''We need to talk about racism. With news items like
Megxit and Manchester’s failure to crack down on grooming gangs not so much sparking debate as detonating ever-deeper dividing lines, that much is clear. It is true that a virulent strain of prejudice is itching undetected beneath the British social fabric. But not in the way that the virtue-signallers who have so energetically lectured the public this week on their “subconscious” racism would have us believe.
A normalised bigotry is indeed hiding in plain sight. It conceals genuine injustices. Diagnosing it is tricky because it involves confronting human shortcomings. Like any self-respecting epidemic, it also has a chillingly sterile name: identity politics.
Dictating that the most important thing about you is your race or gender, its most obvious manifestation is an infuriating “us versus them” narrative: all white people are racists and all ethnic minorities are victims.
“It is not the job of black people and ethnic minorities to educate white people on racism that is perpetrated by white people,” activist
Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu quipped on This Morning, in a Meghan Markle debate that has gone viral. She then went on to “educate” her audience at length, ironically railing against the “whitewashing” of unconscious racism and critiquing those who see the world “through the lens of white privilege” (as opposed to eyes, presumably owing to their bogeyman status).
She also refused to give any concrete examples of
racism against Meghan. In an attempt to cast a pseudo-light on white ignorance and bigotry, she breathtakingly exposed her own ignorance and bigotry about a country that is largely not racist.
Which hits on the outrageous truth about identity politics: the retrograde movement does not help us address racism, because it renounces both dialogue and empiricism. Who needs to provide evidence when one is clearly right? Who needs to have a debate when the answer is decided? Instead of the End of History, we’ve reached the End of Reason.
Far from being committed to understanding others, identity politics is obsessed with the self. Reflecting the cosmopolitan consumer’s spiritually desolate search for intellectually approved personal branding, it is little more than self-aggrandisement posing as self-awareness. But, perhaps most disturbing of all, it deems casual prejudice against “white society” as not only acceptable but positively necessary to fighting injustice.
Hence Sheffield University’s unblinking decision this week to employ “race equality champions” who will tackle “microaggressions” on campus – like asking people where they are really from and striking up conversations with black students about holidaying in Africa.
We need to talk about racism. With news items like
Megxit and Manchester’s failure to crack down on grooming gangs not so much sparking debate as detonating ever-deeper dividing lines, that much is clear. It is true that a virulent strain of prejudice is itching undetected beneath the British social fabric. But not in the way that the virtue-signallers who have so energetically lectured the public this week on their “subconscious” racism would have us believe.
A normalised bigotry is indeed hiding in plain sight. It conceals genuine injustices. Diagnosing it is tricky because it involves confronting human shortcomings. Like any self-respecting epidemic, it also has a chillingly sterile name: identity politics.
Dictating that the most important thing about you is your race or gender, its most obvious manifestation is an infuriating “us versus them” narrative: all white people are racists and all ethnic minorities are victims.
“It is not the job of black people and ethnic minorities to educate white people on racism that is perpetrated by white people,” activist
Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu quipped on This Morning, in a Meghan Markle debate that has gone viral. She then went on to “educate” her audience at length, ironically railing against the “whitewashing” of unconscious racism and critiquing those who see the world “through the lens of white privilege” (as opposed to eyes, presumably owing to their bogeyman status).
She also refused to give any concrete examples of
racism against Meghan. In an attempt to cast a pseudo-light on white ignorance and bigotry, she breathtakingly exposed her own ignorance and bigotry about a country that is largely not racist.
Which hits on the outrageous truth about identity politics: the retrograde movement does not help us address racism, because it renounces both dialogue and empiricism. Who needs to provide evidence when one is clearly right? Who needs to have a debate when the answer is decided? Instead of the End of History, we’ve reached the End of Reason.
Far from being committed to understanding others, identity politics is obsessed with the self. Reflecting the cosmopolitan consumer’s spiritually desolate search for intellectually approved personal branding, it is little more than self-aggrandisement posing as self-awareness. But, perhaps most disturbing of all, it deems casual prejudice against “white society” as not only acceptable but positively necessary to fighting injustice.
Hence Sheffield University’s unblinking decision this week to employ “race equality champions” who will tackle “microaggressions” on campus – like asking people where they are really from and striking up conversations with black students about holidaying in Africa.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/16/time-call-intolerant-wokes-racist-double-standards/
