RACISM AS THE ULTIMATE INCORRECTNESS

Some excerpts from an article by Mick Hume. He refers to an undercover BBC program on which UK police trainess were heard to make racist remarks:

“Racism has been taken up as the cause of the moral crusade. Declaring that you are not a racist has become the bottom line that helps mark you out as one of the 'right-thinking people', in the words of one police chief this week. In an age when many of the old moral certainties have been badly eroded, distancing yourself from racist remarks and following the new etiquette is seen as one of the few ways to draw a clear line between Good and Evil.

That is why every British leader and institution is now so keen to swear their abhorrence of racism, as a pass to the moral high ground that might once have been provided by declaring their belief in God. It is a way of saying that we British might not know what we stand for these days, but at least we know we're not Nazis like Stephen Lawrence's murderers. (Although some might think that a pretty low foundation on which to try to build a national moral consensus.)

In the crisis sparked by the remarks of a few junior policemen, the authorities have been hoist with their own post-Macpherson petard, trampled by their own moral crusade. Having set up anti-racism as the one moral standard that none can be allowed to sin against, they feel obliged to come down hard on any hint of prejudice. It is their defensive reaction that has turned the row into a crisis, rather than anything some idiot boy copper said over Pot Noodles in his mate's bedroom. Thus a police force that survived the real battles of the inner-city riots and miners' strike of the 1980s is thrown into turmoil by a little television programme.

Those of us who have never quite shared the conviction that 'the British police are the best in the world' might not be too traumatised by the spectacle of the force turning in on itself. But we should also be clear that nothing good will come of all this. It will do nothing to combat racism or promote genuine equality. But it will reinforce dangerously authoritarian trends across society.

Some of the most worrying trends evident today are being promoted in the name of anti-racism - such as the injection of subjective, arbitrary elements into the law, the spread of conformist codes of conduct, the institutionalisation of mistrust and surveillance. And perhaps worst of all, the official anti-racism has established that people are now supposed to be judged more on their private thoughts than their public deeds. There is no benefit for any of us in this phoney moral crusade. It is the new thought police, rather than the old racist ones, who are running riot through Britain today.