"I'm Not Racist and Also Justified in Being Racist?"

Cognitive dissonance born of misdirected resentment.

(Audio version here)

I have recently been seeing a phenomenon in which Brits, usually on the right, respond to a claim that racism is increasing by indignantly refuting this while also appearing to acknowledge that the statement is pointing at something real, but also that the phenomenon is justifiable. It looks like this:

I blanked out the names of both people here, because my intention is not to focus on the potential racism or otherwise of those two individuals which would require mindreading, but the cognitive dissonance that I think lies beneath this formulation and which is displayed by people with a range of views. Strangely, perhaps, I think its existence gives grounds for optimism. I think it indicates people who have become sympathetic to rhetoric that contains racialised implications but who hold personal values that are antithetical to the ones involved in racism. This is something that can be untangled.

It is increasingly clear that we are seeing an uptick in racist attitudes in the UK. Overtly ethnonationalist sentiment has soared on social media and racial anxieties and tensions are not at all ambiguous in real life. Black and brown friends and acquaintances of mine who are not remotely ‘woke’ or inclined to detect racist “dogwhistles” everywhere have been reporting incidents of hostility which they were not experiencing a year ago. These observations and perceptions are supported by empirical surveys like this one.

These heightened tensions, anxieties and prejudices are closely related to rising concerns about ineffective immigration policies.

Dr Rakib Ehsan

has been addressing this well.

They are also, I would argue, related to the ongoing resentment against the decidedly racist approach to anti-racism taken by the recently dominant Critical Social Justice (woke) movement. Hitting a peak in 2020 at the time of the Black Lives Matter protests and dominated by the ideas of people like Robin DiAngelo and Reni Eddo-Lodge, this impacted workplaces, education, mainstream media and social media with the persistent message that there is something fundamentally wrong with white people, who are all invariably racist, abusive and exploitative. The combination of such unjust, divisive and collectivist identity-politics on the left with the chaotic post-Brexit immigration policies that have come to be known as the “Boriswave” from the Conservatives and the censorious nature of British authorities in deeming criticism of any of this to be racist has resulted in considerable resentment.

The resentment is clear in the two comments above which refer to people being “pushed to their endurance” and finding their voice. The first commenter’s assumption that the Home Secretary’s claim of increasing racism was intended to appease the left, I’d suggest, speaks to the over-identification of racism within left-wing identity politics and consequent devaluation of the concept of racism. When the second commenter refers to a ‘disinterested political class’ (by which I think he means uninterested in the views of citizens), he is almost certainly including the immigration policies established under the Tories in his condemnation.

That Ms. Mahmood is certainly right to identify an increase in racism and yet many social media users on the right have been inclined to regard her statement of it as cynical, politically-motivated and reflecting an indifference to the views of everyday Britons is troubling. Yet, there are also grounds for optimism in the cognitive dissonance of the formulation of the response which appears to deny an increase in racist attitudes and also justify them at the same time. At a time in which an increasing number of people on the far-right appear willing to argue that racism is actually good and find themselves increasingly welcome in mainstream discourse, people who may have overlapping concerns about immigration policies and the anti-white rhetoric of ‘woke,’ but still clearly perceive racism to be bad can be valuable in moving that discourse in a more positive direction. Their moral compass remains liberal even if their rhetoric has been influenced by illiberal narratives.

When the first commenter says that it is not true that racism is increasing in Britain, but that ‘ordinary, decent people’ are finding their voice, he clearly conveys a belief that racists are not ordinary, decent people. I suspect this to be the position of most people using this formulation. They recognise that evaluating people’s worth by their skin colour is both stupid and unethical and do not do so when interacting with individuals of another race in the course of their normal life. They object to being called racist if they criticise CSJ forms of anti-racism or current immigration policies and this has happened so often that they now assume accusations of racism to indicate that someone is making such a criticism rather than genuinely exhibiting prejudice against another person on the grounds of their race.

In my observation, this does frequently lead people taking this stance to respond defensively to identifications of racism and deny that something is racist when, in fact, it is, or be sympathetic to rhetoric which is critical of left-wing identity politics and immigration policies, but is also racist. The tendency of CSJ activists has been to swoop on this and use it as evidence of their position that all such criticisms are motivated by racism, but this is not only false but foolish. It pushes people into a ultimatum where they must choose between wanting not to appear to condone racism and wanting to criticise the CSJ movement and immigration policy. The former wish may have won out for many at the peak of ‘woke’ cancel culture but the latter is surely in the ascendant now.

Humans do not like the experience of cognitive dissonance. When seeking to resolve the cognitive dissonance of having values that hold racism to be stupid and unethical while being sympathetic to criticisms of the CSJ movement and immigration policy which also include racist implications, the simplest way to do this is to stop regarding racism as stupid and unethical. I am very much afraid that this is what has been happening and this is why we are seeing an increase in racism.

A much better, but harder, way to resolve that cognitive dissonance is to consistently separate ideas from people and aim resentment and critique at adherents to the sets of ideas one sees as presenting societal problems rather than demographics defined by immutable characteristics. That is, to avoid falling into the trap of collectivism. This is also the only way to effectively address problems as they really are and at their source. This is the stance of Rakib Ehsan, researcher on migration, in the piece cited above. In it, he points out that 45% of black Brits and 50% of Asian ones also believe immigration is too high. In my time helping people address authoritarian Critical Social Justice problems in their workplace, I also found black and brown Brits to be overrepresented among those wishing to push back allegedly anti-racist policies and training programmes. They were more likely to recognise these as unhelpful to the cause of good race relations and they were clearly right.

Collectivism always fails and those who are angry and resentful of the ways in which the Critical Social Justice movement has assigned collective blame for all manner of egregious character flaws and harmful behaviour to white people and men should be the most aware of this. The temptation to respond to identity-based tribalism with identity-based tribalism only escalates resentment and polarisation while undermining the credibility of criticisms of ideas and policies which really need to be addressed seriously. Two things can be true at once. Those two truths are these:

• Evaluating the worth of one’s fellow human being via their skin colour is stupid and unethical.

• Anger and resentment about the impact of the CSJ movement and ineffective immigration policy and the difficulty of being able to criticise these are warranted and serious critique is needed.

Cognitive dissonance only arises if you believe that to do the latter, you have to stop believing the former. You don’t.

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