Please read this interesting article published in the Guardian “Hideously diverse Britain: Who are you calling a racist? There’s racism and then there’s racial insensitivity, and it is important to distinguish between the two” by Hugh Muir.
As always, avoid reading the comments.
I’m going to quote and comment on the juiciest, and silliest, parts of this brief article.
Who is a racist? Is it the person who calls me “coloured”, or the cabbie who refuses to stop for a non-white fare? Is it Nick Griffin? Or the horsemen of the Ku Klux Klan? It could be any or all of them given the common usage, says Simon. Therein lies a problem. There isn’t much subtlety about it, he tells me. It’s the nuclear option, and sometimes the lack of nuance does more harm than good.
[Simon Wooley is an "equalities commissioner" I'm not sure what this is]
Lack of nuance. Hm. Let’s think about this for a second. For whom is racism, and discussions of racism, about nuance and “understanding” how racism works? Usually it’s white folks. So the victims or recipients of daily, personal, institutional and systemic racism are off to the side are they? Their experiences aren’t as important as understanding the white person’s perspective of these complex nuances of racism? Riiiiight.
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