You clap for me now – but give it a few months and it’ll be racism as usual

When I first heard about clap for our carers, I was – like many more than would have admitted at the time – deeply cynical. “What on earth is applause going to do to alleviate the escalating strain on already overwhelmed services?” I scoffed, before I saw how uplifting that sign of solidarity was for so many, including those it was supposed to serve.

But as the weeks drag on, and the issues we keep thanking NHS staff for weathering continue to worsen, clapping feels increasingly uncomfortable. I keep wondering what operating under a system that has actively restricted or ignored their rights, while being expected to work themselves to death for that system, must feel like – and for BAME and immigrant workers in particular, who are not only more likely to suffer due to structural inequalities exacerbated by coronavirus, but also make up the majority of doctors and nurses who have died because of the disease.

I began to wonder whether the rounds of applause from a nation that, just months ago, voted in the very government that has spearheaded the policies that make their lives harder, rang hollow. After watching #YouClapForMeNow, a video doing the rounds on social media, it appears that for many, it did.

The video features mostly BAME and immigrant faces on the front line of the NHS, reciting Darren Smith’s poem, “You Clap For Me Now”. Bouncing from key worker to key worker, flipping xenophobic and racist rhetoric on its head, the video lays bare the extent of their betrayal by this country:

So it’s finally happened
That thing you were afraid of
Something’s come from overseas
And taken your jobs.
Made it unsafe to walk the streets
Kept you trapped in your home
A dirty disease
Your proud nation gone
But not me [...]
No, you clap for me now
You cheer as I toil
Bringing food for your family
Bringing food from your soil.

It’s a worthy, moving appeal: as wonderful as the solidarity is now, people mustn’t conveniently abandon it when things return to whatever semblance of normality we have left; must not forget that the people many campaigned against were the ones who kept this country going, who kept us alive. Except we already have forgotten, countless times.

We forgot when the hostile environment – which shows no sign of abating – labelled these people “low-skilled”. We forgot when the migrant crisis was used as fodder for Brexit, when BAME health workers were conveniently forgotten at the beginning of the lockdown – and we’re forgetting now.

We have already allowed Boris Johnson – despite his initial response to the pandemic, his well-documented racism and propensity for bending the truth – to be almost deified because he contracted Covid-19. We’re currently allowing people to dismiss reports of racism within our main political parties as distractions from the bigger picture. And in a (hopefully small) corner of the internet, people are already labelling this video’s attempt to speak to the reality of being a BAME or immigrant key worker in a society that continually devalues you as racist in and of itself. Racism is clearly rife in society. Yet as needed as this video is to help curb it, I know how easily it will fade from the minds of those who stand to benefit from the structures that disproportionately make the lives of those who star in it harder.

Regardless of how we personally feel about the concept of racism, coronavirus has made it impossible to ignore. That won’t always be the case, especially not in a country that likes to romanticise crises (the “Blitz spirit” and all that).

I wish we didn’t have to use what these people have done for us, and will continue doing for us, as the sole reason for recognising their humanity. It shouldn’t matter whether the carers in my grandmother’s care home in West Brom, for instance, “crossed clearer waters” for the sake of you and me, or for an entirely different reason. Unfortunately, it does. In post-pandemic discussions of immigration, I hope we can be realistic about who we are, and have allowed ourselves to become as a nation.