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Political correctness
Nov. 2nd, 2004 11:54 pmIsn't it funny how increasing 'liberalisation' often means the exact opposite of what was intended? Especially bad is how a drive to be inclusive and tolerant actually just means a different kind of intolerance.
In Holland, a country famed for being supposedly progressive and open-minded, it seems like they have a problem of murdering anyone who speaks their mind about a problem. Today it was Theo van Gogh and a few years back it was Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn especially was vilified for being 'far right' because of his anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views, with people conveniently forgetting he was gay, claimed to dislike Islam because of its discrimination against women, and his party was full of black people who believed in his policies.
Then you have positive discrimination applied to communities. I remember a local issue where the influx of students was being blamed for the decline of certain suburbs around here. I could understand people complaining that they were noisy and that sort of thing, but one of the arguments was that students were essentially taking over communities and changing their character. This sort of argument could theoretically and validly be levelled at, for example, poor families, or South Asian families, because they too could change the structure of the community. And indeed they have done, if you look at the inner city areas of Nottingham today. But they are not allowed to be talked of in that way.
More interesting spin (or anti-spin?) applied to the news; a while back there were several allegations of the UK police being 'institutionally racist', implying that not only were a lot of the police racist but that the very structure encouraged racism. Fair enough, that's probably true, and systems are slowly being added to try and fix this. One such system is the roleplaying test that is applied to new recruits to the force, to test their 'diversity'. In the last year, out of the 145 recruits who failed that part of the overall testing procedure, 124 were white and 21 were black or Asian. So just under 15% of the recruits who failed on racism/sexism/sexual orientation/discrimination grounds were non-white. Compare this to the statistic that 9.8% of recruits from 2002/2003 are from such ethnic minorities. But I doubt anyone is going to speak up on why non-white recruits seem to fail this test almost 65% more often than they should be expected to, all other things being equal. Maybe the test's flawed - maybe it's not.
I was reviewing the various political parties' manifestos recently and I nearly decided that the Green Party would get my vote in future, until I noticed that they lied about immigration/asylum to be politically correct. One such quote is 'Compared to other European countries Britain does not take in a huge number of asylum seekers.' Which other countries? Only France takes in more, and that is only after a change over the last year. (Stats available at UN Refugee agency.) They're making out that wanting to reduce unnecessary immigration is racist, which is ridiculous. I see it in terms of the economy, in terms of overcrowding, of linguistic, social, and cultural differences, etc. I also see it in terms of need, and most of these people don't qualify as true asylum seekers in the way the UN means the term. I don't care what colour the people are.
The political correctness thing has to stop. Immigration is a problem that needs solving in some way and white people are not the only ones who can be discriminatory. We're already starting to see the results of this 'paralysis through tolerance', where the only people who dare voice any opinion that might possibly affect a protected minority are the extremists. We need moderate but practical and real approaches to problems, not people on one side pretending the problem doesn't exist so as to pander to the useless liberals, and people on the other side playing on the fears of the ignorant and inflaming the anger of the intolerant.
In Holland, a country famed for being supposedly progressive and open-minded, it seems like they have a problem of murdering anyone who speaks their mind about a problem. Today it was Theo van Gogh and a few years back it was Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn especially was vilified for being 'far right' because of his anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views, with people conveniently forgetting he was gay, claimed to dislike Islam because of its discrimination against women, and his party was full of black people who believed in his policies.
Then you have positive discrimination applied to communities. I remember a local issue where the influx of students was being blamed for the decline of certain suburbs around here. I could understand people complaining that they were noisy and that sort of thing, but one of the arguments was that students were essentially taking over communities and changing their character. This sort of argument could theoretically and validly be levelled at, for example, poor families, or South Asian families, because they too could change the structure of the community. And indeed they have done, if you look at the inner city areas of Nottingham today. But they are not allowed to be talked of in that way.
More interesting spin (or anti-spin?) applied to the news; a while back there were several allegations of the UK police being 'institutionally racist', implying that not only were a lot of the police racist but that the very structure encouraged racism. Fair enough, that's probably true, and systems are slowly being added to try and fix this. One such system is the roleplaying test that is applied to new recruits to the force, to test their 'diversity'. In the last year, out of the 145 recruits who failed that part of the overall testing procedure, 124 were white and 21 were black or Asian. So just under 15% of the recruits who failed on racism/sexism/sexual orientation/discrimination grounds were non-white. Compare this to the statistic that 9.8% of recruits from 2002/2003 are from such ethnic minorities. But I doubt anyone is going to speak up on why non-white recruits seem to fail this test almost 65% more often than they should be expected to, all other things being equal. Maybe the test's flawed - maybe it's not.
I was reviewing the various political parties' manifestos recently and I nearly decided that the Green Party would get my vote in future, until I noticed that they lied about immigration/asylum to be politically correct. One such quote is 'Compared to other European countries Britain does not take in a huge number of asylum seekers.' Which other countries? Only France takes in more, and that is only after a change over the last year. (Stats available at UN Refugee agency.) They're making out that wanting to reduce unnecessary immigration is racist, which is ridiculous. I see it in terms of the economy, in terms of overcrowding, of linguistic, social, and cultural differences, etc. I also see it in terms of need, and most of these people don't qualify as true asylum seekers in the way the UN means the term. I don't care what colour the people are.
The political correctness thing has to stop. Immigration is a problem that needs solving in some way and white people are not the only ones who can be discriminatory. We're already starting to see the results of this 'paralysis through tolerance', where the only people who dare voice any opinion that might possibly affect a protected minority are the extremists. We need moderate but practical and real approaches to problems, not people on one side pretending the problem doesn't exist so as to pander to the useless liberals, and people on the other side playing on the fears of the ignorant and inflaming the anger of the intolerant.
