Liberalism was born out of conflict, presupposes conflict and devises means of managing conflict.
We can aspire to universal ideals such as 'universalism' but conflict is inevitable.
I have a concrete example that may be relevant to this publication. In 2021 the government published a paper called the 'Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities'. This report challenged what seemed to many of us to be the prevailing view that British society was 'institutionally racist' and argued for a more constructive and optimistic vision for the education of our young people. The response to the report was hostile, one critic dismissed the report as 'historically illiterate' and worse. I don't want to personalise things, but I caricatured this as a tribal conflict, I called the two side 'the Sewellites' and 'the Olusogas'.
It seemed to me and still does that the Olusogas held the winning hand. It seems that within the establishment there is a tendency to be seduced by the more militant side. We can speculate about this. Malcolm X famously said that 'the only thing power respects is power', Machiavelli said 'it's better to be feared than loved'. For their part the Sewellites failed to win over popular support. For me, while I would support the perspective of the Sewellites, as far as I was concerned this was a conflict between two sets of media and academic types, the kind of people who need to know your qualifications, your CV and/or your celebrity status before they will have a conversation with you.
If you were only familiar with black people via the mainstream media, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were all one big happy family. There has been a failure to recognise genuine difference and issues of principle. We can remember the universal support of the media. political and celebrity establishments for black lives matter and the disregard for those of us who were wary or critical of it.
Within the UK we have the institutionalisation of difference, for example the equality act which includes 'Race' as a protected characteristic. Within our public institutions you will find a commitment to 'racial equality'. I know that the Equiano project is uneasy with the use of the term 'Race', you might want to send that message on to the Government and the Civil Service.
Is tribalism then, just diversity that we do not like? While multiculturalism is diversity that we do like?
The UK establishment supports black lives matter, black history month and other black prefixes? So what does 'black' represent today? Is it culture? It can't be, given the cultural diversity within 'blackness'. It seems to resemble 'race', black is our contemporary term for 'negro'. I agree that universalism as a humanistic aim is a good one, I even support it. In reality I wouldn't say it is a lost cause but it's a challenge. Not everyone wants universalism.
Liberalism was born out of conflict, presupposes conflict and devises means of managing conflict.
We can aspire to universal ideals such as 'universalism' but conflict is inevitable.
I have a concrete example that may be relevant to this publication. In 2021 the government published a paper called the 'Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities'. This report challenged what seemed to many of us to be the prevailing view that British society was 'institutionally racist' and argued for a more constructive and optimistic vision for the education of our young people. The response to the report was hostile, one critic dismissed the report as 'historically illiterate' and worse. I don't want to personalise things, but I caricatured this as a tribal conflict, I called the two side 'the Sewellites' and 'the Olusogas'.
It seemed to me and still does that the Olusogas held the winning hand. It seems that within the establishment there is a tendency to be seduced by the more militant side. We can speculate about this. Malcolm X famously said that 'the only thing power respects is power', Machiavelli said 'it's better to be feared than loved'. For their part the Sewellites failed to win over popular support. For me, while I would support the perspective of the Sewellites, as far as I was concerned this was a conflict between two sets of media and academic types, the kind of people who need to know your qualifications, your CV and/or your celebrity status before they will have a conversation with you.
If you were only familiar with black people via the mainstream media, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were all one big happy family. There has been a failure to recognise genuine difference and issues of principle. We can remember the universal support of the media. political and celebrity establishments for black lives matter and the disregard for those of us who were wary or critical of it.
Within the UK we have the institutionalisation of difference, for example the equality act which includes 'Race' as a protected characteristic. Within our public institutions you will find a commitment to 'racial equality'. I know that the Equiano project is uneasy with the use of the term 'Race', you might want to send that message on to the Government and the Civil Service.
Is tribalism then, just diversity that we do not like? While multiculturalism is diversity that we do like?
The UK establishment supports black lives matter, black history month and other black prefixes? So what does 'black' represent today? Is it culture? It can't be, given the cultural diversity within 'blackness'. It seems to resemble 'race', black is our contemporary term for 'negro'. I agree that universalism as a humanistic aim is a good one, I even support it. In reality I wouldn't say it is a lost cause but it's a challenge. Not everyone wants universalism.
Thank you for this simple, wonderful article.
Glad you enjoyed it