Thoughts on Wigan Diggers Festival

I was at the 7^th Annual Wigan Diggers Festival last weekend. This was my third time at the event. I enjoy the energy of these events, seeing politically active people is always a pleasure. However as a black person I feel like an oddity, dont get me wrong the festival is run by progressive, lefty, anti racist people. I share those political ideologies, but of late I have noticed how spaces such as this are almost always white.

I am black, feminist, anti racist, lefty and Christian, I am an outsider in each of these groups because I don’t fit the norm of any of them. None of these groups are exclusive, far from it they are welcoming and all of them want to make a difference. However there are too many unspoken things which have caused us to alienate people we would like to reach out to.

In left anti racist groups I am excluded on grounds of religion. My Christian faith is assumed to be at odds with liberal groups whose atheist worldview sees me as a brainwashed black person. I am usually alright till I tell people I am a Christian, and I invariably do, partly to see their reaction and partly to see their discomfort. Most liberal white people end up talking at me after that. This is something I find fascinating but not surprising. For decades now we have had the image of the abject black person dominate our imagination. Black people can only be imagined as mute abject subjects in need of rescuing, campaigns for Africa are a testament to a neo colonial idea of the helpless black person incapable of helping themselves. Kenan Malik has observed a similar phenomena within the left and its failure to connect with non white people for decades. I see this discomfort to engage growing within the left and it is only fuelling the right.

I digress, coming back to Wigan, I realise that a similar ideology of rescuing operated   in the many groups present there. I often feel I am spoken for, my individuality stripped and replaced with a stereotype. Given the increase in racist attacks, this silences and posturing does not help my community. I applaud the effort of those organising the diggers festival and its inclusive nature however I feel liberal leftist forces need to make a greater effort to reach out to people. Those in positions of power who wish to make a difference have a responsibility to speak up. Disrupting abuse should not be negotiable.