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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Racism, entitlement and political protest in the age of covid

12/6/2020

10 Comments

 
Recently I was first-world-problems moaning about the deluge of emails from individuals and organisations offering to fill my apparently endless lockdown free time. Now it’s people shouting their condemnation of the murder of George Floyd and either flaunting their antiracist credentials or vowing to do better. My immediate reaction was: does it need to be said? On the one hand, if you’re sitting in my inbox, abhorrence should be your default setting. On the other, white people’s silence could be taken as support for the status quo.

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Because some people genuinely believe that a reasonable response to #BlackLivesMatter is the platitude #AllLivesMatter. Duh? You might just as well say that the sun matters, the sky matters, something beyond comment until it disappears or falls on our heads. Having suffered enough rage to last a lifetime from my government’s mismanagement of pandemic, I tried not to engage with this when I saw it trending earlier this week on Twitter but then a blog post by a friend of a friend made me pause. Do I have a responsibility to understand?

Racism is a virus endemic in white people, a pathology – like original sin in my Catholic childhood – that marks us from birth. It’s a lifetime’s mission to absolve ourselves and some – through more studious attention, or more conducive circumstances – will be more successful than others at becoming symptom-free. The journey is a painful one: we’re blinkered and, as we remove those blinkers, we peel away a layer of skin. But better do it for ourselves as, if others remove it for us, they’ll leave a deeper wound. Little wonder there’s outrage when that moment comes.
 
Racism is a form of projection: of seeing in others a fault that belongs to us. (And we white liberals have corresponding planks in our own eyes: projecting our racism onto racists, as if that lets us off the hook.) Projection is part of being human, but that doesn’t make it moral.


We’re more prone to projecting if we feel less secure in ourselves. If we feel deprived of what we need, we envy – and then despise – those who seem to have it, even if – on average – those people have less. So some white people respond to the attention given to injustice suffered by black communities by bleating about injustice they’ve experienced themselves.


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If you have siblings, or are the parent of siblings, or have observed the rivalries among a group of friends, you’ll know what I mean. The sense of wanting a particular toy more because we can’t bear for a rival to have it than because of its inherent attraction, which is so common in childhood, never completely goes away.
 
The current situation takes me back to being five years old, bereft because, on breaking up for Christmas, the school caretaker gave a selection box – a few chocolate bars packaged in cardboard with a game on the back that was a genuine treat for 60s kids– to a couple of infants who lived in a children’s home. It didn’t occur to me that this gift was small compensation for their lack of family; they had chocolate, I didn’t. (Except that in one hazy memory of this story, I hung back with these kids – who weren’t even my friends – and helped them guzzle it on the walk home.)
 
If I’d been punished for my selfishness back then, would I have behaved better? Probably not, just as adults shamed for screaming #AllLivesMatter are unlikely to change. Not unless their inner grievance is heard. Perhaps they’ve tried and no-one’s listened. Perhaps the hurt is so deeply buried they can’t put it into words. Perhaps that was the situation for five-year-old Anne, as it took me another four decades to realise that my upbringing – albeit several steps up from a children’s home – didn’t give me what I needed to grow up secure.

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As outlined in my post Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction?, my character Steve in Underneath, expresses racist attitudes as a child in an unconscious attempt to plug the hole left by his absent father. Buried envy characterises his friendship with a Sikh boy with whom he often plays when his mother is at work in the doctor’s surgery downstairs. Unable to bear that Jaswinder has a father and he doesn’t, Steve is cruel to his baby sister and denigrates the culture, albeit in safety of his mind (p167):
I hate Jaswinder and his daddy and his granny and the baby that doesn’t do anything except throw her toys away. I hate their smelly greasy food that burns the back of my throat and their gabble-gabble language that doesn’t make sense. I hate the cloth picture of the golden palace above the fireplace, the jewelled cushions and the brightly coloured walls. As for that stupid girls’ game, Home from India, I hate that most in the whole world.
 
