I may be about to say something that will offend you, but that's okay.
I have the right to say it and you have no right to prevent me. We express our opinions, reasonable and unreasonable, argue about them, reach some kind of consensus, possibly a way forward, perhaps even the truth. But what we should never do is stop talking about awkward subjects and offending each other, because the silence can have some unexpected, unpleasant results.
That is essentially the argument Trevor Phillips makes on race in Things We Won't Say About Race That Are True (Channel 4, Thursday, 9pm) and I agree with him, but the fact the argument is coming from someone like Phillips is surprising to say the least. The television producer and activist is a former head of the Commission for Racial Equality and was at the centre of the anti-prejudice movement that sought to change attitudes on race and end racism.
We now know that the movement got it badly wrong in trying to tackle racism largely by making people afraid to talk about race. I can feel it now as I write this: the anxiety, as a white, middle-class man, about saying the wrong thing on the subject. The theory was that if you could prevent people expressing a prejudiced idea, then perhaps you could stop them thinking it too. It was the wrong approach and Phillips now admits it.
However, so deep is the anxiety around the subject that watching a more honest discussion about race was not easy, particularly when Phillips showed us large captions that presented deliberately provocative views. The first of them was "Jews are rich and powerful" which was followed by clips of Jews being taken to the camps to demonstrate one of the reasons we feel uncomfortable in this area. But Phillips then went on to list some interesting facts: fewer than 1 in 200 of the British population is Jewish, but a fifth of UK billionaires are; the net wealth of the average British household is £204,000, the average for a Jewish household is twice that.
Phillips knows the danger of disseminating such information, which is that it will be mis-used by those who wish to perpetuate racial differences. Statistics on crime committed by certain racial groups can also be pretty blunt and do not necessarily take into account prejudice in the justice system.
But even if we accept that facts about racial groups are open to interpretation, Phillips is right to talk about them rather than suppress them. Sex abuse scandals such as the one in Rotherham happened partly because those in authority were frightened that they would be seen as racist if they pursued the perpetrators, who were often from Asian backgrounds. It is just one of the dangerous consequences of a doctrine that no white person should ever criticise someone who is not white.
To his credit, Trevor Phillips calls for an end to that doctrine in his programme. We all need to feel free to say what we want to without being accused of racism, he says, and that means we must all be ready to be offended. The up side of such an approach is that more of the realities of race will be exposed; more of the problems uncovered and fixed. There will be more honesty and less fear, less silence and more talking.
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