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| The voices of people of colour need to be heard in |
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| amatullah |
| 01/21/03 at 11:54:46 |
| The voices of people of colour need to be heard in the land Western politicians need to pay serious attention to the heaving fury across the globe and in their own lands Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 20 January 2003 Hot news! For two weeks now I have been the heroine of the right in the United States, including fanatical pro-gun lobbyists and the multitudes who want to nuke Iraq now. More than 700 e-mails from these new fans have arrived since I wrote my column on black-on-black violence, in which I criticised the American radical Michael Moore for his crass remarks about the "cowardly" white passengers on the planes on 11 September. Many of them congratulate me effusively for being onside with the war against terrorism and Iraq, unlike so many of those other "damn ungrateful" blacks and Arabs. Heck, fellas, sorry to disappoint but I am with Mr Moore when it comes to guns and absolutely with the damn anti-war objectors, all those millions of people of colour from the US to Tokyo who will not be conned into supporting Bush and Blair's mendacity and bloodlust. This week alone, there have been loud renunciations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Namibia, Japan, South Africa, Iran, India, and the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement. Western politicians need to pay serious attention to the heaving fury across the globe and in their own lands. In the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century we, people of colour and complicated allegiances, may be devastatingly powerless but we are not dolts. We know exactly what these games are about and also understand there are always some who willingly join the band of the perfidious. None of the empires would have survived without useful collaborators and we have them today Salman Rushdie, who increasingly sounds like George Bush's new speech writer; Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who are making calculations on how many thousands of Iraqi lives it is OK to smash to get that oil; and yes-men, such as Paul Boateng, who can't stop nodding every time he hears his master's voice. And we mustn't forget those self-serving Iraqi exiles and stooge Middle East despots who, like many erstwhile obliging maharajahs of the Raj, will sell out to gain or retain power. The only voices, the only dissidents who are given space and some serious attention tend to be white, glamorous, rich or famous. Yes, we are getting poll results almost daily about general public attitudes and it is heartening that most British people haven't yet allowed themselves to be panicked into accepting that, if we bomb Iraq and kill the already drained people of that country, then wicked Islamist Algerians in Manchester will make poison in their bedsits and murder our policemen. But frighteningly, they do now believe that all asylum-seekers, including the oppressed people of Iraq we so want to save from Saddam, are terrorists sent here by that invisible godfather Bin Laden to destroy our civilisation. But where are the polls that would give us some sense of what non-white Britons think of the war? Spying in mosques and among some communities is becoming more focused. Many, many people I know fear that their phones are tapped and that they are under observation. But there are, or should be, other reasons why these views matter. At least a dozen Labour MP's could become very vulnerable if their Asian and black voters decided to switch to the Liberal Democrats, who are at long last providing real leadership and a place for anti-war voters to go. Where are the BBC, Channel 4, ITN, newspaper and radio reporters, when all across the country these Britons are giving vent to their enormous frustration and engaging in the most illuminating and informed debates on the subject? Where do you go to hear the serious and well-argued views of such people, who are not at all anti-Western or anti-American, but who will not surrender to this unjust war? I have been monitoring the main channels for a good two weeks. Besides the unique Dateline London, on BBC News 24, which gives proper time to Arab, African, Indian and Caribbean journalists, and Tariq Ali on Any Questions, and one or two other examples, these people don't matter. (I don't count the set-up confrontations on the Today programme or Newsnight as thoughtful pre-war debates.) If you are black or Asian or have a Third World ancestry, you are deemed to have very low expectations about your rights of participation. We should be happy that we are here and most of us are. What choice do we have when most of our own countries are such dens of corruption and violence? We are made to understand that the powerful will tolerate us only if we don't act too independently or ask impertinent questions or act up as if we had the same rights as our white co-citizens. For decades white politicians Hattersley, Kaufman, Straw, Peter Shore, Thatcher created community henchmen who delivered (coerced) votes and funds in exchange for undemocratic fiefdoms in Bradford, Southall, Blackburn and other areas. But we are changing; our children even more so. Just when the new empire seems unstoppable, millions of non-white Europeans, Canadians, Americans, Australians and others in the developed world are threatening to break out and claim their inalienable right to question the motives and actions of their state leaders. And it is the war against Iraq which is galvanising us all. What Margaret Thatcher warned of has happened. There is now a new enemy within, fighting against ruthless, selfish Western interests. I am happy to be among them, and I hope you are listening in on this, 007. We are not afraid to say that the US is a rogue state itself; or that the most terrorised people are Iraqis, victims of their own leader, with whom Donald Rumsfeld shook hands happily as he handed him weapons; or that 100,000 Iraqi conscripts died in the Gulf War (148 of our own boys were killed) and that their mothers are still weeping. In the US such dissent is almost blasphemy. Liberal voices are either silenced or are colluding in what John le Carrι accurately calls "the historical madness of the US", but this time is worse than McCarthyism, the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam. I became embroiled in an unseemly row with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, last November when he spoke in London about how he was "offended" that Europeans questioned US policies after 11 September. But as the marches this weekend have shown, disquiet is growing and the brave souls including Hollywood actors, businessmen and academics are standing up to protest. Muslims, hitherto almost paralysed by the new immigration registration schemes that target anyone brown 500 people are in detention already are also starting to take courage. Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society, has called for a joint struggle with African Americans against these violations and the war. The gates of hell are about to open here as much as on the Arab streets and slums of North Africa. This war is based on such unconvincing evidence that even that Boy's Own war writer Max Hastings says he is "deeply uncomfortable", adding weakly that, although it is intellectually unjustifiable, we just have to go with it. Politicised black and Asian Britons will not capitulate so easily on this or our treatment of innocent asylum-seekers. Tony Blair has placed the black man most whites trust Trevor Phillips to lead the Commission for Racial Equality through these tempestuous times. For his sake and ours, I hope he does stand out against the Government on these two issues. I can't honestly say that I believe he will. y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk Also in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown The voices of people of colour need to be heard in the land A generation now believes only thin is beautiful Black-on-black violence: there is a way forward The horrors and comforts of my internet postbag Do Muslims not belong in this Christian Europe? http://argument.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=370911&host=6&dir=173 |
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