Our untold stories deserve an audience but, the thing is, this isn’t the time. As for a child with a brother or sister with a disability, others’ needs have to be prioritised right now. It’s painful, even if there’s a loving parent/friend who can take them aside and tell them they’ll just have to wait. To gently point out that #AllLivesMatter equates to business as usual, which means those who are already privileged get the biggest piece of cake.
 
Privileged? If you’re poor, undereducated and underemployed, you won’t feel particularly privileged that your identity’s wrapped up in white skin. But, hang on, those problems aren’t going to be resolved by denigrating other unfortunates. In fact, justice for people of colour will benefit everyone, because #AllLivesMatter, right? Some people are duped into being used as a pawn of right-wing politicians who will line their own pockets by stoking divisions between different categories of poor.
Those whites who feel diminished by the spotlight on institutional racism might benefit from therapy where their hurt can finally receive the attention it deserves. From political action – either on the streets or at the polling booth – instead of electing governments that widen the gap between rich and poor. By learning the difference between misfortune and injustice: shit happens to all of us, but not everyone lives in constant fear of attack simply for the colour of their skin.
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There can be a fine line between misfortune and injustice, and sometimes that line’s so fuzzy we can’t see where it should be. But I suspect that some proclaiming #AllLivesMatter are making a category error. I may be short on compassion – although I’d call it being boundaried – but when hard-luck stories are dressed up as injustice, especially when they come from middle-class white people acting as if they’re entitled to a bigger share, I bristle.
 
As I wrote last week, I think the British media shifting attention from #BlackLivesMatter last Thursday with a headline about the identification of a suspect for the abduction of a four-year-old from a Portuguese holiday resort thirteen years ago, is part of the problem. Awful as it is, losing a child is a misfortune (although if the parents had been black they’d have been castigated for leaving their children unsupervised); police murder for the crime of being black is unjust.
 
But I ought not to single out one set of parents for drawing on all the resources available to them to fight for their child. It simply demonstrates why we need a fairer system. Will we get one? For the first time in years, I feel hopeful, and proud of my country in a way I haven’t experienced since the magnificent opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

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With my concerns about premature lockdown easing, I was anxious initially when the #BlackLivesMatter protests migrated from the US to the UK. But, although too timid and/or selfish to join them, even in the time of covid, I support those who have took to the streets. Because, while the pandemic is misfortune – albeit one from which right-wing governments have created injustice – we need to wake up to the injustice in the legacy of slavery in the UK.
On Sunday in Bristol, a city that has benefited financially from this shameful history, protesters toppled the statue of slaver Edward Colston and dumped it in the sea! This came after years of debating the wording for a plaque that would more honestly reflect his life. Unfortunately, perhaps unaware of more peaceful attempts to demolish the statue, the leader of the opposition has condemned the method of removal. (Or it could be that a future prime minister can’t get away with supporting lawbreaking.)
 
Well, that cheered me up for a day, until the media – whose primary task is to stir up conflict to boost their audience, not to bring about world peace – rolled out the usual racists. But lovely to watch a couple of smart and articulate women giving him what for.

"The only thing Nigel Farage is an expert on is his backside because every word out of his mouth stinks" I don't hold back as this #WhiteSupremacist spews rubbish

.@KateWilliamsme & I respond to his utter lie that #BlackLivesMatter is Far Left/Marxist to defund Police on #GMB pic.twitter.com/vJr8zVU6kE

— Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@SholaMos1) June 9, 2020

But the story wasn’t over. Protests in Oxford on Tuesday about the statue of Cecil Rhodes were followed by the removal of the statue of Robert Milligan from London’s Docklands by council workers in high viz vests on Wednesday:

Lord Sainsbury, who owns the chain, has been blamed for the removal of the slave trader statue https://t.co/VA0agH5B0v

— Evening Standard (@standardnews) June 10, 2020
I love my country! However, it must be noted that not all detractors are white. Sir Geoff Palmer, the UK’s first black professor, spoke against the removal of these monuments to slavery, arguing instead for a more honest teaching of our history in schools. But can’t we have both? If anyone has walked past these statues with an understanding of what they represent, isn’t it more likely to be black people who are wounded by their continuing acceptance in public places than white people with a painful lesson to learn? If we can have war memorials in almost every town in the country, surely the cities built on slavery could accommodate a slavery museum and/or monument. There are more creative options than the black-and-white choice – and I choose those words deliberately – of leaving them up versus whitewashing history.
 
