You can’t switch on the telly, tune in the radio or click
on a link today without being assailed by race. Colour colours every
discussion, fuels every debate and informs every decision made by governments,
corporations and media. In an effort to counter white bias – they tell
themselves – it is necessary to inject as much non-white bias as possible, to
the extent that every TV family is now mixed race, every voiceover is palpably
non-native and every white commentator feels obliged to display his
self-reviling inclinations.
And gathering pace in the UK, as it has been in the USA
is the spread of fear over the rise of white supremacy. It is everywhere… yet
where are they, these supreme white beings, these Klansmen, these insufferable racists?
Where are the violent demonstrations for white power, where are the burning
crosses, the assaults on mosques? Where are the lynch mobs and the strange
fruit?
Because while I don’t see them and you don’t see them, according
to the media they are everywhere. On the drive into work this morning, I listened to a World Service
programme dedicated to the issue, and in the news a spate of killings of
sex-workers in Atlanta by a self-confessed ‘sex addict’ (another made-up syndrome
to excuse bad behaviour) was driving people insane because the motive had not
been attributed to racism, as surely it must, given that these women were of an
Asian background.
Black on black violence is just violence and it must be
excused because these poor people have no alternative but to turn on each other,
because, Whitey. Female genital mutilation, despite never being practised by white nations, is Whitey’s fault, even as
(in Kenya) some lawyers are arguing that the practice is a fundamental human
right. Whites patronising black-owned business is a form of cultural
appropriation, in a way that using electricity, transport, computers, etc, is
somehow not. And don’t you dare talk about Pakistani muslim grooming gangs.
It all smacks of the old marital lament: “What’s hers is
hers and what’s mine is ours.” This pick and choose approach to race relations is harmful, divisive and only ever goes in one direction. The soft
bigotry of low expectations helpfully excuses every failing by individuals or
entire communities to live by the codes of the host society; and the hard
bigotry of critical race theory blames every failing on people who have little
sense of any superiority.
In fact, if anything, it is white fear we
should be addressing. It may be ignorant to blame your lack of a job on
immigrants, but why has that perception been allowed to develop and what has, been done to counter it other than to pour on more blame a guilt? It may be true that white boys do poorly at school,
but this never used to be the case, so what has happened in the last half a
century to bring this about? And what kind of reaction do you expect when organisations
like our national broadcaster openly announce that ‘whites need not apply’?
One of the fervid beliefs of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement is that of black supremacy. They preach the nobility of black skin, as if skin colour is the fundamental attribute to be judged by. They espouse the superiority of black culture, yet have departed in droves from the seats of those same cultures, to live in lands where they seem determined to be despised. But hey, if race is such an issue and if, as they insist, one drop of black blood can have so much influence over life outcomes, and culture is everything, did anybody stop to think that maybe Lewis Hamilton’s culturally unusual – nay, unique - supremacy in Formula 1 might actually be down to his white heritage?