barryqwalsh
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- Sep 30, 2014
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Nick Cater
Illustration: Eric Lobbecke
How dare our Prime Minister slander the abstemious Irish, a sober, temperate and respectable people healthy of mind, body and soul! Surely we are beyond the days when it was OK to cast aspersions on the tight-fisted Scots, the leek-munching Welsh or the sheep-doting Kiwis.
That, at least, is the view of the earnest progressives for whom progress towards a more inclusive society requires us to become as humourless as the Germans, as bland as the Belgians and as smug as the French.
What Tony Abbott was really saying by linking St Patrickâs Day with the consumption of Guinness, explained Tim Dick in The Sydney Morning Herald, was that the Irish are âlively, useless drunksâ.
It was a reminder that âjokes which appear innocuous to the teller can be hurtfulâ. Jokers like Abbott âdonât think theyâre being racistâ, says Dick, who plainly sees himself as an authority on the subject.
Abbott, it appears, was guilty of the newly minted crime of casual racism, a slur so subtle that ordinary people donât think itâs racist at all.
The difficulty of defining casual racism may seem to be a defect, but as Ken Minogue says in his incisive book The Servile Mind, imprecision âmakes the term âracismâ all the more useful as a tool of forensic attack and great caution is needed to avoid being charged with itâ.
How does one plead innocent against a charge of casual racism? You canât. Pleading innocence is what casual racists do because they lack the sensitivity to recognise their own guilt.
In the hands of the politically correct, an allegation of casual racism is a stop-writ to shut down discussion.
Citizens are put on notice every time they open their mouths; racism, like misogyny, is a reputation-destroying accusation and often a sackable offence.
The expansion of the race-speech moratorium to cover not just biological racism but cultural matters too has meant that the discussion we badly need to have about the place of Islam in modern Australian society was smothered before it began.
The recent atrocities in Sydney, Paris, Copenhagen and elsewhere demand a response that goes beyond candlelit vigils and Twitter handles. Yet every attempt to get the heart of the issue is muzzled by the imprecise rules of political correctness.
In Britain, however, some are now waking up to the damage this faux-tolerance is doing to the social fabric.
Last week Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, made some frank confessions in a Channel 4 documentary, Things We Wonât Say about Race That are True.
Phillips confessed he had once believed that if a government tackled discrimination with enough vigour, racial and religious divisions âwould just melt away in time because, after all, we were the same under the skinâ.
The London Tube bombings of July 7, 2005, forced him to think again.
âWe were faced with a single devastating question: if our multicultural dream was working so well, why had this happened?â he wrote in a preview to the documentary in The Sunday Times.
Phillips says while multiculturalism is beautiful in theory, in practice it is âa racket in which self-styled community leaders bargained for control over local authority funds that would prop up their own status and authorityâ. Meanwhile, the communities they claimed to represent âwere steadily shrinking in on themselves, trapping young people behind walls of tradition and deference to eldersâ.
The perverse and unintended consequence of the pursuit of diversity âis that our political and media classes have become terrified of discussing racial or religious differencesâ, writes Phillips.
The result has been frightening. The systematic grooming, sexual abuse and trafficking of young girls by gangs of mainly subcontinental men in Rotherham, Sheffield and other cities went unchecked for years because the authorities were frightened of being labelled racist.
âWe find it more and more difficult to address real problems in our society because we are afraid to describe them,â says Phillips. âAnd we have to face the political consequences of our mealy-mouthed approach to race.â The fear of frankness is not confined to Britain, says Phillips. It is fuelling the growth of âangry, nativist political movementsâ across Europe where âthe po-faced political correctness that cramps all the conventional parties is allowing these frauds to get away with itâ.
Phillips concludes: âIf we are to tackle the problems of racial equality, we at least have to be able to name the problem.â
The British, says Phillips, must âbecome more ready to offend each otherâ.
There are, fortunately, no signs of an insular, jingoistic political force coalescing around an anti-immigration sentiment in Australia. Yet there is no room for complacency, particularly when the Australian political class is squeamish about candid discussion.
In an ideal world, our diversity and inclusiveness professionals, such as Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, would be helping us through this minefield. Like Phillips, who once occupied a position similar to Soutphommasane, they would clarify the distinction between out-and-out racial prejudice and the legitimate discussion of cultural tensions.
Instead, our race-relations experts have put themselves on frontline duty, pencil and notebook in hand, policing the boundaries of acceptable speech.
After a series of anti-terror raids last September, Soutphommasane lectured against âill-judged statements that have inflamed sentimentsâ against Muslims, before giving politicians a stern ticking off.
âThere is a special responsibility for our elected representatives to set an example,â he wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. âNo one benefits from ignorant rabble-rousing. Social cohesion mustnât be sacrificed for sound bites.â No names, no pack-drill. Just an open-ended rebuke against âthe tone of leadershipâ and a warning ânot to judge entire communities by the actions of extremist minoritiesâ.
The Race Commissioner, then, has taken it on himself to determine what can be said about Islam and the manner in which it is said. No one elected him, he canât be sacked and those he rebukes find themselves reliving the experience of K in Franz Kafkaâs The Trial.
âBut Iâm not guilty,â said K. âThereâs been a mistake.â
âThat is true,â said the priest, âbut that is how the guilty speak.â
Nick Cater is executive director of Menzies Research Centre.