That’s all well and good, but where does that leave me and my email newsletter? Rightly or wrongly, I’ve decided to keep my politics and rage within the boundaries of Twitter and Annecdotal, and stick to fiction in my author newsletter that’s gone out today. I thought that would mean no reference to current events – as I thought a bland Isn’t it terrible, now let’s talk about my books! – until I realised I could recommend some novels about the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy, and let the authors, and my reviews, do the talking! These are the five I picked:

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a harrowing story of black lives wasted in a brutal reform school in 1960’s Florida, with a surprise ending that packs an emotional punch.
 
On Africa’s Gold Coast in the mid eighteenth century, a woman gives birth to twin daughters. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi follows the fortunes of these two girls and their families across the next six generations to paint a compassionate portrait of black history, both in West Africa and in America, a story of fractured families, intergroup conflict, religion, slavery, the use and abuse of power and the human determination to survive.
 
Esi Edugyan’s Man Booker Prize shortlisted Washington Black, is a page-turning adventure story of a boy’s journey from the brutal sugarcane plantations of Barbados to the icy wastes of the Arctic to London’s first aquarium and the Moroccan desert, embracing science and innovation as well as the horrors of slavery.
 
In The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins, we meet two women damaged by slavery: the eponymous house slave Frannie, tried for murder, and a wealthy white woman, Marguerite, who takes a peripheral interest in the emancipation movement, while her husband argues not for abolition, but reform.
 
In The Evening Road by Laird Hunt, the last in a trilogy of novels exploring US history from a neglected perspective, three spirited women take to the road on a hot day in 1930s America, when a lynching is about to take place.
 
In addition, my newsletter features forthcoming novels from two author subscribers, an extension to the competition to win a signed copy of my next novel, plus, because June is PRIDE month and I have stock going nowhere fast, I’m offering a copy of my debut novel to a friend or relative of three lucky newsletter subscribers. Why not sign up now?

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I began drafting this post on Monday, and now it’s Friday and history’s moved on! Edward Colston has been fished out of Bristol Harbour and Twitter is divided between those who think the #worldsgonemad in pulling outdated comedy shows and those who think the #worldsgonemad in arguing that that matters. As for me, I think I’ve said enough – I reckon this must be my longest blog post ever – and need to resume writing fiction.


But I’ve followed the theme with my response to today’s flash fiction challenge – yesterday’s for my American friends – to write a 99-word story about deep water. I can’t – and shouldn’t – get Colston out of my mind.
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Cargo
 
The body to my right had stopped breathing but the left one still groaned. I tried to comfort him but my words were babble to his ears. Too late, the white man taught me skin speaks stronger than tribe.
 
When they unshackled us, I expected new neighbours, but they hauled me to my feet, strapped a carcass to my back and whipped me up the ladder to the deck. My head span, the boat swayed, sea spray slashed my wounds. Parched, skeletal, unmuscled, I summoned strength to save myself and toss my brothers to deep water. Complicit? Plotting revenge.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Charli Mills
13/6/2020 12:00:39 am

Sometime, as writers, I think we must stir up the rage or grief or other stew of emotions to make a base for the truth we seek in our fiction writing. May this post be a roux for further works, Anne.

You've given me hopeful nibbles a I seek to understand: "... projecting our racism onto racists, as if that lets us off the hook." I'm currently listening to podcasts with Robin DeAngelo while waiting for her out-of-stock book to arrive (White Fragility). She talks about the root of our white defensiveness to racism, just as you've also hit upon "...hard luck stories dressed up as injustice...." It's not if we were socialized into these systems but how. It's greatly discomforting but my white privilege is that I can refuse to see. Black people don't have that privilege.

