ONE of the latest fashionable traits seems to be telling black people when they can or can’t call out racism.   

This is quickly followed by being told whether or not it is appropriate for us to question if another black person has our best interests at heart.   

The thing about fashion is that it comes and it goes and then it returns.   

The problem with what I have just described is that it’s not a fashion at all. It’s what we black people have constantly been told when we raise our heads above the parapet and call things as we see them.   

Ever since I was a little lad, I have been cautioned against saying something was racist. It usually went something like: “You can’t say that — he/she hasn’t got a racist bone in their body.”   

Or, within our own movement, I have heard: “But I’m a socialist and have fought racism all my life, so you can’t call me a racist.”   

I won’t even get into the “but my best friend is black” or “I love reggae” rubbish.   

The latest example of this sort of racist nonsense comes within the Labour Party where it is now a crime to call out black Tories — at least if you are on the left — because being a racist from the right doesn’t seem to matter.   

It seems you are not allowed to say anything about black Tories not having our interests at heart — and I mean black in the political sense to include people of Asian descent.    

The equality police within the Labour Party largely seem to just follow whatever anti-left authoritarian whim Keir Starmer decides on that particular day. It bears little relation to the lives of “everyday people” — well, black everyday people at any rate.   

Diversity is a fact of life. It is an inescapable reality. I have no problem at all celebrating increased diversity in all walks of life.    

But it is entirely wrong to believe that increased diversity brings about any change in the balance of power between the ruling class and the working class.  

One look at the front benches of both main political parties in the House of Commons would lead one to believe that the Tories are streets ahead in terms of their commitment to equality — if you took diversity as the main measure.   

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.   

Black Tory home secretaries have displayed the most trenchant right-wing authoritarian and anti-black behaviours of almost any I can remember in those posts during my lifetime.   

Their blackness has been of no consequence to me as they have sought to celebrate making sure migrants are demonised and treated as something to be scraped off the bottom of your shoes. 

Their blackness, or that of the new Prime Minister, is immaterial to me if black people face no protection from authoritarian rule or continue to be harassed or even killed by the organisations, such as the police, that they control.  

The truth that Labour seemingly dares not say is that the class privilege and politics of black Tories trumps the colour of their skin every time.   

I am not letting Labour off the hook, because they must do more to increase the diversity of their leadership. But, as with the Tories, this becomes meaningless if it’s the same old right-wing nonsense that we are going to be subjected to.    

To hear one very senior Labour politician say without hesitation that the Tories are not moving fast enough to clamp down on immigration tells you all that you need to know.   

The Labour Party needs to understand that it was set up to represent the interests of the working class in Parliament — all of it — including those of us who are black.   

It needs to display the same commitment to the class it was set up to represent as the Tories show unremittingly to theirs.   

And to those people within the Labour and trade union movement who flinch and sneer not at the red flag but at us when we call out racism, you need to take a cold hard look at yourselves and understand the massive mental health damage many of you have caused us over the years.   

Many of you feel comfortable marching against racism or changing your social media profiles to reflect opposition to the latest atrocity against black people somewhere. Well done! I applaud you. But don’t forget to challenge your own racism, or the times when you have decided to turn a blind eye to what you see taking place in front of you because it’s someone who is on your side in some political campaign or another.   

This is not about diversity. It is about power. It is about who has it and how they use it.   

We must never be silent about racism and neither must we ever allow anyone to determine when is a good time for us to raise our voices.   

Letting racism go never creates a good time. Trust me. I know. It nearly destroyed my mental health and no doubt that of many other black people.   

In a time of Covid when the only contact outside your home was online made racism even more difficult to deal with.   

Being told that it’s in our imagination or, worse still, that we should keep quiet is, frankly, as racist as it gets.   

I know what I owe it to my ancestors who lived in Africa, were snatched from their homes, survived the brutal crossing of the graveyard known as the Atlantic, endured enslavement and then colonialism, and the colour bar and racism over here.   

I owe them my voice and my activism. I owe it to them to ignore the voices that say when and where racism should be called out.   

I owe it to them to never give up — however hard it gets sometimes — because they never did.   

Roger McKenzie is a journalist and general secretary of Liberation.