Caitlin Logan: It should not be hard to call out racist mobs

The irony of using this kind of language, at this moment in time, to shut down criticism from a Muslim woman about the repercussions of anti-immigration rhetoric from politicians, was apparently lost on Balls – a former Labour MP and husband of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – and the three other white people on the panel.

I imagine Sultana is pretty unpopular in Labour circles right now in light of her recent suspension for supporting an SNP amendment to end the two-child limit on benefits, but watching her be badgered and berated for raising these points in the current context was almost surreal.

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Despite all evidence to the contrary, there was clearly still a part of me which expected the media to be able to muster some modicum of appreciation for the impact which witnessing widespread, racist and Islamophobic violence might be having on people of colour.

Or, maybe I just hoped they would have the slightest awareness that it’s perhaps not the best look to invite one woman of colour on to speak about far-right riots with four white people who will proceed to argue that her take on racism is all wrong and have a good old laugh about it.

In reality, there are too many examples to count which reveal that the mere suggestion that a white person’s words or actions might even contribute to racism is more offensive to many than racism itself. This is just the latest example of this, and it’s a fact which has been written all over the media coverage of the riots.

The continual references to “protests” and “demonstrations” long after the destructive, threatening nature of these activities had become clear. The descriptions of people who are turning out in their own communities to stand against this violence as “counter-protestors”.

A BBC reporter using the term “pro-British protest”, when the all-white Britain these rioters are agitating for is one that simply does not exist. The linguistic and mental gymnastics to avoid using the words “racist” and “Islamophobic” to describe the attacks, even as Black, Asian and Muslim people are explicitly singled out.

And perhaps most galling of all is the time and space repeatedly being afforded to the “legitimate concerns” about immigration which have supposedly motivated people to take to the streets to engage in racist chanting, random assaults on people of colour, and set fire to buildings with (predominantly non-white) people inside, as well as cars, a Citizen’s Advice centre, a foodbank, a library.

The striking thing about all of this is the double standard. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was minority groups taking part in these riots, would the mainstream media and commentators be bending over backwards to understand their concerns?

We don’t really need to ask the question, because we have the 2011 riots to refer to, and the answer is an overwhelming “no”.

When the murder of Mark Duggan, a Black man shot by police officers in north London, sparked protests and civil unrest, no sooner had the first signs of violence and destruction of property emerged than the media and political class rushed to condemn, dismiss and ignore any suggestion of righteous anger amongst those communities.

The ease with which any discussion of institutional racism was brushed to the side while racist, anti-Black stereotypes were allowed to flourish was breathtaking.

Fast forward to nine years later when protests and riots in the US arose from the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, and many people across British media and politics happily followed the lead of American celebrities in showing their support by sharing black squares online. One might have thought this signified some semblance of growth or learning but the way that many of these same people are now responding to racist extremism on their own streets puts the lie to that notion.

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Journalists, including the BBC, have adopted the far-right talking point about “two-tier policing” in their questions for politicians, bringing a baseless idea that the police are harsher on white people into the mainstream at a time when countering misinformation is more urgent than ever.

At the moment when far-right racists descended on Southport to wreak havoc and raise alarm in the days following the murder of several young girls, questions were being posed and pondered about what all of this means for “multiculturalism” – a question which is inherently troubling because what, exactly, is the alternative?

To ban expressions of “other” cultures within the UK would first mean defining what the singular “British” culture might look like, and then empowering an authoritarian state to enforce it. An idea which presumably resonates with the people currently doing Nazi salutes in the midst of violent scenes in England, but not one I expect to be casually considered by the mainstream media.

On the BBC on Sunday night, former first minister Humza Yousaf (above) was asked to speak about the riots and the attack on asylum accommodation Rotherham, and the interviewer interrupted to question him about “people who have been saying that they want to be able to express their opposition to immigration, even in the form of protest” and who feel that “by tarring everyone with the same brush, you are simply fuelling the problem”.

There is something incredibly strange and quite disturbing about the fact that people who are appearing on news programmes to represent the position that “racism is bad, actually” are being interrogated as if they were the ones who need to defend themselves right now.

On LBC the other day, listeners were invited to call in if they were considering going to one of the “protests”. Just imagine if such a call-out been made to attendees of the 2011 riots – the details of callers would probably have been handed over to the police.

We needn’t even go back as far as 2011 though, because over the past 10 months we have seen how many politicians and large parts of the media have spoken about the protests in solidarity with Palestinians. The last Conservative government promised to crack down on the protesters with more arrests, while Suella Braverman as home secretary described the protests as “mass extremism”.

Somehow when protests are in support of – instead of in opposition to – people of colour and Muslim people, attempts to empathise or even rationalise are rarely, if ever, made. Yet when white people are flagrantly breaking every law on the books in full view of the world, we must consider the why and how, and agonise over what we could have done to avoid them becoming ever so upset.

For what it’s worth, I do think we should think about why this is happening. I just think that any entertainment of the views of the far-right extremists who have instigated this is entirely the wrong direction to be looking in.

In that terrible GMB segment, one of the points Sultana was making, whilst being angrily talked over, was that Balls had previously written that Labour had allowed too many eastern European migrants into the country. He clearly found it offensive to make a connection between his words and the violence taking place.

I don’t mind risking offence by taking it a step further to say there is a connection between the way he behaved towards Sultana (above) and the riots. Our mainstream media is such that numerous people involved in GMB allowed this scenario to be set up and aired, and no apology has yet been forthcoming about what transpired.

This fact goes a long way to explaining how we have ended up where we are today.

The level of understanding in the British media and political system of institutional racism and unconscious bias is absolutely abysmal.

If you cannot acknowledge these realities and confront them head on, you are absolutely not going to be equipped to prevent the kind of explicit, racist extremism that we now see on the streets. One does not exist without the other, but I’m not sure that’s a conversation the media is ready to have.