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- THE AUSTRALIAN
- MARCH 24, 2015 12:00AM
- 127 COMMENTS
Illustration: Eric Lobbecke
How dare our Prime Minister slander the abstemious Irish, a sober, temperate and respectable people healthy of mind, body and soul! Surely we are beyond the days when it was OK to cast aspersions on the tight-fisted Scots, the leek-munching Welsh or the sheep-doting Kiwis.
That, at least, is the view of the earnest progressives for whom progress towards a more inclusive society requires us to become as humourless as the Germans, as bland as the Belgians and as smug as the French.
What Tony Abbott was really saying by linking St Patrickâs Day with the consumption of Guinness, explained Tim Dick in The Sydney Morning Herald, was that the Irish are âlively, useless drunksâ.
It was a reminder that âjokes which appear innocuous to the teller can be hurtfulâ. Jokers like Abbott âdonât think theyâre being racistâ, says Dick, who plainly sees himself as an authority on the subject.
Abbott, it appears, was guilty of the newly minted crime of casual racism, a slur so subtle that ordinary people donât think itâs racist at all.
The difficulty of defining casual racism may seem to be a defect, but as Ken Minogue says in his incisive book The Servile Mind, imprecision âmakes the term âracismâ all the more useful as a tool of forensic attack and great caution is needed to avoid being charged with itâ.
How does one plead innocent against a charge of casual racism? You canât. Pleading innocence is what casual racists do because they lack the sensitivity to recognise their own guilt.
In the hands of the politically correct, an allegation of casual racism is a stop-writ to shut down discussion.
Citizens are put on notice every time they open their mouths; racism, like misogyny, is a reputation-destroying accusation and often a sackable offence.
The expansion of the race-speech moratorium to cover not just biological racism but cultural matters too has meant that the discussion we badly need to have about the place of Islam in modern Australian society was smothered before it began.
The recent atrocities in Sydney, Paris, Copenhagen and elsewhere demand a response that goes beyond candlelit vigils and Twitter handles. Yet every attempt to get the heart of the issue is muzzled by the imprecise rules of political correctness.
In Britain, however, some are now waking up to the damage this faux-tolerance is doing to the social fabric.
Last week Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, made some frank confessions in a Channel 4 documentary, Things We Wonât Say about Race That are True.
Phillips confessed he had once believed that if a government tackled discrimination with enough vigour, racial and religious divisions âwould just melt away in time because, after all, we were the same under the skinâ.
The London Tube bombings of July 7, 2005, forced him to think again.
âWe were faced with a single devastating question: if our multicultural dream was working so well, why had this happened?â he wrote in a preview to the documentary in The Sunday Times.
Phillips says while multiculturalism is beautiful in theory, in practice it is âa racket in which self-styled community leaders bargained for control over local authority funds that would prop up their own status and authorityâ. Meanwhile, the communities they claimed to represent âwere steadily shrinking in on themselves, trapping young people behind walls of tradition and deference to eldersâ.
The perverse and unintended consequence of the pursuit of diversity âis that our political and media classes have become terrified of discussing racial or religious differencesâ, writes Phillips.
The result has been frightening. The systematic grooming, sexual abuse and trafficking of young girls by gangs of mainly subcontinental men in Rotherham, Sheffield and other cities went unchecked for years because the authorities were frightened of being labelled racist.
âWe find it more and more difficult to address real problems in our society because we are afraid to describe them,â says Phillips. âAnd we have to face the political consequences of our mealy-mouthed approach to race.â The fear of frankness is not confined to Britain, says Phillips. It is fuelling the growth of âangry, nativist political movementsâ across Europe where âthe po-faced political correctness that cramps all the conventional parties is allowing these frauds to get away with itâ.
Phillips concludes: âIf we are to tackle the problems of racial equality, we at least have to be able to name the problem.â
The British, says Phillips, must âbecome more ready to offend each otherâ.
There are, fortunately, no signs of an insular, jingoistic political force coalescing around an anti-immigration sentiment in Australia. Yet there is no room for complacency, particularly when the Australian political class is squeamish about candid discussion.
In an ideal world, our diversity and inclusiveness professionals, such as Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, would be helping us through this minefield. Like Phillips, who once occupied a position similar to Soutphommasane, they would clarify the distinction between out-and-out racial prejudice and the legitimate discussion of cultural tensions.
Instead, our race-relations experts have put themselves on frontline duty, pencil and notebook in hand, policing the boundaries of acceptable speech.
After a series of anti-terror raids last September, Soutphommasane lectured against âill-judged statements that have inflamed sentimentsâ against Muslims, before giving politicians a stern ticking off.
âThere is a special responsibility for our elected representatives to set an example,â he wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. âNo one benefits from ignorant rabble-rousing. Social cohesion mustnât be sacrificed for sound bites.â No names, no pack-drill. Just an open-ended rebuke against âthe tone of leadershipâ and a warning ânot to judge entire communities by the actions of extremist minoritiesâ.
The Race Commissioner, then, has taken it on himself to determine what can be said about Islam and the manner in which it is said. No one elected him, he canât be sacked and those he rebukes find themselves reliving the experience of K in Franz Kafkaâs The Trial.
âBut Iâm not guilty,â said K. âThereâs been a mistake.â
âThat is true,â said the priest, âbut that is how the guilty speak.â
Nick Cater is executive director of Menzies Research Centre.
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