told them that I'm not interested in “ists” or “isms” or “phobics” or any of that. Only kindness. Being nice to people, showing compassion, being a person that other people think of as good ‘un isn't restricted by race, colour, language, gender, sexuality or disability, what qualifications or money or job you have or you don't have. Your words and actions are either kind or unkind. That is all. If, for example, you think someone is less than you because they weren't born down the road, then that’s not just being unkind, it’s also being a bit of a dick.
Ditching the big scary R word and making the measurement about being either a kind person or a dick hit home with some. I caught a bloke, who I thought I would never get through to, in an eyebrow-raised nod. It felt like I was watching a mini-epiphany. I’m not religious as such, but I do have faith in kindness, in love, that deep down almost everybody wants to be helpful, to do the right thing. This angle might not change long-held racist beliefs instantly but for some, it certainly provided something to think about.
Challenging racism
The other conversation was slightly more c-versial and, I've got to be honest, it was partially to mess with people’s heads for my own amusement. This is the one I’d urge you to casually bung into the post-turkey convo this Christmas, when Uncle Knobhead starts bleating on about something a bit Brexitty – red rag to a racist bullshitter.
Ask him where Bethlehem is. Go on. Ask him if he thinks Mary and Joseph spoke English. Ask him what colour skin he thinks ‘ickle baby Jesus had. Carry on. Ask him how he sometimes refers to people of that colour when he thinks he can get away with it. Ask him if he would call Jesus that word.
While I have no evidence of Jesus' actual skin colour, given the lack of travel options in them days it would be unlikely that a lad whose mum and step-dad were from Israel would have the complexion of Boris Johnson. Chucking Jesus at a racist while they’re clutching a Bristol cream for Baby God’s birthday do, sets off a party popper of confusion in their brains that’s more entertaining than the Queen’s Speech. Oh, the festive fun you’ll have.
Consider it my gift to you. Merry Christmas.
Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons
