As I write this, my face and hands are covered in scabs. I’d love to say I sustained these injuries while trying to save the Oxfam shop on Ealing Green from looters. (It was looted, by the way.) But the truth is I fell off my bike on the way to lunch with another journalist. The brake cable got tangled up in the front wheel and the bike came to an abrupt halt. No stitches, but I look terrible, as though someone has tried to carve a map of the world into my face.
This was a blessing in disguise because it meant I turned down an opportunity to appear alongside David Starkey on Newsnight last Friday. Had I done so, I’m not confident I would have challenged his remarks that the whole world and his dog have condemned as ‘racist’. Failing to confront him would have been a crime of omission almost as serious as making the remarks in the first place. I would have instantly been branded a ‘racist’ as well.
How do I know this? Because I wrote a blogpost for the Telegraph immediately afterwards that has got me into almost as much trouble. I didn’t defend Starkey in this piece. Nor did I say I agreed with him, which I don’t. I merely pointed out that he wasn’t guilty of racism. And for saying that — and that alone — I’ve been tarred with the same brush. Attentive viewers will have noted that Starkey wasn’t condemning black culture in general last Friday, but merely a ‘particular form’ of black culture, ‘the violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture’ associated with Jamaican gangs and American rap music. Had he talked about these qualities as if they were synonymous with African-Caribbean culture per se, or condemned that culture in its entirety, then he would have been guilty of racism. But he didn’t. He was quite specifically condemning a subculture associated with a small minority of people of African-Caribbean heritage. Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. I don’t happen to agree with this analysis because it overlooks the sheer range of the people involved in the disturbances, but it’s not ‘racist’.
I went to bed on Friday night, having composed this blogpost, and awoke to find myself infamous. Twitter was ablaze with righteous indignation. ‘Toby Young, you are an ignorant racist,’ tweeted Joe Cottrell-Boyce, who describes himself as a ‘Traveller Policy Officer’. According to Joe Muggs, a music writer, I was ‘vermin’ — worse even than Starkey. Another woman, Ellie Farrell, a ‘multidisciplinary dancer’, thought it was ‘terrifying’ that a racist like me was being allowed anywhere near a school. ‘I’ve decided to make Toby Young my swear word of choice when the C word just isn’t strong enough,’ wrote Helen Cairns, a ‘Scottish bird’ living in London.
Meanwhile, my blogpost was attracting more comments than anything else I’d ever written. People weren’t just responding to my piece, they were using it as a jumping-off point to discuss the issue of race in general and the ways in which British society has changed as a result of mass immigration. Some of these comments were a bit unhinged — straightforwardly racist, in fact — but others were thoughtful and considered. People were clearly relishing the opportunity to have a conversation about a subject that’s normally completely taboo. At last count, over 4,500 people had posted a response.
The fact that people are so anxious to discuss this topic is a direct consequence of throwing the R word around too readily. Describing something as ‘racist’ isn’t designed to educate or inform, but to shut down debate. Indeed, even debating that description is itself considered a form of racism, as I discovered. It’s not unlike the attitude of the Catholic authorities towards Lutherans before the reformation of Henry VIII. Not only were heretics burnt to death, but so too was anyone who defended their right to dissent. Dr Starkey, this could be the subject of your next book: ‘Heresy in the 21st Century’.
What’s ironic is that the people who are so quick to bandy about this charge think of themselves as liberal and lovers of free speech. If they’re truly liberal, they’ll stop trying to terrorise people into keeping their mouths shut and allow the nation to have a genuine conversation about this subject.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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