Introduction
After the death of George Floyd in May 2020, every institution in Britain and America, especially the media, dramatically stepped up their campaign against white people and white society. This is illustrated in the following extract from a “Black Lives Matter” diary covering seven days in June and July 2020. Note that I see political correctness (now called “wokeness”) as a collection of ideologies dedicated to the destruction of Western civilisation, of which anti-racism is the leading one.
June 30th 2020: The BBC on racism in the Met
In the genre of “lived experience”, the BBC tells a lengthy story about the “racism” faced by Shabnam Chaudhri, a Muslim who became one of the Metropolitan Police’s most senior female Asian officers.[i] Apparently her experience “highlights concerns about the treatment of BAME [Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic] officers in the UK”. I summarise the story as told.
Shabnam Chaudhri was a natural detective who joined the police so that others wouldn’t have to suffer as her family had from racial abuse and attacks. For ten years she put up with her colleagues’ racism before making an official complaint in 1999 after someone deliberately mispronounced the word “Shi’ites” and referred to Muslim headwear as tea cosies. When she complained, she was made to feel unwanted, so moved to another borough, only to find that her reputation as a troublemaker had preceded her. She won her hearing in 2005, but the rot in the Met was deep: ten years later it was scolded again about complainants being victimised. But it did set up a Discrimination Investigation Unit and tried to “address the inequalities for black and minority officers”, says Shabnam Chaudhri, and “introduced good processes”.
She completed a course “designed to help BAME officers to progress in their careers” and was given a role at the Inspectorate of Constabulary, but then the offer was withdrawn. The vetting process indicated that she knew someone whose family might be involved in crime. She was eventually classed as low risk but by then it was too late. This showed, she feels, that the culture of the Met fostered unfounded prejudices about non-white officers. Today, says the BBC, all officers have training in unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion.
Shabnam Chaudhri
According to the BBC, many non-white officers have experienced problems with career development. Specialist units are dominated by whites. There has only ever been one black chief constable. But the Minister is bringing in more diverse candidates.
Shabnam Chaudhri eventually obtained a position as an acting superintendent, but just as she applied for a permanent role someone claimed that she had been misrecording her work hours and falsifying entries on a computer system. She was placed under investigation for gross misconduct. “I was devastated!” But she won an award for her “passionate work tackling hate crime”. After being cleared of the gross misconduct charge but found guilty of misdemeanours regarding timekeeping, she was given the superintendent job, but the investigation had taken its toll. She was diagnosed with PTSD, got tinnitus and often cried. She would have loved to have remained in the police for 35 years but had to leave after thirty, otherwise she’d have been constantly having to watch her back.
So the BBC, while seeking to arouse pity and admiration for this woman, illustrates the corrupting effect of racial politics, which had gone far enough by 1989, when she joined. According to a book published that year, special treatment for non-whites was already creating resentment among white officers.[ii] A Woman Police Constable wondered why her non-white peers diddn’t have to study every night as she did. A superintendent put discipline problems with black officers down to their having been accepted on lower standards. An Indian WPC didn’t hold with the discrimination.
But one Home Secretary after another forced the Met to give non-whites more and more special treatment in the form of the special course mentioned here, designed to push them up the ranks at the expense of whites, until by 1996 it was offering young black men a free ten-week course to help them pass the recruitment test.[iii] In 1998 it implemented a plan to “attract, develop and retain minority ethnic recruits, particularly at a senior level”.[iv] In 1999 Jack Straw as Home Secretary introduced racial quotas.[v]
Yet still the BBC promotes the anti-racist ideas that non-white officers are mistreated, that the police’s culture needs to be transformed, that the police aren’t doing enough to investigate their own racism, that special measures for non-whites are a good idea, that anti-racist training for all is needed and that it is a scandal for police units in a mainly white country to be led by whites.
The article goes on to say that a disproportionate number of misconduct cases involve non-white officers, suggesting that these officers are being racially persecuted. It is amazing how the BBC can incline its readers towards this interpretation rather than the more natural one that a disproportionate amount of misconduct is on the part of non-whites, which is as true of the police as it is of doctors and solicitors.[vi] In the 1990s black doctors were six times likelier than white ones to be disciplined by the General Medical Council.[vii] Examples of miscreant solicitors include the Fiona Onasanya MP, who was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice;[viii] Qunmber Bin Ehsan, who was struck off after taking half his fee for a case up front and then doing no work on it; and Raj Rajan Mariaddan, who was struck off for trying to avoid repaying a debt by claiming to have no bank account.
The article ends by quoting the Minister for Crime and Policing saying that reforms have been introduced to make the misconduct process more “proportionate”, which means rigging it to equalise the rate at which the races are investigated, which will mean turning a blind eye to non-white offenders. I wonder how many people understand how anti-racism is used systematically to corrupt our institutions.
