American liberals have been playing the “racism” card again, this time against the anti-government roots movement, the Tea Party. They’re almost all white folk, apparently, and they’re generally conservative, so, obviously, given half a chance, they’d be wearing white hoods and burning crosses on lawns.
According to Colbert King, an American commentator of some “eminence” (which is beginning to gain ground as a synonym for “dickheadedmess” in what an American might call our “back-asswards” era) the supporters of the racist Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, “smouldered with anger” and these Tea Party maniacs are “smouldering with anger”, so the Tea Party is a racist phenomenon, QED. Well, Colby plainly has a watertight case here: the Tea Party should disband its Nazi self at once and apologise and stop all that silly “smouldering”.
The only slight problem I have with Colbert King’s razor-sharp judgment and his awesome command of logic is that it strikes me as ever-so-slightly, just a tad, a teensie-weensie bit, a-dimple-on-a-pimple-on-a-sandfly’s nuts away from being… well, racist.
Now, I’d rather burn a cross on my own lawn (if I possessed one - a lawn, I mean) and cut off my own head than ever be accused of making an initial judgment about another human being on the basis of nothing more 57 years of personal experience of how people of various ethnic, geographical, or religious persuasions tend to behave. After all, why would any of us ever make judgements about anything based on something as deceptive and unreliable as what has happened to us in the course of our lives? We have experts and official agencies and government ministers to tell us what to think: and when have any of these sources given us any reason to doubt their judgment?
Wisdom flows from the state, not individuals: essentially, all judgments should be collective, not personal. It’s the so called Wisdom of Crowds at work here (well, when I say “crowd”, I obviously mean “political class” - you can’t trust us ordinary folk further than you can spit us!). In the world of social engineering - which is where we all live these days - belief and fact are the same thing: after all, if you’re a social engineer, our state schools are turning out brighter pupils, crime is falling, and the economy isn’t really jammed down the crapper.
The world should be seen afresh every morning: as we brush our teeth, we should, mentally, be brushing our minds free of the detritus of what experience has “taught” us. If a firm of decorators did a great job for us last time – and they happened to be Polish – how mad it would be to automatically opt for Polish decorators the next time you need something done. If you’ve always had a good experience owning German cars, how utterly foolish it would be to use that as a pretext for buying another BMW or Volkswagen. If the last time you attempted to pat a Rottweiler, it bit off your right hand, what would make you wary of using your left hand to pat the next one you meet (even if it’s called “Slasher”? And if you’ve always had particularly good experiences working with people who graduated from a particular university, or were members of a particular racial group, or hailed from a certain country, or were followers of a certain religion, how ludicrous, how narrow, how grotesquely unfair it would be to show any sort of natural preference for others of their ilk when it comes to hiring someone.
It would be as deranged as targeting young Muslim males at airport security checkpoints just because “experience” has shown that young Muslim males show a greater propensity than, say, old female Baptists for using planes to commit terrorist outrages.
A few years ago, after the 7/7 London bombings, and after some self-appointed, self-important “community leader” claiming to represent British Muslims had accused security forces of using the attacks as an excuse to “target” young Muslims, I asked a young Muslim of my acquaintance whether he was upset by this tendency to pick on his co-religionists. He said he positively welcomed it: “I have a wife and child, and I don’t want them to be killed. And I don’t want to die, either. So go ahead, concentrate on those who are most likely to kill us!”
What a racist!
Whenever someone obviously innocent is accused of racism, it reminds me of the most embarrassing mistake to ever happen on my watch during my TV News days (and I was responsible for my share). One night, I was the producer in charge of graphics, which meant I was supposed to make sure that no embarrassing mistakes went out on air. I’ve worked with some great designers, but a few of them - well, all, actually - tend not to see it as their job to check for sense: if it looks nice on the page, that’s their job done. On this particularly busy night, an Australia-Pakistan test match score graphic went out with England inadvertently substituted for Pakistan. My fault. (For some odd reason, cricket is a minefield: a colleague once caused the public to be informed that England had lost an ODI against Australia, when it was in fact the other way round - his career stalled, to put it mildly.)
The first telephone complaint about my mistake was received from a Pakistani gentleman living in London. He accused the BBC of doing it deliberately, because we were all - yes, you guessed it - racists! Several similar complaints followed.
Now, at last, I can reveal the truth: we planned it for weeks, me and John Birt and the Head of News and the whole of the BBC Board. Experience would suggest that the BBC is a left-of-centre organisation blindly devoted to egalitarianism in all its forms - but my revelation just goes to show you should never trust experience!
No comments:
Post a Comment