THE quote about the definition of insanity being “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is usually attributed to Albert Einstein.

I have no idea whether he did say it, but I think it’s appropriate to ask ourselves this searching question on UN Anti-Racism Day.

It’s far too easy just to keep on doing the same things in the fight against racism without questioning whether or not it is having any impact.

The facts are that the marches and rallies are numerous but the reduction in racism is arguably marginal if not non-existent.

We certainly do need to mobilise anti-racists on demonstrations and rallies but we also need to be more imaginative about what we can do to widen the participation in these important initiatives.

We spend far too much time in the company of familiar faces at local and national anti-racist events.

Simply shouting at people as we walk past them on our demos that they should be against racism or more supportive of refugees or asylum-seekers doesn’t seem to me to be winning too many new converts to our ranks.

Our rallies are largely preaching to the converted. It’s a valuable exercise in itself to give those of us who are active some support. It sometimes gets very lonely and frustrating living the fight against racism.

Often black people are even forced to question those who call themselves our allies as they, along with those we rail against, treat us as less than them.

Our daily experience of racism is often forced to play second fiddle to some higher cause such as meeting a paper sales quota.

This certainly has to change and is one of the reasons why black leadership of the anti-racism struggle is so important.

I’m not saying that white collaborators in the struggle against racism are unimportant and have nothing to contribute, but we must move beyond the constant lectures about what we should or shouldn’t have in our speeches.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have walked off a platform after an anti-racism speech to be hounded about the merits or otherwise of my speech by some — usually — white ultra-left ideologue.

I don’t mind a debate with anyone but the anti-racism speeches that we give as black people come from our daily lived experience and are not up for revision.

I think we need to concentrate on what we can do to develop anti-racism education in communities and workplaces.

This at least provides an opportunity to develop the foundational understanding for people to tackle racism wherever they are in whatever way they feel able, rather than merely on the basis that we set for them.

We need to develop independent community-based education programmes along the lines of Paulo Freire.

Freire developed an emancipatory approach to learning that linked theory and practice.

We should dispense with the passive learning process which passes for much of the “training” that takes place in workplaces. 

There seems very little anti-racism learning in communities aimed at developing action for change.

But this is where the Communist Party proposal to bring local community groups together in a united front comes into its own because this sort of education needs a wide reach, in terms of the people we need to take part but also for the trainers needed to deliver the programmes on an ongoing basis.

It also means that we move beyond a single “tick-box” approach to the training towards a deeper, longer lasting programme of developing a wider cadre of anti-racists prepared to go into communities and workplaces.

This brings me to workplaces where much more needs to be done to raise the level of anti-racist education by unions.

Data I saw before I left my previous employer showed that the level of “tackling racism” courses across the movement had nosedived towards becoming virtually negligible.

Some of this is probably due to colleges and unions only getting state funding for these courses if they had enough “bums on seats.” Some of it could be due to a number of overworked union reps believing that they had already done the course some years ago and they had other calls on their busy schedules.

Such an approach misses the point. Functional anti-racism training — how to represent someone in a case of discrimination whether as a victim or perpetrator — has its place but it doesn’t help us to build an anti-racism movement.

It just means we may or may not have the necessary skills to tackle the consequences of racism in the workplace without really dealing with the causes.

Unions need to come together to work out how we can build anti-racist workplaces and the role that training can play in that process.

The Marx Memorial Library can play an important role in this process. The library has the expertise and experience to develop and deliver anti-racist programmes that prioritise theory linked to practice. 

The MML can help unions understand how black oppression is deeply founded on class exploitation.

Any other approach is simply window-dressing and will continue to bring minimal or at best gradual reforms that do little to change the material circumstances faced by black people.

We need to do something different from what we have been doing in the anti-racist struggle because nothing is really changing.

In fact anti-black racism has been deprioritised by many organisations — perhaps most notably the Labour Party.