June 30th 2020: RADA’s cultural revolution
This is the most institutionally masochistic thing I’ve seen so far. Edward Kemp, the Director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, writes: “We are aware that RADA has been and currently is institutionally racist. We are profoundly sorry for the role we have played in the traumatic and oppressive experiences of our current and past Black students, graduates and staff.”[ix] Well, absolutely! You can see the signs of trauma in the face of every black person who has been through drama school.
Black British actors and actresses “traumatised” by racism
Kemp goes on to apologise for RADA’s “inadequate response” to Black Lives Matter and to “recognise the need for urgent and fundamental learning and change”. He apologises unreservedly for RADA’s failure to be a “safe and inclusive environment for Black staff and students”. He gives no examples of RADA’s alleged wrongdoing.
But he promises to make anti-racism a priority ar RADA; to commission specialists to conduct a root-and-branch structural reform to end institutional racism; to decolonise the curriculum; to increase the numbers of black people in senior roles; and to train staff in understanding white privilege and equality.
The actor David Cann comments: “The format of confession, contrition, and penance is frighteningly reminiscent of China’s 1968 cultural revolution when Chairman Mao’s Red Guards pulled the professional classes from their offices, beat them, forced them to cry on their knees in public and made them apologise for their ‘sins’”.
I have heard it said that the reason people like Edward Kemp do these things is not that they are cowards who cave in to pressure so much as that they were already revolutionaries, having been trained by agencies like Common Purpose and put in place through entryism ready to go off like bombs when something like the present situation is created.
June 30th 2020: Darren Grimes and David Starkey
Darren Grimes interviewed the historian David Starkey, who dangerously pointed out that slavery did not amount to genocide, “otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damned blacks in Africa”; that the people who kill young black men “in terrifyingly large numbers” in London are other young black men; and that the black nurse-heroine Mary Seacole was not a nurse.[x] She ran the officers’ mess in the Crimea, “keeping the officers supplied with alcohol, brandy and cigars while Florence Nightingale was desperately trying to manage a great hospital, desperately trying to reform nursing, anaesthesia and the whole business of antiseptics”. As he pointed out, the “enormous” statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas’s Hospital “completely overwhelms” that of Florence Nightingale elsewhere in London.
July 1st 2020: Conversations with Coleman Hughes
I’ve watched a video where Coleman Hughes talks to John McWhorter — another bright black guy — and one where he talks to Sean Carroll, who is white.[xi] They discussed anti-racism, missing essential points because, I think, they won’t use the concept of race.
Taking the two conversations together, everyone accepted that groups differ so that no two are likely to be in the same position, but they didn’t say what kind of groups they were talking about. Racial groups? Groups defined by culture? Leaving this unclear prevented them from asking how race and culture are related. For them, it seemed, culture comes out of nowhere.
They wondered how the “stereotype” of East Asians being smart could have arisen, not asking whether it could have arisen from East Asians being smart. They put it down their work ethic, a cultural explanation: anything to avoid mentioning race. They mentioned black boys’ refusal to apply themselves at school, which they would see as acting white, but didn’t ask what might explain this attitude. They misdescribed stereotypes as entailing the idea, for example, that every single Asian is smart and every single black person stupid. Yet Hughes didn’t reject the possible validity of stereotypes, saying that they reflected the mind’s pattern-recognition function. Reasonably enough, he thought the stereotypes would only change once the patterns changed, presumably meaning the behaviour patterns of the races.
When he wondered how far unequal outcomes could be explained by discrimination, Carroll said he thought we should always assume that this was to blame. Has he ever seen any discrimination, for example from teachers, that could explain the races’ different outcomes? I certainly haven’t.
Hughes pointed out that in some countries discriminated-against groups outperform their discriminators, as the Chinese do in Malaysia, but Carroll stuck to his discrimination theory. It was discrimination, he thought, that explained the scarcity of women in science since it was only in the 1970s that Princeton started admitting women to science courses. What a strange mind he has! He finds it more credible to attribute women’s choices to the fact that they’ve only been able to study science at Princeton for fifty years than to their interests.
They were almost entirely politically naive. White guilt was mentioned but not identified as the pivot of racial politics, which itself wasn’t mentioned. No one seemed to realise that white guilt is deliberately cultivated and exploited in the never-ending process whereby blacks extort money, power and other resources from their foolish hosts. Nor did anyone touch on affirmative action or therefore see it as an instance of this process. They failed to analyse the term “institutional racism” as a device for gaining preferences or increased preferences for blacks through the idea that their poor performance is the fault of whites.
July 2nd 2020: Paul Weston
Paul Weston reflects on what we have learned from Black Lives Matter, namely that we are all guilty, all the time. Historical racism, structural racism, systemic racism, unconscious racism, subconscious racism: we are guilty of them all for being white.
He offers tips on how to be an anti-racist. In the morning, look at your wicked whiteness in the mirror, remind yourself that you’re a racist and vow to overcome the sin. This will make your unconscious racism conscious so that you can attack it head-on. When you get to work, make sure you see everyone as an oppressor or oppressed. If someone wishes you a cheery good morning, reply: “A good morning for you, perhaps, but not so good for people of colour, held down and trampled on by the repressive forces of white privilege!” Or you might say: “Morning Bill, structural racism is endemic, isn’t it?” If anyone hesitates to confess to their racism, shout “Racist!” and report them to HR for racially aggravated hostility. Very droll.
