In order to fight bigotry, it is not enough to just campaign for changing our systems. We need to look deeper at our language too

It has been a while since I last wrote, in response to the racial abuse targeted at three England players after the Euro 2020 final. I've wanted to vary topics on this blog, but the same themes keep cropping up in the news and it sparks my feeling of discontent at the institutions that dictate this country. 

For there always seems to be a recurring theme - and it is a tendency of the public to fall into the narrative of callously neglecting institutional failings and the power of language and semantics.

In the news in the past few days has been the life-sentencing given to the former Met police officer Wayne Couzens for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in early March this year. It is undoubtedly justice in a legal sense of the word, but it's not really cause for celebration that we like to think our justice system offers. The murder of Sabina Nessa in the past week has shown again how men take advantage of women, in any scenario.

Perhaps they will, for a few days at least, reignite the conversation into examining aspects of the patriarchal society that fundamentally neglects the basic securities of half the population. But, much like race debates, men will slip back into the easy position of being ambivalent and not enacting change. While the majority of power positions in public and private sector of the country are occupied by men - that will always happen. 

There are further debates to be had that will be masked under this faux-activism and media coverage. What changes are the police and law enforcement going to make to ensure they don't ignore the clues they had to identify that Couzens was a threat to women, again? Reactionary policy is a double-edged sword, but if our law enforcement institution won't respond to its own failings - and its heavy-handedness towards peaceful protesters - how fit for purpose is it?

It also feels pertinent to reflect on a TED talk by Jackson Katz in the context of how gender violence is portrayed through language. Based off the work of linguist Julia Penelope, he highlights how these crimes are often shown to be "against" women. For example, the term "violence against women" that has been significantly popularised. Why is it termed "against women"? The violence is committed by men, the agency should be stressed on them.

People might not think these semantics have an influence but deep under our surface-level emotions, it provokes our unconscious biases. The burden is stressed onto women, in a victim-blaming manner, and refuses to involve the man in the crime that he committed.

In this context, it is worth me reflecting on a semantic-based race issue that has irritated for a while now. It came to light when 18 year-old Brit Emma Raducanu stunningly won the US Open, and popular media engulfed her success. Until they had to reckon with her Romanian, Canadian and Chinese heritage. In the days after, I saw lots of people highlighting this. She "wasn't really British", according to some. It makes me want to tear my hair out.

How can we say we are an accepting society if the first thing we highlight about a successful person of colour is their heritage? Because she doesn't "look" or have the "traditional" background of a Brit, that ought to apparently be the defining feature of her ascension to stardom. These are the same people who belittle Lewis Hamilton, one of the greatest British sportspeople ever, whenever he is successful. He "lives in Monaco though", as if alleged tax avoidance is apparently something worth highlighting only when the supposed perpetrator is black and successful.

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These people have to face the fact that the "multicultural Britain" they proclaimed as evidence of the country being a beacon for racial equality, is just that - multicultural. The assimilation of different cultures is inevitably going to create people as culturally-diverse as Emma Raducanu. There is a big contradiction in celebrating our diversity, and then lamenting the people product of that.  

These might seem pedantic points, but I really do believe activism is futile without questioning language too. The education system still lacks in communicating to children that same-sex relationships are as legitimate and valuable as any other (though Scotland's curriculum change is to be welcomed), and we are too callous in how we approach the binary system of gender too (because non-binary people are similarly impacted by the system).

Only by examining - and reconstructing - these intricacies can we say that we are retraining our implicit assumptions and biases. With issues such as gender and race bias, legislation and protest can go far, but only so far. For these are concepts that have to be torn down and relearnt if the oppressed groups are to see, and feel, a distinct difference.

Sadly, the very institutions that have the power to encourage that openness will only choose to shy away from it. Our media is a money-making machine; the police are concerned more with their image than change; and the government - well the less said about their lack of political capability, the better. 

The burden then, falls onto the individual who does not have to worry about being attacked unprovoked, misgendered or degraded. That individual has to examine how they speak, how they listen to others and how they will try to change their linguistic complexities to reduce the impact upon future generations. 

If we are serious about combatting the hatred that exists today, we will combine that with institutional change - and then people might hold less biases. One, or the other, will not suffice.