Community and Me
by Tom Startup
Current Affairs Editor
I feel rather alone. “We’re all alone”, you respond cynically. Yes but some are more alone than others. I, for instance, lack a community. Whereas, I daresay you, yes you reader, are a member of a community, possibly many. It may seem like a somewhat bizarre complaint, but I feel it rather strongly. I also lack political representation. There are no politicians out there who have been elected as a representative of my community. This is mainly because I do not have a community. No doubt the reader’s mind is at this point probably imagining that I am a member of an obscure ethnic or religious cult, as yet unrecognised by the powers that be. Perhaps I am a fourth-generation-Somalian-priestess, or a son-of-thalidomide-victims, or a wheelchair-bound-Armenian-refugee. Alas no. Doubtless my plight would be somewhat more straightforward at least if I did fit into one of the aforementioned categories. If it did, then I could form a support group. I could advertise: “Wheelchair-Bound-Armenian-Refugees. Meet Thursdays at 2pm, Brent Community Centre. No timewasters please”. Myself and fellow victims could meet to discuss our plight, write letters to the government and demand the recognition of our victimhood and our individuality, most importantly our status as a community. Some time from now I would hear on the news “The wheelchair-bound-Armenian-refugees community were today appalled by the government’s decision to…” Perhaps ten years from now, there would be a (2nd generation) wheelchair-bound-Armenian-refugees representative sitting in the government, maybe even in the cabinet.
But things are worse than that. I am, let me confess, although I feel overwhelmed with embarrassment as I write this, a white, middle class, university-educated, man (this is who I am, the category to which I belong). I guess I could add some other adjectives, but they wouldn’t really help. I imagine they would just make matters worse. I am an atheist, over six feet in height, and heterosexual. It’s embarrassing really. I’ve looked into my family tree, eagerly expecting the discovery of some rogue genes. Perhaps my grandparents were Jewish, or Indians, or homosexuals. Hopefully all three. But no. English, (Anglo-Saxon, I suppose, although I haven’t gone that far back) all the way back, and heterosexual. For Christ’s sake, my name is English. My ancestors were mainly of working or middle class origins, and noticeably normal. It’s so incredibly dull, as to be depressing. The best I can say is that there is some Welsh and Scottish in there, but I’m not sure that that is enough for community-status. Hey, everyone has some Welsh or Scottish in them, don’t they? I live in a city, I can’t claim to be a member of the ‘rural community’. I’m young, not a member of the elderly community. I’m able-bodied, not disabled. Don’t get me wrong, but I’m not even female. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do?
Now, probably the reader is at this point (if indeed anyone is reading at this point), beginning to feel hostile, perhaps even homocidal towards me. No doubt I have been patronising and flippant about your community. Your complaint is surely justified. I guess my attitudes are ‘typical of the kind of establishment white male thinking we have to fight against.’ I’m not a victim, I am a member of the elite. I have prospered from the oppression of others, women, blacks, the elderly and the infirm. I have no community, because I am a member of a majority, ruling class. There is no need for anyone to represent me or for my ‘plight’ to be recognised, because the system is rigged in my favour. The dominant class, by definition needs no recognition, what it needs is its destruction, or at least weakening. But even if this is all true why am I to be punished for my ‘membership’ of such a class, a membership I never chose, but had thrust upon me by my colour, sex, class or educational background? Perhaps you think that I am a member of a community. If so, please inform me, I’d be very grateful. Maybe it is the white-male-middle-class-atheists-over-six-feet-in-height community. Well that can’t be right, I’ve met a few of them, and surprisingly I didn’t feel much of a sense of kinship with them.
I have a list of communities, continually being updated. The latest addition was the ‘horse-riding community’. I heard on the news a few months ago, after a young equestrian had died, that the “horse-riding community are grieving.” Afterwards I was wondering how I could find this horse-riding community, where they are based. I imagined a small enclave in Berkshire, where everyone who rides horses lives together, who have their own culture, religion and identity. I felt sorry for them. How terrible it must be to have lost one of their number. But it gave me hope. I swim occasionally. Perhaps I am on the brink of discovering the swimming community, based somewhere off the South Coast, inhabiting underwater caves, with their own aquatic religion.
When I think of communities I imagine that they share a common culture, language, religion, outlook on life, a certain kinship. But how can this be true of what the media call the ‘black community’? If this is supposed to refer to the class of people ordinarily classified as having black skin, then I find it impossible to believe that there is anything they all have in common, other than possibly their possession of a certain type of skin colour. And even this can’t really be right. It is patronising and just plain absurd to suggest that all black people share a certain outlook, language, or culture, just as absurd as it is to suggest that all white people, or asians do. So, how can demarcating a certain class of people out for their possession of skin colour of a certain kind be anything but insidious racism?
I know I am not a member of any community. Sure I have friends, and family like everyone else. Okay, much to my shame and embarrassment most of them are, like me, white, middle-class, straight, etc. But I’m not a member of a community. I wonder if you, reader, feel part of any community? Or do you just feel, like me, that you have friends and family with whom you have some things in common? The thing about communities is that they exist in our heads, but, and this is the dangerous bit, once they exist in our heads they will probably begin to exist in reality. And I’m not sure that that is such a good thing. Maybe it would be better if we jettisoned the whole idea. We don’t jettison being Jewish, or gay, or black, or whatever, but we jettison the idea of a community characterised by one’s adjectival description. I suppose what is wrong with racism is the division of people on the basis of an arbitrary characteristic they happen to possess. It is the denial of individuality, the refusal to consider each person as a separate person which is so demeaning. But this is precisely what the notion of ‘community’ is being used to achieve. Talk of ‘community’ is the simpering, patronising face of racism and intolerance, and we would be better off without it.