If you had to explain to an alien how important race is in multicultural Britain, what would you say?
Would you explain that, for the most part, we live our lives without any great concern for racial differences?
That would certainly seem to describe the day-to-day reality for most of us. But why, our alien friend might ask, does it seem that in the worlds of politics and the media that race is everywhere?
If we’re not concerned about racial differences, then why does every other Daily Mail headline refer to ‘Asians’? Why is it that there are organisations such as the National Black Police Association? And why are crimes thought to be ‘racially aggravated’ punishable by harsher sentences?
Surely judges always have to weigh up all of the contributing factors when deciding on a sentence, so why does the government need to tell them to treat ‘racially aggravated’ offences more strictly? Why is it inherently worse to attack someone because of their race than it is to attack them because you don’t like their hat, their choice of football team, or their stupid grin?
Or is it more that the government doesn’t trust the judges to treat racist incidents as seriously as they should?
In fact, that may well have been one of the original motivating factors behind anti-racism legislation – to make sure that judge’s racial prejudices didn’t get in the way of justice. But if that was the case, then why treat racially motivated offences more harshly? Why not instead insist on a minimum sentence for racially aggravated crimes, or some other measure that would ensure that racially aggravated crimes were taken as seriously as crimes committed for other unjustifiable reasons?
It’s almost as if politicians were more interested in quick, decisive, vote-winning action rather than measures that would ensure fair treatment of all, regardless of race. Instead of a political system free of racial prejudices, what we’ve got instead is a system that weighs racial grievances against each other. If your ancestors were slaves, or if you’re considered to be part of a ‘sensitive minority’, then expect to the anti-racism brigade to be your best friends. If not, don’t expect any support.
How racist is that!?
The black man hasn’t quite got the whip hand over the white man (as Enoch Powell famously predicted), but if you measure ‘racial advantages’ in terms of what you are or are not allowed to say in the popular press, what is or is not considered politically correct, or even by what is the most likely to get you arrested, then the white man can definitely consider himself the loser.
And that’s not the way it should be.
The sensible response to this sorry situation is not to support one race over the other, but to scale back state-censorship and to reassess all strategies for combatting unjust racial discrimination to ensure that they do actually achieve their purpose, rather than just encouraging further divisions.
For example, does the invention of racially aggravated offences help victims find justice when they might not otherwise have had much reason to feel confident in the courts? Does it help to send a strong message to racist-types which will help to prevent further such attacks? And are its benefits equally accessible to people of all races?
In other words, can white victims be as confident that their attackers will be charged with racially aggravated offences as black or Asian victims?
If there is even the slightest suspicion that this is not true (if there’s a suspicion that there might be a two-tier systemin place), then the strategy may be entrenching racial divides rather than getting rid of them.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening. People are, quite rightly, beginning to believe that the anti-racism movement cares about some races more than others, which, of course, completely undermines its original purpose. As anti-racism campaigner and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (who is also a member of British Muslims for Secular Democracy) says in the Independent:
“Our entire struggle, its moral and ethical foundation, stands to be discredited because we do not pay the attention we should to white victims of black and Asian hatred.”
This one-sided-ness defines not only large sections of the anti-racism movement but also the political establishment and the media. It’s almost become something of a cliché to lay the blame at the door of political correctness, but how else could our alien visitor make sense of the fact that organisations like the National Black Police Association (or the Association of Muslim Police for that matter) are praised in the press whilst a white equivalent would be totally unthinkable?.
How else to make sense of the fact that when a premiership football allegedly uses racist language against another player the media go ballistic and he wins himself an eight-match ban and a £40,000 fine, whilst a senior shadow politician can claim that “White people love playing divide and rule” without any action being taken?
As Abhijit Pandya comments in the Daily Mail, “[Diane] Abbott’s statement clearly harbours prejudice in a way that the recently investigated remarks of John Terry, or Luis Suarez, made in a heated exchange do not… If anyone white was to make broad general statements of this type about blacks their careers and their lives would be ruined and they would, very possibly, need fortified barricades on their front door.”
How can we maintain that, for the most part, we live our lives without any great concern for racial differences, whilst the government seem determined to remind us of racial differences at every possible moment?
Take the case of Stephen Lawrence. There are certainly many lessons that we could learn from the murder of an innocent black man by racist white thugs and the long battle for justice that followed, but the number of column inches dedicated to the case over the years is simply staggering. No one doubts that it was in the public interest to reveal the details of the case, but contrast this with the coverage of the murder of Richard Everitt.
Not heard of him? It’s hardly surprising. It seems that the racist murder of a white man by an Asian gang isn’t worthy of anything like the level of attention that the Stephen Lawrence case was given. You can read about the full details of the case here.
What should we take from the very different treatment of these two cases? Is it that the threat of racist violence emanates more strongly from white communities than from Asian communities, or is it that certain Asian communities are far more difficult to criticise than others?
Perhaps we should instead ask why Stephen Lawrence has become such a powerful symbol of the battle against racism, and whether the memory of a white victim could have been used by the media and political establishment in the same way. If not, then we should be very wary of any anti-racism strategies put forward as a result of the case. Are they designed to placate the anti-racism movement, black campaigners and anyone demanding immediately responsive action? Or are they more considered? In the long run, will they help make our society less concerned with racial differences, or more so?
There is, in fact, a good argument for repealing all anti-racism legislation altogether – not because it would allow racism to thrive, but because it would encourage people to stop seeing everything in racial terms.
If anti-racism legislation was originally passed because of the need to overcome predictable opposition to its objectives, then surely then time has come to consider whether Britain is still so plagued with racism that it needs such rules and restrictions?
If someone today committed a crime that appeared to be motivated by nothing other than racial prejudice, then surely we could trust the judge to pass a suitably harsh sentence without being compelled to do so by the law?
Surely we can also be entirely confident that the vast majority of racist opinions fly in the face of public opinion? So does the government really need to further censor public debate with anti-racism initiatives that could prove counterproductive?
Most people do live their lives without any great concern for racial differences, but the moment they recognise that the political establishment and the media are obsessed with racial differences and with favouring certain groups over others, then they are bound to re-evaluate their attitudes.
If the government and media fail to show impartiality – if they allow the establishment of a two tier system – then regardless of what they preach about equality, the lesson they are teaching is that race isa defining characteristic. And that really could be divisive.
The best way to overcome racism isn’t by compensating certain racial groups by way of anti-racism initiatives that only provide practical advantages to one group, but to disregard race as much as is possible.
Martin Luther King famously said that he dreamt of the day in which is children could live in a nation where they would, “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
This dream has, at least in a large part, become a reality. Most of us in modern Britain couldn’t care less about skin colour, and we would certainly be more likely to judge someone by the content of their character.
We know that a person’s race is not indicative of their character. It doesn’t define their beliefs, their attitudes, or any of their more important qualities. It may give a clue as to an individual’s background or likely cultural upbringing (less so now than in the past), but it is certainly has no ideology, no statement of objectives, no guidebook.
It is, quite simply, not something that we should wish to or would have any grounds to criticise. So it’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t matter to the majority of us in Britain today.
Perhaps if the political establishment woke up to this fact then they would abandon their own apparent obsession with race.
Perhaps then they’d also begin to recognise the difference between racism and legitimate criticism of the many dangerous and intolerant ideologies that exist within Islam.
Until they do, we’ll continue to speak out against racism whilst we demonstrate against Islamic extremism.