WhatInTheWorld #22: Diane Abbott and meaningless Racial Categorisation

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North has found herself in some hot water for suggesting that white people cannot experience racism, but rather can be victims of prejudice. She makes the distinction that while different types of white people have gone through maltreatment due to their differences, this does not compare to the collective struggle of black people in for example apartheid South Africa or during the transatlantic slave trade. In this episode, I dissect her comments and the outrage that ensued. I delve a little into why she is a victim of semantics. The categories of race are meaningless and have long been exposed to be junk science. Trying to make statements about what forms a race and who therefore can experience racism is essentially why we get incoherent arguments like the ones she made and the ones made in the article she was responding to.