mmoa_writes

Thursday evening saw me at a 'Representing You Better' event hosted by Sadiq Khan at the House of Commons. He's our local Labour MP who also happens to be the first Muslim to be elected onto the Cabinet. It was quite short but in an hour and half, they packed in four amazing speakers starting off with Dawn Butler the Labour representative for Brent, then Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP for Streatham, Simon Woolley from Operation Black Vote and finally the ever delectable Oona King.

The only thing that left me disappointed was the absence of the Asian community. It was interesting to see that many of the Muslims who attended were of African origin whilst those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi origin - and there are many of them within the constituency, especially in the area closest to Khan's main office ironically enough - were in the vast miniority, not to talk of representatives of the thriving Hindu and Sikh communities.

It's one of the many things that make me envy the American anti-racist movement. There does seem to be a greater divide between the ethnic miniority groups in Britain than in the US. particularly between the black and asian communities. It's strange, because we both get the same benefit from the gains of the anti-racist movement, yet there is less cohesion between the groups as they strive forward. In the case of the event, I suspect it didn't help that all the speakers where of African descent, although that hadn't been mentioned on the invitation and indeed, considering the purpose of the event was to encourage all local ethnic miniority groups to get more politically involved, that's as it should be. Even so, coming from a biased perspective, the dissonance between the main ethnic groups in the UK (even within religious groups, as is often the case) is something that really needs to be worked on.

One thing I also noticed was the subtle religious bias. This wasn't so much from the speakers themselves (actually, I rather liked Dawn's gentle satire of a Church gathering, though choosing to end off with the sexually charged poetry of Angelou was a fitting coup) but from the attendees. Well, it was subtle to begin with, but then, once they realised they were amongst friends, so to speak, all thoughts of intersectionality was cast off to the winds. None of the Muslims batted an eyelid which made me wonder if it's because they're so used to the Christian-bias of the black community of which they are part of. I thought it was a shame none spoke up, seeing as we got to talk of feminism from a black woman's perspective - why not anti-racism from a perspective beyond the conventional religious paradigm?

The religious bias was most evident when King, in her speech, made some references to Gay Pride marches and all the broad smiles that had spread as she'd talked about her progress as an MP just vanished... until she got back to tutting at silly white tories. Oh dear. Again, where is that great meeting, the coming together of the oppressed? I'll tell you: the Pastor and the Iman has run off with them and I wonder if we'll see it again - we rather liked it when it was there.

Apart from that, and the obvious partisan nature of the event (my father, the resident black Tory voter did not leave entirely satisfied, though frankly, that's his own fault...!), it was a lot of fun and very informative (I especially appreciated the revelation that the BNP is not covering it's tracks just because it's gained some twisted legitimacy - it is still as openly vile and racist as ever, and it's EU representatives are a thorough embarrassment considering how progressive Britain is amongst the EU nations in terms of race relations). Got myself frisked before entering the hallowed halls of the world's first... house of commoners I guess, and was photographed like nobody's business, even alongside King and Umunna at one point, though my mobile refuses to send the picture to my email address which is slightly annoying.

At one point they mentioned Diane Abbott would be paying a visit, which would have been awesomeness incarnate. Unfortunately I never caught sight of her, though in retrospect, that's probably a good thing. I would have just embarrassed myself with my unhealthy knowledge of the 'This Week' programme.

EDIT: Doing my daily blog roll and I came upon this wonderful post on Gilroy's opinions concerning the state of black Britain. Funny how these things happen.

Also found this excellent article from the Left Luggage blog. Although it is focusing on class interests, I think it's relevant to all groups within the spectrum of the left, be they class based, racial, religious or other.

I ought to stop editing now because there are a couple of other posts I've been meaning to write but reading about the recent movements of the Nigerian Humanist Society made me want to stand up and dance. Once upon a time, this was the sort of thing that the churches would have also dug their teeth into but with the likes of Akinola running the show those days are long gone. I wonder if any of the traditional religious groups are also taking a stand as for too long, they either haven't spoken out or have been ignored when they do about the malpractices within various new cults. The myth of the 'satanic' cult simply fuels the crazy-eyed evangelicals and attracts the desperate to the congregations of these despicable 'witch-hunting' pastors and the like.