Post-Brexit Hate Crime Are Now Diplomatic Conflicts
This will not be a well-researched article. This is an idea we are too familiar with and have not done enough about. That a violent, racially-motivated attack takes place in England is no shock. Hate crime has sadly been a part of any society marked by ethnic or religious diversity. But hate crimes have spiked in the UK within days of the 23 June Brexit result. And here is one that hits too close to home.
On 30 August, Arkadiusz Jóźwik was having a slice of pizza outside a takeaway shop when he was apprehended by a group of about 5 boys, teenagers. They began to pick on him when they overheard him speaking Polish — and when he wasn’t having any of it, they beat him to the point his friend had difficulties recognizing his face in the hospital. Arkadiusz Jóźwik died shortly after in the hospital. His untimely death (he was in his early 40s) comes after a string of crimes targeting immigrants of various background this summer.
The Leave campaign capitalized on a style of populism that played on fear mongering. To those who were concerned about employment, social services, and national security, the campaign inflated statistics confident that their target demographics would never fact-check any of it. The extent to which prejudice factored into the Leave Campaign is staggering, as many voters were hoodwinked into believing they had been robbed of security by ISIS recruits and Polish ‘vermin’.
Poles make up a large minority (700,000 people) in Britain. I am frankly unsurprised they have been a target of hatred. My heart goes out to anybody who is fighting such battles in their private lives that inciting hatred is their release. And those raised to believe that hating someone different from you is easier than trying to know them.
Coming from a background of Polish refugees living in the USA, I’ve grown up with an intimate understanding of the intersections between politics and immigrant culture. My parents’ battles, their anxieties, and their triumphs have been written into my blood.
At the same time, in many senses, I have been privileged. There is no cohesive anti-Polish sentiment in the US these days (unlike 100+ years ago). Though racial discrimination is very much alive, I look ostensibly to strangers on the street and my name doesn’t read as obviously ‘ethnic’ on a job application. These facets of my life have undoubtedly given me certain advantages throughout my life.
My parents and I have experienced a handful of micro-aggressions over the years: from people who heard our accents or knew our immigration status. I remember going to an immigration office with my father fifteen years ago for a routine errand. I remember the woman at the desk responding to my father’s questions as if discerning his mild accent was too much effort. Until she asked his immigration status and my father mentioned he was a citizen.
Immediately we got an “Oh why didn’t you say so?!” and were told this errand could go much faster now. My dad has always had an uncaring ‘eh, what do they know’ attitude but I remember being furious that someone had tried, for one second, to make him feel small.
Picking on someone for their accent or their identity is an attempt to make them voiceless. Post-Brexit, it seemed like the UK had turned into an open call for all the racists to come out and audition for Britain’s Next Top Bigot. In the best case, we become a more tolerant society until newcomers feel safe speaking up. In the worst case scenario, someone is robbed of their voice irreversibly. Arkadiusz Jóźwik could have so easily been my father. He could have been my mother, my sister, my cousin in London who just defended his PhD and had a son.
Jóźwik will never speak to his mother again, call up his friends in Poland, or contribute to his community in Essex. He has been robbed of his voice and his death is a threat to the voices of all immigrants to Britain — be they Poles, Germans, Spaniards…Muslims, Jews or Catholics.
This story has been all over the news, especially now that Polish ministers have come to meet UK government to discuss the events. I can only hope British leaders take the conversation seriously. Now that the UK has planned to leave the European Union, it’s a diplomatic conflict. There’s no way around it, these are truly foreign affairs now.
I can offer no solution to systemic prejudice in a paragraph, but I hope our leaders can. There is one way to ensure Arkadiusz Jóźwik did not die voiceless : make this death the last one of this kind. Britain may leave the EU, but it cannot forget that the EU was founded to keep Europeans safe. From EACHOTHER. From an emotional standpoint, British leaders should understand that no mother should bury her child. From a political standpoint, they need to understand that if they don’t take racial violence seriously now, they could make enemies faster than they think.
