Why did the Stephen Lawrence story catch the public imagination so dramatically? There are countless miscarriages of justice every year, some of them just as serious, which most people have never heard of. Lawrence stuck mainly of course because it was a racial morality tale. Indeed from that day in 1993 when the original racially motivated attack took place, right up to yesterday’s verdict, the Stephen Lawrence story has provided a kind of running commentary on the politics of race in Britain. And I would venture to say that there is something both to celebrate and to regret in that unfolding story.
One obvious thing to celebrate is how long ago 1993 now seems in attitudes to race. Already by the early 1990s Britain was becoming more relaxed about racial difference and overt racism was becoming rarer, though not as rare as it is today. But there were certain places,
Sunder Katwala
David offers a thought-provoking piece.
Yes, the Lawrence case resonates as a racial morality tale.
But the elite metropolitan liberalism versus white working-class frame struggles to accomodate the crucial role of the Mail and Paul Dacre, both practically and symbolically.
1993 does feel a long time ago. In some ways, it did by 1997-9 when the case became prominent in the mainstream.
People didn’t think they lived in a country where a kid would be killed, for kicks, for trying to catch a bus, and being the wrong colour.
In that sense, Mail Middle England both saw the validity of some remaining ‘grievances’ from anti-racist advocates, while also needing to prove this (the murder, then the failure) was not the norm.
Its right to say the area of Eltham was too often ‘anthropologised’ and stereotyped.
I am less sure that the “south london white working-class” captures it.
I lived in Eltham, later, in 1999, and not so far away across the period since. It is suburban, mixed in class terms, quietly more diverse than the 1993 imagery suggests.
You have a good point about the trigger-happy tweet-outrage, both on silly cases (Alan Hansen clumsily saying coloured, non-pejoratively) and probably real ones (Terry).
But the conclusion surely demands that we identify how we would prosecute murderers without stoking a sense of grievance, rather than accepting a sharp trade-off between those two things.
tigrin semoar
There is a tendentious quality to David Goodhart’s commentaries on race. One of his familiar tropes is this “original sin” of mistreatment of Afro-Caribbeans by the English. But there is also the frequent implication in his writings on racial matters that somehow racial rows, as raised by non-whites, are overblown, are hysterical, and that things have greatly improved. Expressions like grievance culture, for which the wikipedia term weasel words seems apt, reveal a certain antipathy to the cause of antiracism. To a white male like Goodhart, it may seem to be a “grievance culture.” To non-whites it may be merely a concerted reluctance to tolerate discrimination. And I find myself wondering how many blacks does Goodhart actually know?
While i would not say that white males should not write about race or race relations, i do say that they should preface their remarks with an admission that it is well nigh impossible to be other than speculative (and optimistic) about how much ordinary, non violent discrimination there is in society and moreover what it feels like to be on the end of it.
So that when Goodhart alludes to the white working class having to “endure lectures about racism from middle class liberals whose lives have not been changed at all.” the irony is too rich.
And it is insensitive to talk of moments of triumph as if this murder and the subsequent trial are nothing but a football match. A measure of closure may be possible but certainly no triumph.