Something that's really hit me and hurt me recently is something else that makes up a triangle of comparisons.
There's a website I go on (Peet's Mustardland, a successor to BBC Archers) where from time to time people make obnoxious generalised comments about Gypsies and Travellers. Like a number of others, I used to work on the basis of reminding people that Gypsies and Travellers fall into recognised racial categories for the purpose of legislation relating to discrimination and hate crime. It took me until very recently to realise that some people aren't generalising because they think they're just referring to people with a particular lifestyle choice, they know perfectly well they're being racist. But leave aside the race bit - and I prefer to talk of 'heritage' not because I object to race, but because being a broader term it can help to communicate better - there's a type of 'othering' that some people do that is the more attractive to them if it's arbitrary, if it's lumping people together.
(Declaration of interest re Travellers - my family on one side were Bargees, right up to my generation . I have a first-degree relative whose motor & butty [barges, narrowboats] were burnt out by arsonists. Prejudice has consequences.)
But I want to take this a step further - class.
I live in a conurbation made up of a cluster of contiuous and nearly-contiguous cities and towns. The contrasts between neighbourhoods can be stark. However, one day when catching a bus to visit someone in an area I hadn't been to for years, I was shocked to realise it had brought out my own, hidden, self-denied class prejudice. The area was white, working class, some social housing and some former social housing. Full of visually stereotypical 'chavs'. But my grandparents on one side had lived on a council estate. Why was it different?
To begin with, I thought I'd become more prejudiced, but then I also reminded myself how with the sale of council housing, the people living in council housing and housing association housing now have a far narrower demographic. A high density of people with problems that we then think of as problem people and then 'other'.
So back a step to Travellers. When I was a child, it was the [land-] Gypsies that came round in the spring and sharpened the garden shears. It was the Gypsies that came and fixed all sorts of stuff. And yes, it was the Gypsies that sold the lucky heather and told your fortunes, but they wouldn't have been doing that if there hadn't been a market for it. But then they became unwanted and the work often dried up. The next thing you know, like those on the council estates, those that hadn't made enough money to settle in a 'nicer' area, not travel in their vans or whatever, were 'othered' like the 'chavs' on the council estates (now largely buy-to-let, often owned by 'slumlords').
So back to Windrush. They came here poor and as immigrants lived in the cheaper areas. Some were successful, but my gut feeling is that a significant proportion (but not all) of those that became professionals would have gone back to Jamaica. However, if you think 'Windrush', do you think professionals? My bet is that those with the most problems are typically those that were already 'othered' by being lower down the social spectrum. Someone in Peet's place expressed surprise that the Windrush problem couldn't have arisen. How come they didn't have passports etc? Therein lies the class divide and/or the money divide. People that can afford to take foreign holidays or that have enough money to invest to want passport-type ID to go with it would have passports.
Food for thought - if you've been reading the stories in the media about Windrush, how many of the cases you've read about aren't working class? Multiway 'othering'.
And disabled? Well a lot of disabled people don't work, so get 'othered' as non-workers, then those that do are more likely to do jobs lower down the pecking order, so get 'othered' for that and so on.
It stunned me when I read a GP writing online that he had a picture of Stephen Hawking on his surgery wall so he could tell patients that if the professor could work, so could they. Growl!
Incidentally, when we criticise others for mentally lumping all people of a group together, it's easy to forget that that's how our brains largely function unless we override it. Take the word 'chair'. What's a chair? What makes it different from a table? Why is an armchair a chair and also a kitchen chair and also a deck chair, but not a swing? Why are a bench and a sofa and a couch not chairs? Why do we need the word for stool (hint - so that we can fill the conceptual gap between 'table' and 'chair', i.e. stool = table you sit on = chair that fits the description of a table).
Right now I feel scared but feel somehow I have to join the fight back and I'm beginning to have a vague sense that what matters is awareness, but also maybe something like the Windrush scandal in terms of 'we have a duty not to do this to them'.
I don't know. I do know that how I am at the moment, I wake crying and feel gloomy about the future, and think and think and think, but that the Windrush scandal shows it's worth fighting over the disability scandal.