The opening paragraphs are about the fact that Smith had found out that the next-door neighbour at his first home was a hard-core BNP racist. The fact that Smith only found this out after he had moved to other accommodation, and the neighbour had moved away from Lewes, suggests that maybe the neighbour felt less welcome in Lewes than Smith did, possibly because there were only four other BNP members in the town. But far be it from Smith to let a little detail like that spoil the hook of his self-pitying article.
Lewes is famous for its anti-Catholic bigotry, says Smith, because of the annual Guy Fawkes parade. Hmm - let's see; a street party in which people dress up in whatever costume takes their fancy, on the anniversary of the most famous of many Roman Catholic attempts to destroy the Protestant settlement by assassination, is a sign of anti-Catholic bigotry? How about it being a celebration of the defeat of Roman Catholic bigotry, as clearly expressed by the Inquisition, that mortally threatened the independent existence of Britain?
Smith worries about his young son because, he says, "it's easy for mixed-race children to get, well, mixed up and unsure of who they are. We wondered how his identity would be shaped in Lewes". One would presume that his identity will be shaped by the example of loving mixed-race parents, not by Lewes; but if the community is so important, then maybe moving to a lily-white town was not such a bright idea.
Unless, of course, the idea was to get the boy away from the peer pressure of black youths in London, which does appear to be the secret fear Smith dare not express because - well - it's racist, innit?
And on and on it goes. Clumsy efforts by well-meaning ladies to make Petal feel welcome simply underline the fact that they are aware she is black. How racist! So is the resentment of Lewesians for c*nts who commute to work in London. One of his son's white friends commenting on their physical differences - that's racist too. A teacher pulls his son out from under a desk, a parent upbraids his son by mistake for a schoolyard confrontation with her son, both of whom apologize - all indisputable proof of racism.
Oh - and so is the use of the word "coloured". Are all those who are not lily-white best described as "black"? I seem to recall that Guyana is viciously divided on racial-political grounds between the descendants of black slaves and the descendants of Indian indentured workers brought in because the blacks didn't want to work on the plantations any more after they were emancipated. And that even in the "black" communities of the West Indies, it was - maybe still is - common to have separate beauty contests for different shades of black.
That being, of course, the cultural identity his son must prize alongside that of the country his maternal grandparents came to for a better life. It's all about Smith's son; very little about his three daughters - isn't that indisputable proof of sexism?
What we really need, says Smith, is to take a leaf from the astoundingly successful race industry in the USA and adopt Critical Race Theory, which says race is at the centre of everything, and even trumps class as a determinant in people's lives. So that racist Jew Marx got it wrong, then?
I am in no doubt that middle-class black or mixed-race young males have a problem with stereotyping - but the problem lies in a cohort that commits a staggeringly disproportionate amount of the really nasty crimes crimes that get you locked up. Even the pre-eminent race hustler Jesse Jackson once admitted that the "Bad Black Brother" was the biggest threat to fellow blacks in the States.
I hear of a new school in Brixton, Evelyn Grace Academy, where they are overturning all the old myths about black pupils. It is an extraordinary place, perhaps the most remarkable state school in the country, modelled on high schools on the south side of Chicago. Three-quarters of its pupils are black or mixed-race.Wow - the south side of Chicago, eh? There's a community to aspire to. And oh, by the way - do pupils at the Evelyn Grace Academy who are not black and mixed-race have the same sensitivity shown to their ethnic culture as you demand for your children in Lewes? No? I thought not - racism is all one way, isn't it?
The biggest problem for Smith's son is to have a whining white c*nt for a father, who sees racism in everything and will, if the boy listens to him, turn him into a chip-on-the-shoulder loser with a built in excuse for failure.
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Oh my goodness! Hard to say that without the proper Indian accent but I well remember my time in the early sixties as a College chaplain at the U. of Penn in West Philly when I was, among other things, organizing sports leagues for black gang youth.
ReplyDeleteWe had a seminarian from Boston working with us one summer, one Tommy Adams from the Boston family, and he got on well with the black kids because he never pretended to be some kind of condescending liberal snob. Tommy, one Saturday, had been drinking beer with the troops and when they went off into a park to sleep for a bit, he did likewise. When Tommy woke up,an hour later, he rolled over and said, "Any of you niggers steal my wallet while I was sleeping?"
This provoked a total explosion of hilarity. No one was 'offended' or took it the wrong way. WTF
In fact, one of the things we discovered was that 'real' white guys with balls instead of liberal attitudes went down very well in the ghetto. Another guy who became a coptor pilot in Nam and was captured but escaped, was a kind of model for the black locals (much before his later military service) who competed to introduce him to their girl friends and female relatives.
Oh ? You never heard anything like this? Well, I guess not from the Guardian (guardian of what?).