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BySunder Katwala, Sunder Katwala

Opinion

In Britain we can build a new ‘us’

One important response to rising hate crime is to positively reinforce our collective British identity

October 25, 2018 14:50
Well-wishers watch Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, pass by after their wedding in 2011 (Photo: Getty Images)
5 min read

Prejudice is a light sleeper. I feel certain that Britain has come a long way on racism when I think back to the playgrounds of the early 1980s, yet nobody looking at rising hate crime after Brexit or Labour’s failures on antisemitism could fail to think that we live in a much more anxious, divided and polarised society than any of us would want.

Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recently described the power of group identity — both to foster hatred and to counter it. “We find identity in groups, and groups identify and divide. They turn a lot of ‘me’s’ into a collective ‘us’, but that ‘us’ is defined in opposition to ‘them’, the people not like ‘us’,” he said.

Look around the world today and the validity of this account seems clear. When we look at America or Britain, Italy or Hungary, the ‘them’ may shift from targeting Mexican migrants, ethnic minorities or refugees. The contemporary focus is often on Muslims, although others once again restoke prejudices against Jews. Yet across countries and continents, and different targets for prejudice, the ‘them and us’ narrative has a common refrain: “There are too many of them” — about numbers. “They are taking our stuff” — about resources, such as jobs or housing. “They aren’t like us and they don’t want to be” — about culture, belonging and identity. And “We aren’t even allowed to talk about it — or they will call us racist”. 

That potent, dangerous appeal to grievance offers an uncomfortable conversation that we may indeed recoil from. But if we do, we risk reinforcing the conspiracy theory that we are not prepared to talk about these difficult issues. We know that we need to do so if we want to root out prejudice, but struggle to work out how to engage without risking legitimising it. So those who want to challenge this account scramble to find a useful starting point.