Racism is a horrible prejudice. Its most common form in Britain is that inflicted by white people on people of colour. It has often been combined with colonialism, exploitation and class superiority. For hundreds of years, it was used to justify slavery. The psychological origins of racism are complex: but we could start with insecurity and the wish to push into others aspects of ourselves that we can’t bear, especially powerlessness.
The allegations of racism by cricketer Azeem Rafiq, and the small-minded reactions of his club, Yorkshire, have put the sport under the microscope. In November, Rafiq gave evidence to parliament about “inhuman” racist treatment he had endured in the dressing room. “All I wanted to do,” he said, “was play cricket.” Instead, he was left suicidal.
Given their shared imperial origins, cricket and racism have a long history. In the late 1960s, there was an even more controversial series of events. Basil D’Oliveira, born in South Africa of Indian-Portuguese ancestry, had scored 158 for England against Australia in the fifth Test at the Oval. Two days later, he was left out of the team for the upcoming tour of South Africa. This omission appeared to me to have been made to appease the apartheid regime and to ensure that the tour took place. I seconded a motion of no confidence in the MCC’s handling of the affair and soon became convinced that international sporting events against South African teams selected on a “whites-only” basis should be discontinued. At the time, this was not a popular view in the cricket world.
But I had, and have, more to learn. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I captained a Middlesex team that included several black players—Wayne Daniel, Roland Butcher, Wilf Slack, Norman Cowans, Neil Williams and Dennis Marriott. Most of the time, race seemed irrelevant to me. We were a team, engaged in an activity we loved, energetically arguing with each other, mostly constructively, though the teasing could get nasty. But there were racial issues in the team, as there were in wider society. The atmosphere in the country was toxic. In 1981, the Toxteth race riots took place during the Ashes. Enoch Powell was still a malignant force: “Enoch was right” graffiti was being smeared on walls.
As a captain, pervasive stereotypes complicated my interactions with players. I would sometimes ask a player whether he felt fit enough to play in the next match. We had to make judgments about how realistic he was in relation to his own body. Baseless assumptions that black bowlers were less willing than white bowlers to play through pain put black players under special scrutiny. Occasionally, I felt conflicted. If I were to ignore this assumption, would I be naive? But if I challenged a black player’s doubts about his own fitness, was I subscribing to a racist stereotype?
Roland Butcher had come to England from Barbados in 1968, when he was 13. It must have been a shock to arrive in a cold, foggy and often racist England. He was an extremely talented cricketer. We called him “Hoover” for his ability to gather up the ball in the field, and he was a beautiful stroke-player. However, in his early days he often got out for low scores. During extensive conversations, especially on long car journeys, I said he needed to be more aggressive in his own defence—in standing up for himself both against racist assumptions inside and outside the dressing room, and with a bat in his hand on the pitch. He became the first black cricketer to play for England.
Fakhry Davids, a psychoanalyst and colleague of mine in London, born in South Africa, wrote that “to be black in a white world is an agony.” It has taken most white people a long time, and the Black Lives Matter movement, to begin to understand how traumatic this can be. We need to do our best to empathise. Some younger people go further, arguing that it is not just difficult but actually impossible for white people to empathise with victims of racism—a view that I don’t fully agree with.
Davids continues: “to be black, you are seldom allowed to be an ordinary regular human being… Instead… hidden stereotypes that can spring to life in a flash, push violently into you, destabilise you and make you think, feel and act in ways that are wholly determined from outside.” This comment reveals how racism impedes self-respect and authenticity, exactly what I felt was inhibiting Butcher.
It also reveals, I suggest, that white people, including of an older generation like me, should do more than refrain from speaking or writing about race. Being “allowed to be an ordinary regular human being” implies being free to speak and be spoken to with frankness. Honest exchanges are often helpful, provided that we are willing to listen and learn without becoming defensive.
Moreover, notwithstanding how inadequate Yorkshire’s earlier response to Rafiq’s complaints were—originally, racist abuse was classified as mere banter—the county’s later sacking of 16 employees, including all the coaching staff, apparently without proper hearings, amounted to collective punishment. There were no second chances. At least one sacked person has needed police protection.
As well as holding people to account, we need to respect context. The Indian-American psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar reports that after giving a talk in Pittsburgh, he was approached by a white analyst, who told him: “I have listened to your talk today and to others of yours before… I think you can teach us a lot because you are not one of us. You are from a different culture, and see things with a fresh eye.” Akhtar writes that the words “you are not one of us,” uttered by a man of “lesser dignity and clean-heartedness would have come across as prejudicial, even racist.” However, “the way he puts it, I find touching and feel myself well understood and validated.” What appears at first sight politically incorrect—even racist—was neither wrong nor hurtful.
Roland Butcher might have taken offence at what I said or the way I said it. Had he done so, I hope I would have pulled back. If the conversations had happened today, and had been made public, this could have given me a bad name. (It still could.) On the other hand, had I remained silent, I would have left him unprotected against the projections that had been forced onto him. Rigid political correctness risks making the wall between people more impenetrable, as happened for decades in Northern Ireland. We need to work and talk together, multi-racially and multi-generationally.
We have to be sensitive in what we say, but also say what we feel. It helps if we have some understanding of why people become racists, and why none of us is free of biases. Today, outrage is ready to hand. We are inclined to lose touch with what Seamus Heaney called in his poetry “subtleties and tolerances.” We are inclined to cast “stones of silence”—stones of condemnation and of complicity. Before expressing an opinion, we seek hints of the allegiances of others, we wear “the tight gag of place and time.” And none of us who, loudly or silently, throws the first stone—or for that matter, the second—is without sin.
