A racism problem

Those of a certain age will remember characters Alf Garnett and Rigsby, lead characters in two popular TV sit-coms. Both Characters were racists, certainly by modern standards. Comically bigoted buffoons who were always in the wrong and who always tripped over their own social incompetence. It was a healthy and open way to treat bigotry, including racism, a way we seem to have forgotten in favour of unhealthy, craven suppression. Why the change? Ridicule works, just as it worked with Garnett and Rigsby. Free speech is healthy, it shines a light on social cankers.

Anti-racism politics may have started off as an ethically necessary component of civil rights movements. It may have been necessary for social cohesion in a more diverse world, but in recent decades it has acquired more dubious undercurrents. It has become embroiled in an old war and old hatreds.

The horrors of twentieth century Marxism made it more difficult to adopt a mainstream political agenda requiring ritual denunciation of traditional class enemies such as the bourgeoisie. Not only that, but as the working class disappears the bourgeoisie becomes too large for denunciation. What to do?

New language was indicated with the same political purpose packaged in more modern rhetoric. One feature of this newly packaged bourgeoisie is that it must be inherently racist. Another feature is that one may easily avoid the racism tag by conspicuous political correctness. Those who are not politically correct are deemed right wing and therefore tainted by racism. Yet ironically there is nothing quite so bourgeois as political correctness. It’s a mess.

For example - from the BBC last month

Black footballers find it "almost impossible" to speak out over racism because they are cast in a "victim role" when they discuss it, says former Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit.

An unpleasant experience, but as similar stories are extremely common both in and beyond football, Mr Gullit’s claim seems likely to attract little more than a weary shrug. Oafish abuse can be vile but as I recall, vile yet non-racist abuse was common enough at professional football grounds decades ago. It isn’t obvious why certain types of oafish abuse should be so appalling that the police become involved, why the lesson of Alf Garnett and Rigsby has been forgotten.

Not only that but anti-racism rhetoric has become so pervasive that one has to raise the issue of a political subtext which seems to read – white people are inherently tainted by racism. Yet simple observation suggests that white people are not particularly racist and one could make out a case that they tend to be less racist than other ethnic groups using voting patterns as an example.

However that debate should not be necessary because there is much more variation between individuals within groups than there is between groups. Hence it is inaccurate to convey the impression that all individuals within a particular group are somehow tainted with a racist stereotype. On the whole, oafish abuse is restricted to oafs.

A political desire to create a new bourgeoisie seems to have resulted in strident anti-racism acquiring the taint of racism – anti-white racism as a substitute for the old anti-bourgeois rhetoric. We are moving on from an ethical civil rights stance and mixing it with another, less principled stance where politics, opportunism, malice and ignorance fool around with stereotypes.

At the moment the racism debate is a mess which nobody within the political bubble seems willing to raise let alone untangle. As with feminism it has spawned stereotypes which are as inaccurate and damaging as politically inspired stereotypes usually are. As inaccurate as the stereotype bourgeois was and still is.

It all needs to be aired within open public debates because many people are likely to react to Mr Gullit’s comment with a shrug. Not so much a what do I care shrug, but a weary it’s just race politics shrug and who knows what mischief might arise from that? Who knows what mischief already lurks beyond the political bubble ?