Which New Normal Do You Want?

After lockdown we really are going to have to face an issue which has been boiling over for years but is never fully addressed for fear of charges of racism. As America burns and sympathy protests are sparked in London, as France is suffering another wave of race-motivated violence from ‘the new Parisiennes’ we can’t just keep on tolerating it. However much you cling on to the hippy-era notion of the melting pot, or the more recent and more plausible salad bowl analogy, race will always spark anger and violence.

I can’t see how it can be any other way. After years of pursuing, with laudable intent I hasten to add, an equalities agenda and trying to become colour-blind (as we almost were before recent mass immigration stirred the pot) we are in worse shape than ever before. When non-whites really were a disadvantaged minority I think we were far more indifferent to cultural differences. But after decades of pushing a moral equivalence agenda the chasm is as wide as ever.

White natives do not see the supposed privilege they possess, especially when they have been elbowed out of the areas where they grew up, especially when they see apparently preferential treatment given to new arrivals while native Brits are sent to the back of the queue. They are hurt when the festivals and celebrations of alien cultures are widely applauded and encouraged by not just air-headed celebrities but by their supposed representatives in Parliament. They are offended when flying their own national flag is seen as just one step away from committing a hate crime.

Being described as white scum by Piers Morgan is not a healthy contribution to the debate, either. Then early this morning, Tommy Corbyn, scion of Magic Grandpa and failed drug baron tweeted “It's a fucking disgrace that this government is choosing not to release the report on Corona and BAME deaths because of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.” punctuating his message with clenched-fist power salutes of various hues. How would it help soothe his rage if the report concludes that those ethnicities are more susceptible to Covid-19 because of their genetic makeup, or – as is more likely – cultural practices?

Why is black culture described as ‘vibrant’ and monocultural islamic communities described with the oxymoronic ‘diverse’? Black lives matter more than white lives when their gatherings are generally monitored by police but white gatherings – unless for one of the new-age totems such as climate change – are more often than not derided as ‘far right’ or ‘white supremacist’. But now we are seeing an unholy alliance between the worst elements of all the clans, black and white as protests quickly become disorderly.

For weeks commentators have been flogging to death the phrase ‘the new normal’ referring to social distancing and the viral threat. But maybe what we are seeing on the streets, as it seems to happen more frequently and on ever flimsier pretexts, is a more accurate model? In which case what are we going to do about it? Are we going to be allowed to discuss this openly and honestly and with whatever language we believe describes our sentiments, however offended some will be? Because if we don’t this new normal is looking pretty uninviting.

If we don’t discuss it openly, if we don’t properly and evenly police our rules, the whole of the UK will do what the muslims here have already done. Welcome to segregation, the Britain of the future. Black towns, brown towns, white towns, and freak towns. While extremists of all skin colours might welcome that development it is not something that the civilised – of all skin colours – should allow to happen. But we can’t even have the debate if the language is restricted, as it is at the moment.

Until we can joke we haven't fixed this

People glibly say, in company they can trust, ‘Enoch was right’ but unless we grab this shitty stick decisively he will have been, because more and more people believe they are living through the end of white western civilisation. If we are all equal then let’s practise that maxim. If we are not then let us launch that investigation and work out how to deal with it. Until we can celebrate diversity without that being an implicitly anti-white endeavour we are lost.