Our Sector’s Response to Racist Violence

Last week, Women’s Resource Centre hosted a bitesize session to provide space for member organisations to discuss the racist violence that took place over the summer that took place over the summer. The session was led by Kiran Dhami, WRC’s Head of Policy. She welcomed three speakers to share their organisation’s and community’s experiences in the aftermath of the violence, as well as their reflections on how the women and girls' sector can collaboratively develop their anti-racist efforts.  
 

Our first speaker, Yasmin from Feminist Dissent and Juno Women’s Aid, began the session with a call to challenge the persistent subdivision of different racial groups. She noted how difficult it was to respond to racist violence as a collective, owing to the effort to further divide communities along ethnic and religious lines. While acknowledging the realities and lineage of anti-Muslim rhetoric, she thought that singling out particular groups as the main victims of racism will only weaken our collective anti-racist response and that this ultimately dilutes the messaging of groups and organisations who share a goal in tackling oppression and white supremacy. This ‘divide and rule’ tactic is echoed amongst the women’s sector, with the drive towards competition for funding making it harder to speak with a collective voice on these more ‘political’ issues. In a climate where this is increasingly needed, we should be aware of the funding forces that undermine our solidarity.  

She also mentioned how the far right co-opt and weaponise violence against women and girls (VAWG) to further a racist and anti-immigration agenda. The weaponisation of VAWG attempts to justify racist violence and create distance between marginalised groups and ultimately ignores how multiple issues of violence and oppression interconnect at a personal and structural level. 

Our second speaker, Zlakha from Apna Haq in Rotherham, also shed light on the weaponisation of VAWG to further racist rhetoric. She shared with us some experiences of their service users’ children being labelled perpetrators of VAWG, e.g. “groomers” and “paedophiles”, which have been coopted as racial slurs. Whilst the deeply damaging impact this has on those young people is undeniable, the flagrant misuse of these terms undermines efforts to really tackle VAWG.  

She also spoke about the different levels of racism she has encountered over the years – from the police who said they would not be able to protect people from racists on the streets, to commissioners who withdrew funding because they considered the organisation to have overstepped when they voiced their concerns about racism; from the media who failed to report on the non-white victims of paedophile rings in Rotherham to local authorities who sent vulnerable Black women to be housed in ‘no go’ racist white areas. This was a great example of how structural racism works across different institutions, compounding and entrenching discrimination and inequality. Therefore, it is more important than ever for women and girls’ organisations to take an intersectional approach to tackling the complex and overlapping issues experienced by their service users. Issues impacting women and girls don’t happen in isolation of race, class, religion and so on.  

One of the main aims of the session was to discuss the response from the sector. One of the speakers felt disappointed that the issue fell to Black women and Black women organisers calling upon their lived experience at the intersection between racial and gendered violence to push for more conversation about anti-racism in discussions on VAWG. She encouraged the sector at large to be at the forefront of this conversation instead of waiting for the effort, as it often is, to be driven by Black women in the sector.  

We also discussed how this period of racist violence did not come as a surprise to many of us who are acutely aware of the ever-present undercurrents of racism in the UK. While there has been a decimation of working-class communities, which is a major driver of the anger and scapegoating we are witnessing, this does not explain the overt trajectory of racism - after all, it is non-white working-class communities that have borne the brunt of austerity, yet it was not them running riot. Politicians and decision-makers who have used their platform to inflame tensions and use dog-whistle politics bear a lot of responsibility here. 

This conversation moved on to note the sad reality that some felt relief in that the racist violence over the summer had finally brought the deeply rooted issue of racism to the forefront of discussion around the country instead of it being a silenced, day-to-day, lived experience for racialised communities, which has so often gone without question or concern by the broader public. However, a representative from the South East and East Asian Women's Association (SEEAWA) noted that whilst these events did encourage crucial conversation, it was deeply re-traumatising for their service users and the wider community, a sentiment shared by other specialist women and girls’ organisations. This, unsurprisingly, reaffirms that whilst there was a benefit to this conversation finally happening in the mainstream, it came at a grave cost to the most marginalised communities and service users in the women and girls’ sector.  

The women’s sector is fighting on many fronts: they had to support their staff during the violence, many of whom were frightened to come into work; organisations have had to support their service users who already have enough problems to deal with; we are fighting with the racism within the police, and the lack of attention to ‘race’ by funders, government and local councils. Having a siloed approach to service delivery in the current social and political climate would be a massive failure of our dual role as activists and campaigners. The session provided a safe and necessary space for member organisations to share their thoughts and reflections about racism, how it manifests, and our responsibilities as a sector to name and deal with it. We concluded with hopeful remarks from Kiran about the overwhelming anti-racist response and counter-protests that took place across the country to the visible minority who were intent on spreading hate. This served as a reminder that whilst the far right’s threat is not to be underestimated, the number of those in opposition to their rhetoric is also significant.  

October 2024