Yesterday, after I wrote that “the EU, multiculturalism, the Equalities Act, anti-racism, hate crimes, bastardised human rights, Marx, Marxist feminism, Marcuse and Gramsci” all belong in history’s dustbin, lots of people screamed: “If you’re anti-anti-racism that means you’re pro-racism!”
So I thought I’d help your deprogramming with a little explanation.
“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism; rather it is the name sometimes given to a particular authoritarian view of what racism is, and how it can be combated.
The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.
“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.
The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.
The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.
In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).
A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!
This is “anti-racism”, and it is heavily influenced by a Marxist interpretation of race. Oliver Cox’s 1948 work Class, Caste and Race presents the idea that race originates in “a practical exploitative relationship” used to justify the exploitation of one group by another as part of capitalism.
Racism is created to justify imperialism, exploitation, and scapegoating when things go wrong, and to divide the population to prevent class consciousness from forming.
Racism, therefore, is a product of western, European society, which is why those schooled in British academia are so bad at seeing racism when it is committed by non-whites, because only whites can really be racist.
This, itself, is a racist idea, because it views only whites as being fully sentient actors capable of committing right and wrong, when of course racism, like all human feelings and failings, is universal.
So if you consider yourself an “anti-racist”, you are, in fact, a racist.
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