Well!  Diane Abbott does seem to have put her foot in it!  A quick Google search threw up an article by The Telegraph which highlighted reports that forty people complained about her comments to the Metropolitan Police, which is probably the least of her troubles.  All in all, we’ve all had a field day discussing this particular gaff.

As it happens, I had a curious experience over the weekend.  By way of background, I have a neighbour – a few doors down – who likes to play his music very loud and often late at night.  At times I’ve knocked on the door to ask him to turn it down – usually unheard above the music.  At times I’ve asked for help from the “noise patrol” of the local council.  At times I’ve resorted to using the earplugs that are supplied occasionally when I’m seated by the organ speakers at a concert when I sing.  I have managed to speak with my neighbour a couple of times and, most recently, agreed that next time it happened I would send him a request, by text, that he turn the volume down.

So it was that at about 1.30am on Saturday morning I texted him with said request when his music woke me up.  I was half asleep and eager not to wake up any more fully than necessary.  I sent the text, turned off my phone and was successful in going back to sleep.  In the morning I woke up to a couple of text messages.  The first let me know he’d got my text and had turned his music down as well as wishing me a Happy New Year.  The second was a response to my lack of response and included the following:

….given the fact that u find it difficult 2 reciprocate a simple happy new year has made me realise ur colonial mindset which ur apparently unwittingly a victim of n probz dont even realise it to the point of even feeling justified.

I am so unused to being spoken of in this way that I chewed it over in the morning with Edward, my nephew and Gary, who is working in my kitchen at present.  Of course, it would be easy to go to precisely the place my neighbour describes – the place of feeling justified.  It seems so obvious to me that my neighbours don’t want to hear too much noise that I feel some anxiety when I listen to Radio 4 in the summer whilst gardening – how does my neighbour not understand this, too?

Maybe one of the reasons – the reason, even – that Diane Abbott’s Tweet stimulated so much discussion is precisely because it offered an opportunity to accuse the accuser.  No matter what atrocities our ancestors may have committed or we may commit now, we don’t like to be seen as racist.  Ms. Abbott’s misfortune was to show her own biases even whilst being known for campaigning against the biases of others.  And perhaps at a deeper level her misfortune was this, to have imagined that racism is the sole domain of any particular racial group.

Coming as this does in the aftermath of the trial and conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence I tread with care, recognising just how much people can – in the words of my neighbour – feel justified in carrying out the most awful acts of violence.  The murder of Stephen Lawrence has been a bitter reminder of this fact throughout the last eighteen years.  At the same time, it seems to me that we need to show ourselves – and each other – enough compassion to recognise that we are all, more or less, racist:  to see the differences in the “other” is the natural response of one who fears.  For me, the important question is this:  having had a racist thought, what do I do next?  And equally, how do I respond to the racist thoughts of another?

I responded to my neighbour’s text as best I could and with the intention of keeping the door open to communication and understanding.  This was not because I have an intrinsic need to be on good terms with this particular neighbour or even because I’d like to be able to talk to him about the noise he makes.  Rather, I recognise that his comments may well be a sign of how tender issues of race are for him and, whatever my own perspective, I want to see beyond my own response to understand a fellow human being.