A Call to Humanity: Can We Protect One Another When the State Fails to Protect Us?
Today, I am feeling reflective.
Could be, that Sunday-night back-to-school vibe: summer holidays (at least in Scotland) are over, and I have started a fantastic new role at the University of Glasgow School of Law this month, which (being a bricks and mortar university, unlike the The Open University Law School) has a much more defined timetable for the academic year.
Could be, I have been project planning my work for the year at Lawmanity and a fellowship project for Atlantic Fellows for Social & Economic Equity (AFSEE), and I’m asking myself questions about what matters to me right now…. and whether this work best reflects those priorities.
Putting optimism to the test
Might also be, a few recent items in the news have hit me harder than I expected:
- the sudden and unwelcome surge of racist rioting and Islamophobic attacks across the UK, including in Scotland – and the rise of far right and white supremacist organising here in the north
- the continued dehumanisation of Palestinians in Gaza, as we witness the most significant failure of international human rights and humanitarian law since WWII
- the Scottish Government’s announcement this week that they will scrap free bus travel for asylum seekers – a cruel decision at a time when even working families are struggling to afford food, clothing and transport; hard to understand given the policy would have benefitted, literally, the most impoverished people in Scotland.
This week, I see very little reflection, apology or regret in the public narrative on the impact of our words, our deeds, and our policies, for racialised people and those who are visibly Muslim. I also see and hear quite high levels of fear and isolation in racialised and minoritised communities across the UK – not in the press, but in messages and group chats, from friends and colleagues, on my phone.
State failures to protect: If we don’t talk about it, does it go away?
We talk about things that matter, so not facing up (as a society) to the truth that some of us are rightly, justifiably more afraid than others, to leave our house and go about our business, just because of how we look – this is a major issue that, in a better society than this one, should be a concern for all of us.
Just as the Don’t Be That Guy campaign in Scotland has called on men to hold other men in their lives to account for sexual offending, and my teenage girls’ TikTok feeds are full of bystander allies stepping in to stop sexual harassment in public places, we need a public movement with the same focus, resource and credibility, to step in to stop harassment and assault of black and brown people, and Muslim people, in our communities.
It breaks my heart 💔, for example, that a judge in Plymouth, England recently sentenced a young Muslim man to 20 months in prison for throwing four cans at fascist rioters after accepting that they had thrown alcohol at him, whilst “making deeply offensive racial chants,” because, according to the judge, “what you should have done is rise above their obnoxious racism.”
It breaks my heart also 💔because my daughters and I experienced a deeply racist incident this summer, on holiday in Switzerland, and that’s what I forced them to do – I cautioned them not to react, and told them to rise above.
It was the right thing for us to do, but it was not fair that we had to do it.
There should have been other people – ideally, people who are racialised white – to confront and stop these racist behaviours. Punishing the victim of a crime, who the state repeatedly failed to protect, feels like a significant betrayal.
Feminist lawyers have rightly called out the state failure to protect victims of misogynistic crimes, and prosecution of the victims those crimes – see for example Harriet Wistrich‘s report, Women Who Kill: how the state criminalises women we might otherwise be burying and her recent book, Sister-in-Law.
Rebuilding trust, and optimism 🫶🏽
It would be great to see more work across sectors and movements, sharing successful learnings from the feminist and violence against women and girls (VAWG) movements for example, with activists, lawyers and policy makers who are focused on making our society a safer place for racialised people, for Muslims, for disabled people and for LGBT+ people.
After many, many years of thinking about structural inequality and social change, I’ll put my hand up and say it: I don’t know what works, and when something does work, I’m never sure why it worked. But I do also know that nothing changes, if people don’t put their shoulder to the wheel and push.
So, for this week, if you want to do something – I have some suggestions here:
- Please check in 📱 – and keep checking in – with people you know who have experienced racism, or bigotry or some other form of prejudice. Don’t stop doing that. As long as it’s respectful, most people don’t mind being thought of. It means you care – and as long as prejudice is a part of their lives, it’s something that matters to you, too.
- When you think you’ve witnessed racist behaviour or racial harassment, ask yourself: if I swapped the racial roles here, or I swapped gender or age for race, would this behaviour be unacceptable? 🗣️ If so, and you feel safe to do so, please call out or call in that behaviour.
- Expand your horizons. 📚 We can never experience the world as anyone other than us. But we can use our curiosity and our empathy and our imagination to better understand each others’ experiences.
Here are three thoughtful and enjoyable books I’ve read this summer, about real people’s lives, very different to mine:
I would love to hear from you: What books, films, songs or podcasts really helped you to imagine the world as lived by someone else?
What makes you feel safe, and what do you do to make others feel safe?
And I suppose, if there are any takers on a conference or series of papers on state failures to protect victims … feel free to pitch that here too!
First published on LinkedIn on 23 August 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/call-humanity-can-we-protect-one-another-when-state-fails-jen-ang-6ooge/
