Racism is back on the streets

A ring-pull moment unleashes violence, what can be done?

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Rioters confront police, one wearing a sinister Union Jack mask

Racist violence is back on the streets of Britain. Some say it never went away in the first place. Never mind that we have just had our first brown Prime Minister or that we have the most diverse cabinet in history. Just listen to the chants on the streets, watch a viral video of a lone black or Asian man being kicked to the ground by a gang of white men, or read the graffiti on the sides of hotels housing asylum-seekers who fled the Taliban because they dared to help the British army. Talk to those who feel afraid - most will agree: racist violence is back and it is unacceptable.

The riots on the streets of cities around the UK brings back all too painfully for me the memory of those dark corners of my school yard where I was trapped by bullies throwing insults and punches in my direction, just because my skin colour was different. Now once again, I, along with my friends and family, and all communities of colour, are beginning to think twice before we leave our homes or walk down our streets.

Back when I was just that kid in the playground, I once opened a can of cola that, unbeknown to me, had been shaken vigorously. As I heard the crack of the ring pull, I was immediately drenched by a fountain of black sugary liquid and an eruption of cruel laughter. That humiliating event of my childhood perhaps offers an insight into what is going on in the UK right now: the tragic incident on Hart Road in Southport where three young girls were murdered was the ring-pull moment that has unleashed the bottled-up frustration of disaffected people around the country – a frustration which has been deliberately and openly stirred up through divisive rhetoric over many years.

Cultural Christians are more unsympathetic to asylum-seekers than any other group of immigrants.

It is not only the rioters who are to blame for this wave of violence. We must also hold accountable those who have been shaking the can. Those who have stirred up anti-immigration sentiment for personal gain, spreading lies and misinformation. Those who have tried to win votes and build careers and influence or grab headlines by scapegoating those who have lost everything and sought sanctuary in the UK. Those who have not questioned as we have drained resources out of schools, cut youth services and failed to provide affordable housing or realistic job prospects. Those who have assimilated a hostility towards asylum-seekers.

Sadly, the can has also been shaken by some who call themselves Christians. Recent protesters in London have been heard using anti-Islamic rhetoric alongside their chants that “Christ is King”. A small number of Christian influencers have consistently contributed to the anti-immigration stance and undermined the importance of diversity and multiculturalism. Data from the Faith and Religion thinktank Theos reveals that cultural Christians are more unsympathetic to asylum-seekers than any other group of immigrants. This despite all the incredible amount the church in the UK has done to lead the way in the welcome of new arrivals from Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. More poignantly, the hostility stands in stark contrast to the Christian virtue of hospitality that permeates every book of the Bible, and every moment of Jesus’ life and teaching.

Racism is unacceptable, and there is a part for all of us to play in ensuring that this message is heard loud and clear. For a start we can refuse to turn a blind eye and pretend it is nothing to do with us. We can challenge anti-immigrant rhetoric. We can counter misinformation with truth. We can choose to deescalate violence and defend those who have become targets and clamp down on those who stir up hate. We can show support for all those who are seeking to keep the peace, and we can choose to foster a more inclusive, generous and compassionate society every day with our words and actions.

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Attention

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Digital

19 June 2024

3 min read

When standards fail, what next?

Media’s fragmentation reflects our own shattered attention.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

Seat on an underground train carraige, a passenger holds and reads a newspaper.

Evening Standard headline 2013.

Derek Key, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

News about newspapers is never good news. So, the not wholly unsurprising announcement that London's daily Evening Standard will only be printed weekly comes with sadness. There are fewer commuters and those who are on the tube or overground are making use of the Wi-Fi. Even the paper's editor, Dylan Jones, recently admitted he never reads a print newspaper. These shifts are hardly breaking news anymore, but they do need us to take out our earphones and pay attention.

Earlier this year, as if predicting the newspaper’s daily demise, Lord Hague wrote, 'Even a few years ago you would see, on the London Tube, a high proportion of people reading the Evening Standard, cheek by jowl sharing the commentary on the fortunes of the capital. Today, they sit with headphones on in their fragmented worlds.'

Most of us haven't noticed, because our heads are down staring at our screens, but he's right. Hague argues that we should fight against the plight of local newspapers, but even a recent ‘editorial pivot’ to local London news couldn’t save its daily edition. It's a newspaper known for pivoting a lot over the decades, but this is a step change.

Losing the daily printing of a two-century-old institution is more than the end of an era. Even for someone like me who has lived in London recently, the change in our reading habits that Hague describes is one that is unmistakable. I'm sure I will look wistfully at the empty trays of newspapers, without the obstacle of a newspaper in my face as I descend the steps to the tube.

The people are what makes these institutions: whether it’s the bellowing by the tube at rush hour, or those who write the articles. Journalist Tom Leonard's sepia-toned reflection is that the Standard was 'the closest you could get in the real world to a newspaper in a classic Hollywood film, with reporters and photographers actually rushing out together on stories… and editors actually occasionally saying dramatic things like “hold the front page”.’ But we're losing more than nostalgia, and even more than the life-altering job losses.

At the heart of that liberation wasn't agony-aunt good advice, but the heralding of good news for all people.

We are going through the largest shift in information dissemination since the arrival of the printing press five hundred years ago. They called that the Reformation. What will they call this? The Fragmentation? Or the Liberation? Information is not always illumination, and the new world we are creating is indeed an increasingly fragmented one. There's the threat to democracy, as Hague soberly warns. Never before have we felt the need to hold power to account, yet without the focused resources to do so.

And it's focus itself we're also losing. My scattered senses fling me to the urgent, rather than the important. They take me to ephemera rather than what really matters. Our attention spans drive us to snippets rather than stories, bitesize over background. It could be argued that rather than the power residing in the newspaper editor, the power is now in the hands of the person holding their phone, but let's not be naive about the quality and the neutrality of what we consume, and the echo chambers we're locking ourselves in. The power of the daily habit of reading what we will and won't agree with is the power of the printed press. Holding the Bible in your hands, in your own language for the first time was challenging, confronting, but also liberating. At the heart of that liberation wasn't agony-aunt good advice, but the heralding of good news for all people. This good news included repairing of the fragments that broke people apart from each other. It became the must-read.

As we adapt to a new standard in news, perhaps some old news might reveal a new standard.