Is Britain a racist country?
On the surface, Britain appears to be one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to race relations. But, like how Brexit has had the effect on exposing Britain's dirty laundry for all the world to see, the image that Britain projects to the outside world (and the way it sees itself) is often very different from the reality. You only have to look at the evidence.
Politics in the UK has become consumed with latent (and also overt) prejudice. Britain's governing Conservative Party has become consumed with Islamophobia, where it is widespread at the grassroots level and (used more selectively) at government level. Then there is the "Europhobia" that has become more endemic since the EU referendum; a paranoia that is mainly anti-German in its sentiment and stems from - of course - "the war", where it seems some politicians' prejudice is about not forgiving Germany for killing their fathers.
At the same time, even the party of the opposition has its own "problem" with Anti-Semitism.
More generally, there is evidence of overt and covert racism and prejudice in wider society. There is "unashamed" prejudice shown by the lower end of society, and there is more covert racism within the higher echelons of society. In the latter case, it is a form of prejudice that "dare not speak its name", but everyone understands its real origin.
A survey not long ago discovered that when it comes to employment, BAME applicants in the job market have almost as much chance of getting rejected for a job on the basis of racist stereotyping now as they did fifty years ago. Black people with "funny names", for instance, have to contend with the latent prejudice of their white employers. It seems that far too many managers are still in the "David Brent" mould. In other words, while things might seem to have improved a lot on the surface, underlying prejudice is not hard to uncover.
"This sceptred isle"
The roots of British identity cannot escape from the fact that Britain is an "island nation".
An uncomfortable parallel is found in Japan: a "island nation" that, after the Wall Street Crash, transformed its identity into that of being a militarist power where the native population were led to believe they were innately superior and that, by contrast, people in China were "dogs".
Britain has historically avoided the descent into racist nationalism that has overtaken many other countries at one point or another in their history, but there are uncomfortable signs now that this descent into the moral abyss is close to hand.
Germany and Japan are the historical examples that come to mind most easily, for obvious reasons. Both were countries that became imperial powers fairly late in the game, and this may have created an innate insecurity in the pathology of their rulers. In this way, the hateful racism that made both these nations the worst villains in the Second World War may have also stemmed from an innate insecurity.
Being one of the first empires built on sea power, Britain's evolution as an empire came about through a combination of opportunism, luck and ingenuity. Seen from the other side, this "opportunism and ingenuity" may simply be called a form of dastardly cunning, for no empire came to thrive on good manners alone. But the ability of Britain's white population today to see themselves as somehow "different" is built on the belief that the British Empire was, if anything, a service to mankind and the world as a whole, rather than the exploitative empire that it was.
The racism that still exists in Britain today stems from the belief that British people are innately "better", which invariably leads to the belief that the empire wasn't "colonizing" but "educating" foreign territories. This then explains why so many people believe that the loss of the empire was somehow an injustice to the country. How could a "proud" nation allow its empire to disappear? How could this "sceptred isle" allow itself to be overrun with "colonials"?
It is this innate prejudice that feeds the politics of race hatred, and explains why a significant proportion of the native white population bear such resentment to foreigners. The white working class have had their ignorance and prejudice stoked for decades by a tabloid media that uses hate as a weapon of misdirection. Xenophobia has been used by the tabloid media in Britain to keep the white working class in their place; ignorant and angry. As long as they were angry at someone else (such as "Europe" or "asylum seekers"), they weren't angry at the real cause of their problems: the ever-more-rapacious ruling class.
It takes a great deal of ignorance to believe that the British Empire was a paragon of virtue, but it is astonishing how many people in Britain today (and they are usually white) that still hold this belief as inviolate. The belief that the British Empire was ultimately benevolent in character still permeates through the thinking of the native white population of Britain today. Apart from the white working class holding on to this idea as an article of faith, it also Britain's (white) ruling class that also believe this without question.
This is also linked to the reason why so many people hold Churchill as the greatest Briton in history, both rich and poor.
Not just by today's standards, but even by the standards of his day, Winston Churchill can fairly be called a white supremacist. Race relations have of course moved on considerably since Churchill's day, but even people then considered him a racist.
Churchill's view of the British Empire was that Britain was populated by people who were innately superior, and this was how he explained why Britain ruled over a quarter of the world's population. In that sense, to borrow Hitler's infamous phrase, Britons could well be seen as the "master race".
Churchill was famous for his disregard for the Indian population (Hindus in particular), and he saw Britain's rule over the Indian subcontinent as a moral right; a "moral right" due to the British Empire's superior intellectual, military and organisational might, no doubt.
In this sense, Churchill's view of the British Empire's rule over its colonies was justified through its innate superiority, and had nothing at all to do with the exploitative manner of its administration. The viewpoint Churchill had of the empire (and its self-justification) was transmitted throughout the empire's ruling class, such as through the boarding school system.
By being able to separate and indoctrinate boys (and girls) for years in the moral teachings of the "British philosophy", this instilled in them an innate prejudice in favour of British superiority and the innate inferiority of the colonial populations. In this way, at its kindest, it educated Britain's ruling class to see the colonial populations as "children" in need of guidance; while at its harshest, saw the empire's colonial populations as people bred only for natural servitude, like slaves. If the British Empire's non-white subjects had to be educated, it was only for the wider benefit of the empire.
This is why such deep-rooted prejudice takes generations to remove, and explains why much of the progress that has been made since the end of empire has been superficial: the ugly prejudice still prevalent within the white working class, and the elitist snobbery within the white ruling class, are evidence of that.
"Take Our Country Back"
The toxic legacy of this prejudice from the days of empire has now led to much of Britain's white population today feeling that they are still - in an unmentionable way - the "master race".
This quietly-held sense of superiority, of a population that has somehow been held back from greatness by the actions of foreign powers (the EU) and of a proud homeland "taken over" by foreigners, is the prejudice that runs through Brexit.
The mythology of British exceptionalism has many facets, but the narrative is well-known. As the empire that "won" the war, the fact that the empire was lost in the peace seems to have left an abiding sense of betrayal; many of Britain's white population have been unable to come to terms with being taught to see themselves as superior, but being unable to have anything to materially show for it.
Without an empire, and now seen as just another European country, how can these people demonstrate their "superiority"? The answer was offered in 2016.
And now we are at the point where racism has become unashamed and blatant among the more raucous segments of the population, against both those of BAME heritage and European stock. Fueled by the xenophobic language in the tabloid media, the government itself seems to have been taken in by the nativist atmosphere after the referendum: the "hostile environment" can now in theory affect almost anyone that isn't British, and to almost any British person who isn't white.
This is how Britain (and more exactly, England) has become a kind of social laboratory of white-power experimentation in the Western world. Racial prejudice, while still "officially" sanctioned, has become implicitly acceptable, thanks to Brexit and thanks to the "hostile environment".
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