Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf has complained of receiving “over 6,000 racist social media posts” after he delivered a speech denouncing Scotland for having too many white people in key positions.
The justice minister for Scotland’s left-separatist devolved executive — roughly equivalent to a U.S. state government — told local media that “the abuse I get online is an hourly occurrence” and demanded Twitter do more to censor and ban what he described as “hateful accounts”.
The Daily Record reports that Yousaf’s staff counted thousands of “messages of abuse” following a speech the minister made in June expressing his support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement:
The Scottish National Party (SNP) minister reported receiving further “abuse” following the mass stabbing carried out by a Sudanese asylum seeker in Glasgow at the end of last month.
“Someone tweeted to say that I had blood on my hands, as though I was responsible. That doesn’t just anger me but it deeply upsets me that people out there think I am somehow responsible for an incident that could have left many people dead,” added Yousaf, a vocal supporter of mass immigration and the resettling of asylum seekers in Scotland.
In his controversial speech to the Scottish Parliament last month, the justice secretary gave an impassioned rant bemoaning the number of white people in top jobs in Scotland, where the percentage of the population identified as white is 96 per cent, according to the 2011 census.
“Some people have been surprised or taken aback by my mention on my social media that at 99 per cent of the meetings that I go to, I am the only non-white person in the room,” said Yousaf, who was educated at a private school in Glasgow.
Why are we so surprised when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by people who are white?
Take my portfolio, for example. The Lord President: white. The Lord Justice Clerk: white. Every High Court judge: white. The Lord Advocate: white. The Solicitor-General: white. The chief constable [of Police Scotland]: white. Every deputy chief constable: white. Every assistant chief constable: white. The head of the Law Society: white. The head of the Faculty of Advocates: white. Every prison governor: white.
[And] it’s not just justice.
The chief medical officer: white. The chief nursing officer: white. The chief veterinary officer: white. The chief social work adviser: white. Almost every trade union in the country headed by people who are white.
In the Scottish Government, every director-general is white. Every chair of every public body is white.
That is not good enough.
Yousaf told fellow members of the Scottish Parliament these should be “uncomfortable truths” for them and that “racism is literally killing minorities”.
“Scotland has a problem of structural racism,” he asserted, before demanding that everyone in the country become an activist for “anti-racism”.
Addressing white people, he said: “Do not just tweet ‘Black Lives Matter’, do not just post a hashtag and do not just take the knee. As people of colour, we do not need your gestures.
“Yes — solidarity is helpful, but what we need from you is action and for you to be anti-racist by your deeds. Do not just tell us how you are not racist—I take that as a bare minimum. You must be anti-racist.”
Footage of parts of the speech gained significant negative attention on social media last week, particularly after one user posted it with the caption, “The trouble with Scotland, is that it’s full of Scots” — a famous line spoken by English king Edward Longshanks in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.
Yousaf’s post received more than one and a half thousand responses, many of them querying the proportion of top jobs in African and Asian countries occupied by white people.
It is unclear what criteria his staff used to determine which of these remarks, among others, amounted to racist abuse.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.