He mocks the television news for presenting Black Lives Matter as a “politically impartial human rights movement driven by a desire to protect the lives of all people of colour, or at least black people of colour, or at the very least black people of colour who aren’t policemen or policewomen”. We must not question the sincerity of those who project the message of collective white guilt.
Paul Weston
July 3d 2020: David Starkey cancelled
David Starkey has been “cancelled” for referring to all the “damned blacks in Africa”. He has lost his invitations to speak, his book deals, his honours and his position at Cambridge University.
This shows the dishonesty of political correctness. He is supposedly being punished for verbally abusing black people, as though to ask where one’s damned glasses were would be to abuse one’s glasses. He is actually being punished for exposing politically correct myths as myths. According to the myth, Mary Seacole was a nurse, and moreover a greater one than Florence Nightingale. According to the myth, black people are victims, not aggressors, therefore young black men can’t be killed by other young black men. According to the myth, the transatlantic slave trade was the worst crime against humanity ever committed, therefore we should regard it as a genocide.
July 5th 2020: The long march
In a New Culture Forum video, Marc Sidwell explains the long march through the institutions.[xii] Melanie Phillips thinks that the West let it happen because the elite, demoralised after seeing the holocaust emerge from itself, was vulnerable to a set of ideas to which it otherwise wouldn’t have given house room, which got into our institutions and turned their values upside down. I suspect that the elite’s demoralisation did not result from seeing the holocaust emerge from itself so much as from hearing stories about it.
But she rightly points out that we’ve been preparing for today for decades. She was reporting on the subversion of British education in the 1980s, when children were taught that their country was drenched in imperial or post-imperial sin, and now we’re seeing the complete collapse of institutions in the face of violence. She points out that one can’t debate with the Left because they won’t take part, which is because they know their position is built on sand. They limit themselves to insult and character assassination.
July 6th 2020: Bianca Williams
Black people have been demanding exemption from the law on account of their race, and being given it, for so long that it’s not surprising when the athlete Bianca Williams calls it outrageous and disgusting for the police to stop black drivers who look suspicious.[xiii] The male athlete who was with her when the police stopped their Mercedes thinks they did it because he “looks like someone they’re after”. How he thinks they could have seen him through the car’s blacked-out windows I do not know, nor do I know why he would object to the police stopping people who look like pe
[i] BBC, June 30th 2020, “My 30-year struggle with racism in the Metropolitan police”, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53224394.
[ii] Roger Graef, Talking Blues: The Police in Their Own Words, London: Collins Harvill, 1989: pp. 134-38.
[iii] Telegraph, Feb. 26th 1996, “Police woo unemployed blacks”, http://telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=001868173118697%rtmo=qu…/ncoppa25.htm.
[iv] Metropolitan Police, March 15th 1999, A Police Service for All the People: Report of the MPS Ethnic Minority (Recruitment and Advancement) Working Group, http://www.met.police.uk/police/mps/mps/press/1099.htm.
[v] Home Office, March 1999, Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Home Secretary’s Action Plan.
[vi] History Debunked, March 19th 2022, “How solicitors in Britain have changed in recent years (and not for the better)”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgi3qgNYmk.
[vii] In 1999 the British Medical Association gave this as its reason for finding the National Health Service to be “institutionally racist” (Telegraph, Feb. 23rd 1999, “NHS stands guilty of racism too, say doctors”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1999/02/23/ncon423.html).
[viii] She didn’t resign as an MP, though, saying that she needed the income.
[ix] Ikon London Magazine, June 30th 2020, Email from the Director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, https://www.ikonlondonmagazine.com/rada-goes-woke/. This is mentioned in Counter-Currents, March 14th 2023, “Institutional Racism Explained”, https://counter-currents.com/2023/03/institutional-racism-explained/.
[x] Reasoned, June 30th 2020, “Dr David Starkey: Black Lives Matter Aims To Delegitimate British History”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tVjZ9hA4SQ.
[xi] Coleman Hughes (1), Jan. 15th 2020, “Has Anti-Racism Become A New Religion? with John McWhorter (Ep.2)”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPiNiTwf5bM; (2) Feb. 19th 2020, “Where Do Morals Come From? | Sean M. Carroll (Ep.4) with Sean Carroll”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HCUAR1vH_M.
[xii] The New Culture Forum Channel, July 5th 2020, “How Do We Reverse The Left’s Long March and Take Back Control Of Britain’s Institutions?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdyWlCeFiZ0. More often associated with Antonio Gramsci, the phrase “the long march through the institutions” was coined by Rudi Dutschke to describe the strategy of infiltrating society’s institutions so as to subvert it and prepare it for revolution.
[xiii] The Sun, “Team GB sprinter Bianca Williams calls for police commissioner to step down after stop and search”, July 6th 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoC3_Qcl_SA.
