Now even conservatives are scared to mention race

When is it socially acceptable for a white person to tell a black person he looks like a monkey eating a banana? For some of you the answer will be ‘never’; for others: ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe you even asked such a racist question!’ But I must confess that when my white tennis friend Glen made some quip on these lines to my black tennis friend Rodney at our class the other weekend, I found it funny.

What made it so was not, of course, the stupid joke itself but the context. Here we were in gag-inducingly PC south London, conspiring in the kind of banter so verboten it could almost get you put in prison. Glen laughed, Rodney laughed, we all laughed. It was the laughter not just of rebellion and transgression but of liberation. No longer would we have play that silly game so many people — middle-class liberals, especially — feel obliged to play in these enlightened multicultural times. The game that goes: ‘Gosh. Do you mean to tell me that that person has a completely different skin colour from mine? I can’t say I ever noticed.’

This pretence that we’re all colour-blind is a poisonous nonsense, as I was reminded at a meeting of our local park committee. We came from all manner of backgrounds, those of us gathered round the table: young policemen, late middle-aged Irish cleaning ladies, Kiwi council administrators. And though we were all theoretically equal, none of us was under any illusion as to how the hierarchy of power went: lowest on the rung were the white, well-spoken professionals; at the top those who were poor, preferably living in council accommodation and above all black.