Why it's time to accept that Britain has no institutional racism at all

Yesterday a report commissioned by the Tory government found that there is no institutional racism in the UK, and I couldn't agree more.

I've been alive for decades now, and I've never experienced any racist discrimination by the state, and we all know that anecdotal evidence is the absolute best evidence there is don't we?

A lot of people would try to argue that of course I haven't experienced any state-orchestrated racism, because I'm a British-born white man, but I can clap back at them like an absolute beast by saying that if they're judging me by my skin colour, then that makes them the racists doesn't it?

Some people try to use facts and statistics to win the argument that Britain is still riven with institutional racism, but they've obviously forgotten Michael Gove's dictum that "the people of this country have had enough of experts" haven't they?

Why listen to all the academics and experts who are saying that the report is tendential bullshit that's been produced by people who were determined to conclude that systemic racism doesn't exist before they even began working on it, when our personal feelings on any subject are obviously far more important than anything like proof, or evidence, or observable reality?

Some people have tried to argue that any country that still celebrates the lives of slave-traders with statues still has some kind of racism problem, but I say isn't it time we gave slave-traders a break?

Yes they bought and sold black people like property, kidnapped them, threw them into the Atlantic Ocean if they got sick on the slave ships, killed them and raped them, abused them and chopped off their limbs,  stole their children, banned them from speaking their own languages, erased their real identities, and branded them with hot irons.

But if you think of people as if they're property, then the slave-traders should have been allowed to do whatever they wanted with their own property shouldn't they?

And given the Tory maxim of "property above people" isn't it actually a compliment to the slaves that they were considered property, rather than just lowly people?

And of course I'm not alone in thinking it's time for a positive reappraisal of slavery, because this wonderful government report into systemic racism also argues that it's time to take a more positive view of slavery too, and that it wasn't all just about "profit and suffering".

How can Britain be a systematically racist country when the government is so open-minded that it's prepared to speak up for the positive side of slavery, and bring in 10 year jail sentences for anyone who throws eggs at a slave-trader statue?

Others have tried to argue that it's obvious that the police are systematically racist, and pointed to the disparity between the brutal and savage policing of Black Lives Matter protests last summer and the kid-gloves approach to the policing of lockdown-sceptic anti-vaxxer parades.

Once again there's a misunderstanding going on here. 

The Black Lives Matter people were rudely provoking the police by asking them to stop discriminating against, violently abusing, and killing people of colour. 

Of course the police fought back against these impertinent demands, because who on earth wouldn't take umbrage at people telling them how to do their jobs?

And just look at the violent smashing up of the Clapham Women's Vigil. The police are just as happy violently repressing women as they are people of colour, so that means that if they're institutionally racist, then they must be institutionally misogynistic too.

Then there's the fact that dozens of Tory MPs have been openly promoting the antisemitic conspiracy theory of "Cultural Marxism", which says that an evil cabal of Jews, gays, blacks, academics, artists, and other undesirables are eroding the foundations of traditional western culture.

Yes "Cultural Marxism" is a crude reworking of the Nazi conspiracy theory of "cultural bolshevism" which was used to promote and justify the Holocaust, but just because something had its origins in Nazi Germany and the mass-slaughter of millions of Jews, does that really mean it's racist for government ministers to keep promoting it all these years later?

Others have argued that Boris Johnson paying homage to a newly erected statue to the openly fascist Tory MP Nancy Astor during the 2019 General Election was outrageously racist, given her statements that Adolf Hitler was a "welcome solution" to the "world problem of Jews" and her insistence that black people should be thankful for slavery.

But we've already written these things off as non-issues haven't we?

Just because she was a fascist doesn't make her a racist, and the government report into institutional racism said that it's time for a positive reappraisal of slavery, so, if you think about it properly, she wasn't being a racist, she was being a visionary.

And if the Nancy Astor statue scandal wasn't even reported by the wonderfully "impartial" BBC, then it can't have been a scandal at all, can it?

Then there's all the claims that Britain must be institutionally racist if it's allowed Boris Johnson to become Prime Minister after all the racist bile he's spewed over the years?

But when he wrote that book accusing Jews of being a secretive cabal that control governments, world finance, and the media, he was just having jolly japes. 

And when he wrote the line "he was a coon, and he was stupid, and he was stupid because he was a coon" he obviously wasn't being racist, he was just repeatedly using a racist slur, and having a laugh at the expense of black people, wasn't he?

Then there's the Windrush Scandal these people keep banging on about, yawn!

Yes, OK, the British government did a tiny oopsie by bringing in "Hostile Environment" laws that were designed to discriminate against black Brits by denying them housing, and employment, and banking services, and social security, and even live-saving medical care.

Yes, the British government used this legislation to deport hundreds of black British citizens, and many of them actually died in exile overseas.

Yes, the courts subsequently found that the Tory government's "Hostile Environment" was unlawfully racist.

Yes, the government has utterly failed to live up to its promises to compensate the victims of their racist legislation.

And yes, only 18 of Britain's 650 MPs bothered to vote against Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" when it went through parliament in 2014.

But just because the overwhelming majority of British MPs either supported or failed to oppose legislation that was used to systematically persecute black British citizens, does that really make Britain a country with an institutional racism problem?

Of course not. 

Let April the 1st 2021 be the day that everyone in Britain accepts that the British government is absolutely perfect. Whiter than white, actually.

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