Are Racists Racist ?

The British National Party is to be investigated because its membership and employment policies may break the Race Relations Act. Well, there’s a surprise.
But even more surprising is the reaction of that nice Mr Peter Tatchell. Asked for his view by The Guardian, he said if only people had known beforehand that non-whites can’t become members then maybe some would have thought twice about voting for them at the European Parliament elections.
How often are we going to have to put up with elements of the left in denial about the casual racism of our society ? Last week, Romanian people living in Belfast were hounded out of their homes by an admittedly very tiny minority of racist thugs. Sky News spoke to locals about it. They blamed the credit crunch.

Now it seems everyone is unwilling to face up to facts. A large section of people in parts of England vote for the BNP and the reason ? Ignorance ? Kind of, but not the ignorance the chattering classes have in mind.
We have to be open about it. Lets just say it. They voted BNP because they don’t like black people, they don’t want foreigners in “their” country and because anything that is “other” is automatically suspicious.
They are not voting BNP because they don’t understand what the party represents or because Nick Griffin tries to disguise their overt racism in cleverly mendacious ways. They are not voting BNP to protect British jobs or any such tosh that fails to stand up to the fact that we need immigrants to maintain skills levels.
And here’s another shock for the hand-wringers. The number of people who share the views of those who voted BNP but didn’t dare put their X in the party’s box is a lot higher than those who did.
How many times have we seen supposedly respectable people, men and women who would never in a million years consider themselves fascists or potential BNP voters, say they are cancelling a doctors’ appointment rather than face an Asian in the consulting room ? A minority, yes, but a significant one harbour these opinions. And if a political party can tap into that, then what?
It’s not just a British phenomenon, of course. I have seen “English Go Home” daubed in paint on walls in Scotland. Hungarians talk of a “final solution” for their gypsies; Poles whip up anti-German sentiment over post-World War Two borders; Romanians tell Hungarians living in “their” country to go home.
It’s a challenge to us all. But we can’t hide from it by pretending that those who vote for the extreme right are somehow being duped into doing so, and if only they understood the consequences of their actions they would stop.
Our mainstream parties seem to do little to make the situation better. The left has ill-served us with its tokenism on the issue while the centre and the right talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
David Cameron’s happy to voice his “disgust” at the BNP’s election gains while his own Euro MP’s join forces with Latvian politicians who think it was no crime for their countrymen to throw in their lot with the Nazis.
All democratic politicians should speak out against racism and mean it.
Race hate laws are good and should be used more often. Clamp down hard on the insults and abuse that litter our everyday life and don’t give regard to clogging up the courts with such cases.
And maybe we could heed the advice of Jerry Dammers and The Specials. In a world where the political and the ideological have been driven out and replaced by a smaller, more inward-looking realm of personal experience we could simply think again if we have a racist friend.