Posted 24th September 2010
The issue of ‘racist kids’ resurfaced in the media again yesterday, prompted by a Daily Mail piece which was itself prompted by some excellent writing by several black and Asian authors in this months issue of Prospect Magazine. In a live LBC phone-in I was amazed at the muddled-up defence of government racist incident reporting in primaries and nurseries put forward by Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism. LBC presenter Petrie Hosken was incredulous that schools and nurseries were being pressurised to chase down “racist” incidents. Weyman’s contribution to the discussion could have been written for him by state policymakers who take the view that racism must be ‘nipped in the bud’ at the earliest age and government regulation is the only way to go about it.
The idea that racism incubates in little kids and, without early years intervention, spills into adulthood is daft. Petrie wondered if Weyman agreed that as far as everyday racism is concerned society had improved considerably over recent decades: Weyman (aged 46) said this: “Of course there’s been changes. When I was at school there was none of this [state intervention]. It was terrible the level of racial bullying… [ ] The reason why [society] has changed is because things have been implemented in order to stop the level of racism as existed then …”
Hmm, strange that he feels government intervention on recording and reporting all incidents of childish banter and name-calling (which only began in 2002) has made the world a better place since his schooldays in the 1970s? And surely - following this argument - the very absence of in-school official anti-racism back in Weyman’s day would have allowed a generation of kids (untouched by our caring state’s ‘nip it in the bud’ procedures) to flower into a generation of racist adults? (We didn't).
Stranger still that Weyman, a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party, would then say “We have to accept there are a number of parents that are racist, that teach their children to be racist and what the school has to do [ ] is to try to adjust those things… [ ] The best time to deal with it is not when they’re 17 - not when they’re adults because usually by then its too late”. Too late? I guess if we encounter a racist adult we should just scream 'nazi' at them - or thump them. In one stroke Weyman signs up to the view that the source of British racism emanates from ‘the parents’ and that its only state intervention at the earliest age that can save us from ourselves (is 'parents' code for 'the ignorant lower orders' Weyman?). Perhaps Unite Against Fascism should help the state out by diverting its efforts into opening up UAF sunday schools and kindergartens?
Of course individual prejudices against ethnic minorities do persist and sometimes take an offensive or violent form. But today, it’s the rarity of this kind of prejudice that makes it so shocking to us. The significant change is that individual racism no longer enjoys official sanction – and the experience of a growing melting pot of diversity is partly responsible for this (and something to celebrate). We have to avoid the copy and paste mentality that harks back to a time when racism was a social force in society (driven along by politicians, magistrates and the police). If we don’t do this we risk buying-in to the new ‘official anti-racism’ ever eager to confer the state with moral superiority over the ‘bigoted masses’. Advocates of official in-school racist incident reporting are all too happy to re-locate racism as purely a human flaw or social illness (and often hint that working class families are its epicentre). In the process we are discretely invited to approve measures – as Weyman Bennett did on LBC – that “track” and label kids as in some way tainted or infected. The top-down ‘social force’ that minorities and left-wing groups so stridently opposed in the past is thus swapped-out by the state with the idea that racism's social force independently resides in you and me and our children.
The playground is a messy, exuberant place full of banter and name-calling. Only a tiny number of the 35,000 incidents reported last year could ever be reasonably ascribed the term “racism”. And yet these figures are routinely used to open the gate to race-awareness interventions that threaten to racialise a generation of kids more culturally and biologically mixed and more capable of transcending race that at any time in British history.
(listen to Weyman Bennett on LBC here)
