{"id":4255,"date":"2013-04-13T15:45:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T15:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4255"},"modified":"2013-04-13T16:05:32","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T16:05:32","slug":"anti-racism-an-industry-in-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4255","title":{"rendered":"Anti-racism: an industry in decline"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brad Paisley and LL Cool J<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like coal mining in the Eighties, the anti-racism industry is in decline. Governments can no longer afford to subsidise \u201cdiversity workshops\u201d for which there\u2019s no demand. Especially from young people.<\/p>\n

On both sides of the Atlantic, teenagers and students are giving the finger (as they might put it) to the hypersensitive race relations ideology drilled into them by their teachers. They laugh at jokes that, a decade ago, would have been regarded as racist. If, after a few drinks, one of their friends crosses the line into ethnic stereotyping, they\u2019re more like to argue with them than to notify the campus police.<\/p>\n

The disintegration of traditional anti-racism was brought home to Americans this week when Brad Paisley, a young country music star, and LL Cool J, a black rap artist, released a song entitled Accidental Racist. In it, Paisley clumsily tries to explain why he\u2019s attracted to the Confederate flag. He sings: \u201cI\u2019m proud of where I\u2019m from but not everything we\u2019ve done\/And it ain\u2019t like you and me can rewrite history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cool J replies: \u201cJust because my pants are saggin\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m up to no good\u2009\/You should try to get to know me, I really wish you would\u2026 If you don\u2019t judge my gold chains\/ I\u2019ll forget the iron chains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cue melodramatic gasps of\u00a0horror from progressive columnists. But what\u2019s interesting is that most fans of Brad Paisley and LL Cool J (and there isn\u2019t much overlap between the two groups) aren\u2019t offended. A white singer takes grudging pride in the Confederate South? A black singer makes fun of his own sagging pants and refuses to harp on about slavery? Cool. Or at least, like, whatever.<\/p>\n

This nonchalance confuses the elderly activists who, until recently, lumbered from one workshop to another, pocketing wads of cash in the process: \u201cracial sensitivity\u201d doesn\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n

I put those words in quotation marks because these bores did nothing to promote harmony. On the contrary, ethnic minorities were taught to be ultra-sensitive towards unintended slights (as opposed to real racism, which they didn\u2019t need lessons in identifying).<\/p>\n

As for white people, it was all about guilt-tripping. Chief executives booked themselves on reprogramming courses, patting themselves on the back. (One of the benefits of austerity, in my opinion, is that firms can no longer afford these feelgood exercises.) In schools, lessons focused relentlessly on race, with risible results. \u201cOur English teacher would read poems by black authors in a Jamaican accent,\u201d recalls a young colleague. \u201cNo one\u00a0could keep a straight face.\u201d<\/p>\n

This readiness to mock pompous anti-racists isn\u2019t evidence of hard prejudice. Old-style \u201cracialism\u201d, as it used to be called, is pretty much dead, in the sense that fewer and fewer of us are interested in the colour of people\u2019s skin. The word \u201cdarkies\u201d is antiquated as well as nasty. On the other hand, if young people of any background want to tease members of another group for its annoying or anti-social habits, then they go right ahead. And if they feel threatened by aggressive behaviour \u2013 for example by\u00a0Islamists trying to segregate\u00a0men and women at London University, as happened last month \u2013 then they won\u2019t be silenced by right-on quangos.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not denying that, in the heat of the moment, horrible things are said. This is what happens in a (mostly) colour-blind society that allows free speech, as opposed to one governed by the phoney etiquette of the grievance-mongers. But, in the words of the song, racism is increasingly accidental rather than intentional. Surely that\u2019s\u00a0progress. – Damian Thompson,\u00a0From Saturday’s Daily Telegraph<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like coal mining in the Eighties, the anti-racism industry is in decline. Governments can no longer afford to subsidise \u201cdiversity workshops\u201d for which there\u2019s no demand. Especially from young people. On both sides of the Atlantic, teenagers and students are giving the finger (as they might put it) to the hypersensitive race relations ideology drilled … Continue reading “Anti-racism: an industry in decline”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[2675,2674,2676,2673,157,2532],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-accidental-racist","tag-brad-paisley","tag-confederate-flag","tag-ll-cool-j","tag-racism","tag-slavery"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/ll_cool_j_and_brad_paisley.jpg.size_.xxlarge.promo_.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4260,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions\/4260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}