The UK MP who claimed white people can never face racism

Former UK Labour front bencher Diane Abbott wrote in a letter:

Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.

It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.

So she compares being Jewish to being a redhead, and ignores the Holocaust which was state sanctioned elimination of six million people based entirely on their race.

She is also factually wrong on slavery – over one million Europeans were forced into slavery in the Barbary slave trade.