Conclusions made by others

 

Subject: Conclusions made by others.









How in this fractured world today is it that interactions between people get out of hand so quickly and even more tragically, opinions and prejudice take over as we take sides. This morning a snip of a recorded conversation, played out in the streets of an American town slowly got out of hand as the authorities, in this case the police, answering a call from a neighbour, were responding to what the neighbour reported was a unknown black man on the on their neighbours property. The officer doing his job was responding to the call and from what I heard on the voice clip was respectfully asking for the man’s identity and who gave him permission to be there. The man it turned out was from across the road ad was watering the flowers in the garden as he had on a number of occasions. The conversation between the man and the trooper slowly became an issue of rights. The policeman’s right to demand answers and the man’s resentment at being interrogated for doing a good neighbourly act.

Of course this was only the cusp of what was going on in a country split into segments of prejudice, prejudice of all kinds and often motivated by years of a ‘them and us mentality’. Why this relatively innocuous interaction was broadcast on the national airwaves in this country has deeper implications following recently the shooting dead by our police of a young black man in London. Racial overtones immediately drown out rational conversation and we go down the familiar route of perceived oppression by one race of people towards another. Our minds having been soured by incidents such as the one in America concerning the gruesome death of George Floyd, into a cry of ‘institutional racism’ of which there is some but often highly coloured by the local conditions. In this country there are areas which are dangerous to set foot in at night made dangerous by gangs which themselves identify each other by their skin colour. The issue of even handedness when a black person is interrogated by the police, who are mainly white and who on occasions are over officious is a fact of life in that particular environment, they feel scared and outnumbered on the streets in a non white area and resort through fear to overbearing aggression. We all fear for our lives when threatened and because the police, having been hollowed out and cut back in numbers are now very thin on the ground.

The prejudice of racial intolerance is different given the age of the person being engaged in this act of intolerance. People of my age years ago experienced a different street experience in the city, different shops, different dialects, different customs and religious observance. Of course we also experienced many other differences so why, we must ask ourselves  single out the prejudice of race above all other. Intolerance be it political or racial, is a sign of the decay of social justice, something we hold important since without justice society crumbles away. There will be kick back to change, given the circumstances but it’s mainly consensual, depending on the environment, most of us seek alliances not confrontation but there are people who would prize their racial affiliation above much else. Are these people wrong or simply out of tune, is religious affiliation right and racial affiliation wrong and why. When we travel abroad and I don’t mean the overseas hotel experience where foreigners cluster together but in the streets of Kandahar or Timbuktu. Would we expect even handedness there.

This even handiness is patchy where ever you go, from the streets of Bolton and the prostitution of white girls as being lesser and not of the faith to the nimbyism of the middle classes. Intolerance of others is not only a white persons affliction but exists everywhere largely because we fear change and exceptionalism, change which largely hasn’t been negotiated beforehand. Even the word negotiated is loaded since often before negotiations begin, the decision  has been made and ordinary people are simply pressured into conclusions already made by others.