Throughout my life, along with most people in western society, I have been taught that racism is bad. That idea is so ingrained that I never question it. Of course it’s bad! It goes without saying. But with the increased fear of violent extremism and terrorist attack I have seen a rise in racist commentary on social media. Often this commentary has been shared by people that I count as friends and know to be good people. We have a tendency to address racism with a label and an assumption that the person espousing it is just a bad person. But this shuts down the debate and simply indulges our feelings of righteousness without even an attempt to understand or change minds. So I have found myself analysing my own opposition to racism and why I feel that way.

I am a white anglo male, and so by a quirk of genetics and history have found myself on the privileged side of this issue. I have only ever lived in white Anglo majority countries and so have never experienced racism directed at me and am unlikely to. So when I am told by the media that me and my loved ones are in danger from extremists, doesn’t it make sense to ban Muslims from entering our countries? Doesn’t it make sense to put the ones that are currently here on a register so that we can monitor them? Yes I know these ideas are racist and will make the lives of those people miserable and possibly put them in danger, but on the balance of risk for me personally, does it makes sense and is it worth it to protect the people that I love? So why am I opposed to racism on such an instinctive level? Am I just a really good person who cares about all the people of the world, while others are just nasty and purely selfish? I find that hard to believe. So I found myself thinking about the history of the issue and the implications of unchecked racism for me, a white Anglo male in a predominantly white Anglo country.

Racism is a form of prejudice, which is defined by my dictionary app as, amongst other things “unreasonable feelings, opinions or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious or national group”. Over many years our culture has evolved to consider such feeling bad, we have laws against acting on such feelings. Why is this so? The answer is because it is better for everyone. While it is true that the recent terrorist attacks that have been perpetrated against the west have been carried out by people identifying as Muslim, this is a single characteristic amongst many characteristics of these people. 30 years ago, most if not all, terrorist attacks carried out in the UK were by Irish Catholics, but it was never true that all Irish people, or all Catholics were terrorists. It’s a characteristic amongst many. And if we use this one characteristic to single out people for special treatment such as refused entry into our country, for monitoring or incarceration we set a precedent. 
From that moment onwards it becomes acceptable to single out a person based on a single characteristic for special treatment, and that’s when it becomes my problem. Because while I’m a white Anglo male, I do fall into some minority groups, as do the people I love, everyone does. Whether it be people with tattoos, short people, tall people, gay or transgender people, atheist people, people that don’t drink coffee, vegetarians, or people that don’t like sport. We are all a minority somehow and as soon as we make it OK to accuse an individual based on a characteristic such as race or religion then we make it acceptable to accuse someone based on any characteristic it takes our fancy to pick. How long before they come for you or your loved ones. 

The recent election has seen Pauline Hanson reenter the Australian senate. Pauline wants to ban Muslim people from entering Australia, as she did with Asian people prior to that. Now let’s look at a scenario where Pauline becomes Prime Minister. Muslim people get banned from entering Australia. Australia will still have problems and so Pauline turns the blame onto any foreigner who is still in the country, and throws them all out. But Australia still has problems because it wasn’t foreigners causing the problems, and so Pauline has to find someone else to blame. If she doesn’t people will blame out leaders. Who’s next? Hitler didn’t stop with the Jews, he rounded up and locked away the polish, the Roma, the homeless, the mentally and physically disabled, the idle, the homosexual, and many others. Eventually, characteristics will get made up as an excuse to target anyone who disagrees or may cause trouble for the person or people in power. 

“Now come on Barry, who’s being paranoid now?” I hear you say. If we ban Muslims from entering the country right now, what is the chance that it will escalate into another holocaust? My answer is, very high! Because we have so many examples from history when this has happened, the holocaust is just one example, and not even a recent one. In fact, it happens more often than not. Why do you think we have the laws that we have to protect us against prejudice? They were not a result of some people sitting around abstractly thinking about what might happen, they were a reaction to what has happened time and time again. Human nature and the nature of people in power means it will most likely happen, without mechanisms to ensure that it doesn’t. 

So my opposition to racism is not a result of me being a super good person who cares about others more than everyone else, my opposition is because I care about myself and my loved ones and I want to protect the very privileged and comfortable lives that we enjoy. To treat all Muslims as terrorists is to remove the safeguards that prevent our countries becoming like the ones that so many refugees are trying to escape! In a country where you can be persecuted due to a characteristic such as race, religion, sexuality or opinion. Unless you are the person in power, you risk being the persecuted. 

The values that our society is built on are not “nice to haves”, they are absolutely essential to our way of life.