In the US, we are protesting for major changes in governance. Defund the police. I'm not sure how that translates to the UK. Historically, the US founded its colonial nation on a pillar of slavery that was -- is -- key to our capitalistic economy. It wasn't until the 13th Constitutional Amendment that slavery was abolished. Sort of. A clause in the 13th maintains freedoms from slavery except if a crime is committed. That is the foothold of unjust laws in the US and it hides systemic racism behind the cloak of "law and order." It's why the #BLM movement is focusing and de-militarizing the police (that's what the defunding is about). Tax-payers (protesters) are taking back their precincts. It's really easy for me to not try and understand these complexities because I'm white. I don't have to understand. But I appreciate the dialog among the white race to discover how we are complicit in these systems. It's not easy but it's easier than being black. As you express in your flash.

I hope you will continue to write about these topics in your fiction.

Reply
Anne
13/6/2020 03:59:45 pm

Thanks for reading and supporting this post. And it’s encouraging to know that some of the things I’m saying about racism are endorsed by more scholarly stuff you’re reading.

So slavery is still on the books in the US? I remember reading – in a novel but I can’t remember which one – were in the early decades after abolition people were still enslaved if they’d been convicted of a criminal offence (and of course with a racist jury). Police brutality and racism here too but I don’t think the force was set up with this purpose, though presumably they’d be about protecting the rich from the poor and therefore enforcing unjust laws. But they’re not routinely armed – yet! Maybe this is one of many areas I need to learn more about.

We of course don’t have a constitution but a legacy of imperialism and colonialism. And we have a hereditary head of state albeit only ceremonially. I think that pomp is also part of our problem. Today is some official royal thing – I looked it up, it’s the Queen’s official birthday and the Trooping of the Colour, on the news because they have to do the social distanced version. I think this whole royal family stuff is extremely resistant to change as many people feel about them the way people in the US feel about your flag.

This last couple of days I was getting a bit bogged down as I wasn’t sure where I stood in relation to calls for the removal of other statues – of people whose racism was indirect and perhaps more part of the culture. But this morning I’ve had my fix of the Guardian newspaper – Saturday is the only do we buy the paper copy which is more comfortable for me to read – and a couple of articles that helps clarify my thinking. The first particularly – by Jonathan Freedland – reminded me how much the Right attacks the Left by dividing us and that the focus on specific statues after the first few is a diversion from this government’s massive failures. So yes to taking an historical perspective but only to better understand the present. It also helped me to feel more optimistic about the leader of the opposition refusing to endorse the protests in order to better focus on the current government’s record.

I’m trying to stay informed without feeling so overwhelmed I’m paralysed, and prioritising what I can feed into my fiction. Particularly whether this will inform my next novel while keeping within my own sphere of expertise.

Boris Johnson's polarising statue tweets are pure Trump | Jonathan Freedland https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/12/boris-johnson-statue-tweets-donald-trump-prime-minister-george-floyd-culture-war?CMP=share_btn_tw


As one of Oxford's few black professors, let me tell you why I care about Rhodes | Simukai Chigudu https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/12/oxford-black-professors-cecil-rhodes-british-empire?CMP=share_btn_tw


The Windrush generation deserves justice – not video chats with the home secretary https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/12/windrush-generation-justioce?CMP=share_btn_tw

Reply
Charli Mills
29/7/2020 07:47:48 pm

Add to your fiction list: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Anne
3/8/2020 01:43:18 pm

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi CoatesThanks for that recommendation, Charli. It's one I requested from the publicists last year but it didn't arrive. Checking it out now, I'm wondering about the supernatural element, which reminds me of another novel I read, and dutifully tried to find, but I couldn't. Do you think I'd like it? I might get it anyway when it comes out in paperback – if I remember!

Norah Colvin
13/6/2020 07:25:36 am

You express your thoughts clearly and succinctly, Anne, and help me clarify my own understandings. We have not escaped the protests here either and we are definitely in need of change. I do hope that some positive change is on its way.
Your flash speaks with clarity of the harsh conditions and injustices. What humanity has lost is a tragedy. We have still a long way to go in this journey. Hopefully this is a turning point. If 2020 isn't, I don't know when it might be or what it might take.

