On the day in late October 2009, when The Myth of Racist Kids was launched, an early indication of the hot tempered reaction it would later unleash was posted on a teaching union website:  "To seek to dismiss racist taunts as 'playground spats' shows a breathtaking degree of ignorance and irresponsibility" said NASUWT general secretary Chis Keates in a union press release. 

Two more reactions appeared on November 2nd and 5th respectively. One was posted on the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) site, the other on the website of consultancy firm INSTED a key-player in the provision of 'diversity' advice to government and education authorities.  I discuss both these below.

What I think is interesting is the way today's advocates of 'official' anti-racism seem locked-in to a very strict party-line which views racism as endemic and state-managed race-relations as of vital importance.  In this mind-set anyone who suggests that racism has dramatically receded over the past decade is just plain ignorant.  To dare to criticise government race-relations policy is nothing short of irresponsible.

And so at the very point that debate could emerge over the racialising consequences of official anti-racism in schools, it gets shut down - the inference being 'look, there's no alternative ok! you either support these policies or you're part of some malign attack on anti-racism'. 

Professor of race relations Louis Kushnick sums up the blunt necessity of racist incident reporting: "If you dont have monitoring you have no way of identifying the scale of the problem.  And if you leave it to schools there's no reward for flagging it up".   In the post-Macpherson world-view 'the scale of the problem' is set in stone and the social science is settled.  This world-view sees little point debating anything with critics so manifestly guilty of 'racism denial'. 

With all crticism brushed aside, policy assumes the virtuous role of a health campaign ever watchful for signs of the virus and keen to immunise the vulnerable against its ravages.{jcomments on}