Diane Abbott and The Grotesque Vilification of Black Women In The UK

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Malcolm X wasn’t high on cheap crack when he said that the most unprotected and disrespected woman in America was the Black woman.

Those words revealed the extraordinary breathtaking perspicacity of the man, who was singularly committed to solving the immense and profoundly complex structural problems confronting Black folks in white society.

And those words remain powerfully true, sixty years since the assassination of our hero.

So why have I written these words?

Diane Abbott.

For those who know nothing about British politics, Diane Abbott was the very first Black woman to be elected to the House of Commons.

She’s the Black British version of Shirley Chisholm.

Ms. Abbott is the rarest of species — a Cambridge graduate — at a time when very few of the British public —Black, White or Brown — attended university.

Her election to parliament to represent the people of Hackney and Stoke Newington (area in which I was born) took place in 1987, alongside other trailblazers such as Paul Boateng, who currently sits in the upper chamber, known as the house of lords, Keith Vaz and the late Bernie Grant, who died in 2000.

And Ms. Abbott has been incredibly consistent through the years in tackling the bigotry of the Conservatives and the movement to which she has belonged till quite recently — the Labour party.

Her positions on race, social justice, foreign policy, economics and immigration are very much to the left of the Labour party and mainstream British politics and for that she has been the target of ferocious criticism and attacks.

And this is no hyperbole.

Of all the members of the House of Commons and there are 650 of them, it is said that no one receives as much abuse as Diane Abbott.

And it is worth pointing out that this isn’t a recent occurrence but a recurring phenomenon.

For the better part of the last forty years, no other figure has attracted so much bile from the white establishment and this came into sharp focus, a few days ago when it emerged that the biggest donor to the ruling party, Frank Hester, made the following comments regarding Ms. Abbott:

It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.

Those comments might have gone under the radar, if it weren’t for the hypocrisy of the speaker of the House of Commons — Lindsey Hoyle — when he botched a motion by the Scottish National Party on Ceasefire in Gaza and of Rishi Sunak, when he chose to make a speech about the extremism of the newly elected MP for Rochdale — George Galloway — in front of Number 10 Downing Street, two weeks ago.

But given the fraught state of affairs in the United Kingdom today, if those comments about Ms. Abbott were made regarding a Jewish woman, the outrage would be completely off the Richter scale and rightly so; the mainstream media would be falling over themselves to condemn the vile anti-Semitism.

And yet, it took the Prime Minister a full day to find his voice and describe the remarks by Frank Hester, racist and even then he stopped short of an outright condemnation.

But all this was nothing compared to the fact that the very speaker who said that he was acting in the interests of the safety of the members of parliament, two weeks ago, repeatedly ignored Ms. Abbott, when she rose to speak about her ordeal, yesterday.

The humiliation of Ms. Abbott in the House of Commons, yesterday by Lindsey Hoyle, sums up the words spoken by Malcolm X, several years ago.

Why I hear you ask?

The constant and horrendous vilification of Ms. Abbott is white society’s way of telling us that Black women can be disrespected without fear of reprisals.

And for those who think that only dark skin women are affected, they will do well to remember that there isn’t a week in the British media when Meghan Markle isn’t attacked.

Even though Kate Middleton is in the eye of the storm, with her doctored pictures and enforced absence from public view, the Daily Mail has been quite vocal in its attacks on the Duchess of Sussex.

Britain’s favourite tabloid has queried why Meghan Markle has said nothing in defense of Kate, conveniently forgetting that it was the latter, who was generating negative stories about the biracial American to the press.

But given the galvanizing effect that these attacks have had on the wider community, it is clear that the push back has begun.

Black men and women are completely unprepared to put up with the BS from white society and we are saying, enough is enough.

Thanks very much for reading.