Reply
Anne
13/6/2020 04:09:24 pm

Thanks, Norah – it didn’t feel so concise as I rambled on! But glad you found it useful.

I’m wondering now about the psychology of Australia as a colony of Britain founded on two types of injustice: the first the transportation of people from these islands for petty crimes and then the genocide of the native people as in the US. Would it have felt like being the middle child in a family, bullied by the older child and bullying the younger?

This is certainly proving to be an unusual year, but I do feel a thread of hope that we can change for the better.

Reply
Norah Colvin
14/6/2020 11:36:39 am

I hope your thread of hope has enough weight to carry all of us.

Reply
Anne
18/6/2020 06:51:03 pm

Time will tell.

Reply
D. Avery link
17/6/2020 03:32:39 am

This was a good read. As always; lot’s of wisdom and plenty to chew on. Yep, poor people have poverty in common, but racism divides. “Some people are duped into being used as a pawn of right-wing politicians who will line their own pockets by stoking divisions between different categories of poor.” Yep. (It’s worked for hundreds of years)

“When hard-luck stories are dressed up as injustice’… This post summarizes and distills some of the issues and distortions, makes clear why “all lives matter” is categorically and strategically flawed thinking. “In fact, justice for people of colour will benefit everyone, because #AllLivesMatter, right?” First things first.
I quote you rather than comment because you spoke well and I’m still chewing.

I was reminded in reading all this of a book I’d found at the TakeItOrLeaveIt written by a black woman who had lived in France in the 1700s and was raised in an upper class white family. She was raised among and with privilege but grew to realize that she could never have true privilege or opportunity because society’s lens would always be her skin color. I feel like I mentioned this book to you and I think I mailed it to Charli M. Had no idea it was timely, or rather it has always been timely, which is why it was reprinted. Timely in that her situation then, while unique, reveals circumstances of that time and place that have not changed, that reflect my country in present time. Like your flash.

Your flash is an encapsulated history. The character’s first realization that color trumps tribe (yes, trumps)- welcome to America. (Reminds me of the link regarding the reasoning behind the term Indian by many tribal groups in North America, shared in HRR’s recent column at the Ranch. But all folks are tribal - your post speaks of that too, that constant compare/contrast, and boy don’t visuals and labels help us to keep folks sorted; again, if the common cause, the common denominator was matters of equity and economy, if injustice to any was seen as the common enemy to all… ) oops this was about your flash…
And what a powerful and symbolic scene and temporal setting, for while your historical non-fiction shows real shackles, the modern shackles are intangible yet institutionalized racism and dehumanization and contrived poverty systematically enforced. That last sentence… ominous yes, but also the fuel for fear-based racism, but maybe the fear of revenge is an admission of having wronged and needing to be righted.
Oops.
And, finally, if you had WP I could just click a like button or maybe leave you a heart emoji or even a unicorn.
And I have a name in mind for your dog. Hashtag. You can shorten as you see fit, but if you go with one syllable Tag is probably better than Hash. You have gotten a dog by now, right?

Reply
Anne
20/6/2020 06:15:14 pm

Thank you for your thoughtful splurge, and for making the effort – I know it's much easier with WordPress, and perhaps I'm more likely to switch to that for my blog than get a dog, but I do like your name suggestion – but I'd probably pick Hash rather than Tag, but you know having given my dog name you've obviously to 90% of the paw work for me, for which I'm very grateful – all I need to do now is choose a breed, where to get it, were to keep it, remember to buy food, what kind of food, easy!

But seriously, yes, yes, yes! And quoting your words back at you: 'maybe the fear of revenge is an admission of having wronged and needing to be righted' but wouldn't that be a start! I'm hopeful, but then I go to Twitter and see that the latest #nonsense is #BritishLivesMatter – at least you will be exempt from that, except that you had the Big Brother version for ever – and thought I'd tried not to look of course it means British lives of a certain skin tone.

Reply



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