Diane Abbott & The Unspoken Rules Of Talking About Race In Britain

When news broke that Diane Abbott had been suspended again by the Labour Party for doubling down on her comments about Irish, Jewish and Traveller communities not experiencing racism, I wasn’t surprised. Frustrated? Sure. But surprised? Not really. We’ve seen this playbook before, especially when it comes to Black women who dare to speak boldly and unapologetically.

For context, in 2023, Abbott wrote in a letter to The Observer that while Irish, Jewish and Traveller communities experience prejudice, they don’t experience racism in the same way as Black people. The backlash she faced was immediate, with the Labour Party suspending her and Keir Starmer labelling her comments as antisemitic. Eventually, she apologised, withdrew her remarks, and was reinstated just in time to stand as a Labour candidate in last year's general election.

Recently, when she was asked if she regretted her comments in a BBC radio interview broadcast two weeks ago, she said, “No, not at all," adding: “Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don't know.” It was these remarks that led to her being suspended once again. Let’s be clear: what Diane Abbott originally said the first time around was poorly worded, lacked the nuance required, and, legally, was false. While Jewish and Traveller communities are not necessarily racial groups, they are ethnic groups, because they have a collective identity based on shared history, culture and ancestral ties. And under UK law — specifically, the Equality Act 2010 — these ethnic groups are protected as “races” to prevent them from becoming subject to discrimination. So, although these communities may not constitute as races, they can still, by law, experience racism — making Diane Abbott’s claim partly wrong, but not wholly wrong.

Ultimately, how we define race can get messy. What really is ‘race’, anyway? Quite frankly, it’s an obsolete term that was created by European scientists during the Enlightenment period to ascribe varying levels of ‘intelligence’ to people of different skin colours. The very concept of race, therefore, is rooted in prejudice towards people of colour. It has always been weaponised against us and used as a tool to justify white supremacy, the myth of Black inferiority, and atrocities such as slavery and colonialism. 

This is why there was a very valid truth in what Diane Abbott said, and the backlash she faced tells us more about Britain’s discomfort with conversations on race than it does about any single line in her letter. After all, if race as a social construct was created to legitimise the dehumanisation and commodification of Black and brown bodies, then is it wholly wrong to claim that people of colour have a monopoly over the experience of racism? 

For Black and brown people, racial prejudice plays out differently because we don’t get to hide the difference in our identity. We can’t take off our skin and put it back on as we please, in the same way a Jewish man can with a kippah or a Romani woman can with a dikhlo headscarf. We have no choice but to wear the very thing that subjects us to hostility and violence everywhere we go.

I’ll never forget when I was refused entry into a club in France while studying abroad. There I was, dressed up, standing outside the club while the white girls I was with were all waved through with ease just minutes earlier. Even after explaining I was with them, and one of them vouched for me, he refused to budge — then let in more white girls after me. Not much needed to be said. His cold glare spoke a thousand words. I wasn’t good enough to enter the club because I was Black. It was humiliating.

That’s what racism rooted in skin colour does. It denies you your humanity before you’ve even opened your mouth. Just by laying their eyes on you, people decide, “You don’t belong here”. The socioeconomic impact of this is striking. According to the McGregor-Smith Review,  people of colour in the UK are less likely to be hired and routinely face hiring discrimination based on their names, racial disparities which cost the UK economy £24 billion annually. We’re also less likely to receive business investment or approval for bank loans. In the criminal justice system, we’re more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested, and Black defendants are 40% more likely to be jailed than white defendants for the same offences. These aren’t just perceptions. They're real-life consequences of institutional racism.

And beyond the material impact is the psychological toll of constantly seeing Black bodies brutalised in headlines, on social media, and in the streets we walk every day. I grew up hearing about my male friends getting roughed up by the police for no reason other than the fact that they were teenage Black boys. We were just kids, but society had already decided we were threats. That feeling of constantly being ‘othered’ simply because of the colour of your skin does something to you. It wears you down.

It’s a feeling that Diane Abbott is all too familiar with. After all, she was the first Black woman ever to be elected to Parliament and has endured constant racist and sexist abuse throughout her political career. According to Amnesty International, she received almost half of all abusive tweets directed at female MPs in the 2017 election. So when she tried to draw a line between racism faced by people of colour and prejudice faced by other minority communities, she was speaking from her lived experience. I got what she meant. So did most people of colour. It’s not that one experience of hostility is worse than another; it’s that they’re not the same. That difference deserves interrogation, not silencing.

But instead of engaging with nuance, Labour weaponised her words – and her apology – against her. It’s hard to ignore the fact that this all happened under the leadership of Keir Starmer — a man who called Black Lives Matter “a moment”, and delivered a speech that claimed that further immigration would risk making the UK an “island of strangers”. 

Besides, Starmer has been unequivocally vocal about denouncing the “stain” of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, promising to “tear out this poison by its roots”. But if suspending Diane Abbott is part of his attempt to do just this, then he is barking up the wrong bush. As Abbott rightly said, any rational, “fair-minded person” should be able to accept that there is a distinction between racism towards people of colour and discrimination towards white people who have their own ethnic subculture.  To pretend this is not the case is simply disingenuous, and, in some way, can be seen as invalidating the reality of racism and its scientific roots.

In a statement reacting to her suspension, Abbott said, “It is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out.” She is probably right. This whole scandal isn’t about standards or values. It’s about punishing a Black woman for making white people uncomfortable, and doing it loudly and unapologetically.

Diane Abbott’s comments warranted some correction, yes. But they also deserve context. Because if we can't have difficult conversations about the clear differences in how racism operates — in how it shows up depending on who you are and what you look like — then we’re not fighting racism. We’re oversimplifying it and protecting white feelings. And that helps no one.