I recently had an interesting discussion on race and political correctness with a black friend I shall describe as a political agnostic. A successful banker by day, he called me to complain about a black work colleague who, when recently stopped by a white traffic cop for breaking a driving rule in London, had promptly whipped out the race card: ‘Why did you stop me? Is it because you saw a black man driving an expensive car?’
All In Britain Posts
Trevor Phillips once said to me – only half joking – that newspapers should have identity correspondents, just as they have economics or environment correspondents. Certainly there appears to be an inexhaustible appetite on the part of media outlets for stories that focus on social divisions, real or imagined. Usually these are framed as moral parables featuring virtuous victims, usually female, ethnic minority or gay, and contemptible wrong-doers who are male, white or straight. Sometimes the perpetrator is institutional – often, as with the Windrush generation controversy, the British state itself.
Over a number of years, the artist, Franklyn Rodgers, photographed his mother Loretta and her close circle of friends, building up an extraordinary series of large-scale portraits. The size and grandiosity of the works combine with a remarkable intimacy, achieved by the artist’s close relationships with these women.
Shelby Steele argues that the combination of a black power ideology and white guilt (or more accurately white fear of the stigma of racism) has thwarted the promise of the civil rights era to create a post-racial world.
It has long been a curatorial fantasy of mine to organise a re-staging of a boxing match that took place in 1972 between the German artist Joseph Beuys, regarded as a giant of modern art, with a local art student of his.
Is The Guardian immoral or amoral? Guardian writers and the editorial team know exactly what they are doing. They are the truly wicked.
Race, region, gender identity and sexuality are what matter in this culture war waged by the social justice warriors.
Our values today are being driven not by morality, rationality or philosophy but by the harsh, crude and bitter outpourings of petulant and snarling individuals.
But the EU is a very modern empire which extends its power through regulation and bureaucracy not with armies.