THE ability to simply wake up each day, get up, get ready and to put one foot in front of another to walk into your workplace — if you have one — is very underrated.
 
But this is what many black people have to do every day when they know that they are going to have to spend a day in a hostile racist environment.
 
It’s not exactly the sort of liberation politics that many people on the left are necessarily interested in but it is black self-liberation — it is survival.
 
Racists are so very clever these days. It is not like when I was growing up and they never particularly felt the need to conceal their hatred.
 
The racists I came across on an all too frequent basis never felt any difficulty in verbally or physically assaulting you.
 
These days the racists, as my comrade Diane Abbott experienced, not for the first time last week, can speak about you like you don’t exist — because to them, you don’t.
 
There is no point in allowing you to speak because who or what are you to have any sort of valid opinion?
 
Of course, if you do speak up you are often labelled as “uppity” and “not knowing your place,” and, of course, told to shut up.
 
You speak up in the knowledge that there will always be a comeback from these people. They will always find a time and a space to take revenge for the audacity that you have shown in daring to speak.
 
One of the problems is if we as black people are occupying places in prominent public positions or in everyday life that they, the racists, believe should be theirs.
 
Too many simply can’t accept that black people have the ability or the right to be in these places on an equal footing.
 
To be honest there are some people I have come across over my life that if the height of my ambition was to be equal with them then I really have no ambition!
 
It is far too easy to see this as just a kind of “skin game,” or, as many now reduce it too, “identity politics.”
 
I have often been told that as black people we spend far too much time talking or worrying about what is happening to us because of the colour of our skin and not enough about our class exploitation.
 
Thank you! I am very clear about the level of exploitation I face from the ruling class because of my class.
 
But equally, I am absolutely clear about the treatment I experience because of the colour of my skin — including from some people who claim to be on the left politically.
 
This super-exploitation that black people and women experience is all too often overlooked by people who appear more intent on maintaining their own ideological purity or positions of privilege.
 
What happened to Abbott last week was not just about race, it was also because she is a woman. Straight up racism and misogyny.
 
A toxic mixture to many who seem to develop a particular irritation when black women stand up for their rights and simply say they are not prepared to put up with this rubbish any longer.
 
Something that Abbott and other black women on the left have had to endure for far too long.
 
It seems to me that far too much time is spent debating which of the particular exploitations is more important. In my experience, this has often been to the detriment of actually committing to doing anything other than giving a clever speech.
 
But whatever way you cut the political analysis, which, don’t get me wrong, is critically important to helping us to understand what needs to be done, the bottom line is standing up to racism every day is completely exhausting.
 
I remember in one place that I used to work when I felt I was being undermined or marginalised — or both — because of the colour of my skin or because I was being uppity enough to challenge things, I sometimes had to just leave the building and walk around the block to reset myself for the inevitable next episode.
 
Not everyone can do this. In many places you can get the sack for even thinking about doing that so I was fortunate enough to be able to employ that strategy.
 
I have mentioned on these pages before that for many years I have practised meditation.
 
Sometimes I was forced to flee to a quiet corner or unused room in the building to go back to my breath for a few moments to gather myself for the next round.
 
I remember even talking about what I was experiencing to colleagues only to be told that they understood and that it was a widespread problem but nothing could or would be done because of who was involved.
 
The other black people in the workplace knew exactly what the problem was and were often carrying out their own coping measures so they could live to fight another day.
 
Of course, the all too frequent other response is that we are imagining it — which, incidentally, we rarely are. You really do get to know the look or recognise the phrases or treatment from a very early age.
 
Any negative treatment is, apparently, our own fault for not fitting in and constantly allowing that proverbial chip on our shoulder to get in the way of building improved relationships with white folks.
 
If only I had realised this before in my three-score years on the planet! Things would have been far easier for me.
 
The truth is I would be devastated if I really believed I fitted in with some of the things that I have seen and experienced in my life at work and in the movement.
 
More than 50 years ago I ran a daily gauntlet of racism just months after Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech. Little did I know that all these years later I would still be running the gauntlet as would so many others.
 
Standing up to racism is running the gauntlet. And the excuses employed by people about why nothing can be done is, frankly, insulting and infuriating beyond words that I can put together.
 
Watching Abbott stand up 41 times in the House of Commons reminded me of something that someone said to me many years ago about fighting racism.
 
I was once told if you think you have a choice as a black woman or man in fighting against racism you have already lost.
 
As black people, we are not just interested in being black or thinking only about race.
 
There are a great many things that we can talk about and do. We would dearly love the space to be able to talk about and do those things without being undermined at every difficult step.
 
But, unfortunately, there are a great many people who are interested in the colour of our skin or if we are women and relate to us almost entirely on that basis.
 
This leaves us with no alternative but to keep standing up — and many of us will continue to do just that. Whether you like it or not.