When I wrote this column yesterday evening, beneath my Thursday column there were 450 comments and the discussion was still ongoing. The subject was not actually racism, but how – when there is a surge in racist sentiment that allows racists to feel justified in their views because “everyone feels like us” – this is the trigger for violence.
The overriding sentiment I picked up from the comments posted by racists and members of hate-groups (including Imperium Europa’s treasurer and fund-raiser) beneath that column – other than the fact that they actually don’t think they are racists at all – is how they lack the courage of their convictions. Accusing them of racism is like winding up a noisy clockwork monkey and throwing it into a crowded chicken-coop. Suddenly, they are all aflutter, squawking and protesting that of course they are not racists, but they have genuine concerns about defending Malta from Muslim invaders and from people with a different culture who are “not like us”.
You try telling them that this is the dictionary definition of xenophobia, from which racism stems, and they round on you and say that you hate your own country and are racist with your fellow citizens. Logic was never a racist’s strong suit. Racism is irrational, and it therefore follows that racists are irrational, that they espouse their racist views because they were irrational to begin with. It is not their racism which has made them irrational, but their irrationality which has made them racist.
If racists had the courage of their convictions, they would not say “I’m not a racist, but…”. They would say, “I’m a racist, and…”. They are passionate in their racism, but cannot confront it in themselves because they don’t like what it says about them. Confronting the personal truth about themselves would shatter their self-image as decent and honourable citizens of an island (l’ombelico del mondo) that owes its Christianity to St Paul and donates lots of money to missionaries to convert the heathen and build schools and hospitals for the heathens’ piccaninnies.
Interestingly, some of those reacting to my article and my comments beneath it appear convinced – such is their touchiness and inferiority complex – that I have called them hamalli and said that racists are hamalli. I have never said that all racists are hamalli or, for that matter, that all hamalli are racists. On the contrary, I am very clear on the matter that many, if not most, people of my own social background are among Malta’s worst and most ignorant racists. The racist and ignorant views which were expressed in my presence by some people of my acquaintance – even a few who I might have called friends – have changed my opinion of them profoundly and permanently. Racist opinions are not just any old opinion; they are not like an opinion about food or travel or art or the film you saw last night. Racist views are an intrinsic part of the person who espouses them. They tell you who that person is at a fundamental level. The sudden discovery that somebody I know is a racist affects my perception of them negatively, profoundly and permanently.
Malta’s worst racists, fascinatingly, appear to be at the extreme ends of the social spectrum: the underclass and what the old French used to call the gratin (the thin and crispy layer at the top). The fact that the dreadful racists of the gratin wouldn’t be seen dead at a racist (anti-immigrant) demonstration alongside the members of the underclass who enjoy going to that sort of thing does not mean that they don’t share their views. They do share their views. They simply express them in more articulate language, and know when to keep quiet so as to maintain appearances when necessary. Both ignorance and racist views span the entire social spectrum in Malta, but the ignorance of the gratin is disguised by greater eloquence (after a fashion), better manners and more knowledge about the veneer of things.
Yet some of the most ignorant people I have ever had the misfortune to contend with share my social background. They left formal education at 15 or 16, several decades ago, and have never bothered to read anything except Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey (and even those were a struggle) since then. They get all their information and news from Facebook or over coffee after tennis and cards.
They have no interest in current affairs, absolutely no understanding of the fact that people from a certain kind of background, everywhere else in Europe, are expected to know about X, Y and Z and make informed conversation about them – conversation that does not contain truisms and old chestnuts picked up in the classroom circa 1975 – and have no general knowledge whatsoever. Such ignorance is the perfect breeding-ground of fear and racial prejudice. Some of their conversations and pronouncements are beyond embarrassing.
So no, social background has nothing to do with it. Education does, by which I do not mean university degrees. The fact remains that Malta is teeming with racists. They live in villas, in nice old houses in St Julian’s and Sliema, in flats in Fgura and in council housing in Bormla. Maltese people are trained from early infancy to be irrational – in the home, at school and especially in religious doctrine classes – and racism is the product of irrational thought.
www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com