Slipped on a little white lie

A recent piece in the broadsheet press has received quite a lot of attention – attention which I think it fully deserves, in much the same way that an infectious disease notification or a hurricane warning deserves attention. My initial impression was that it was extraordinarily bad in every respect, but on closer inspection it does some things very well indeed. All told, it’s an odd combination of superb rhetoric, tenuous logic and moral foulness.

The dividing line between liberals and conservatives in the US and the UK increasingly hinges on different definitions of racism.

The author takes it as axiomatic that racism is a bad thing: whatever it is that we call racism, that thing is bad, OK? So when he talks about ‘different definitions of racism’, what he’s actually referring to is different ways to draw the line between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’. Just as treason doth never prosper, racism is never acceptable – because if we see anything that looks a bit racist but want to say it’s acceptable, we redefine it as not being racism.

What do you mean, “what do you mean, ‘we’?”? We do it; we label some things as acceptable that other people might call racism – it’s something everyone does. In fact two assumptions are being made here: (1) it’s possible to draw the line between acceptable-but-a-bit-racist-in-the-wrong-light and unacceptable-and-just-plain-racist in different ways, and (2) not only is it possible, but everybody does it – liberals do it just as much as conservatives, they just draw their line in a different place. (The British political scene is a bit more complicated than “liberals vs conservatives”, of course, but the author prefers to stick with a cast of two. Presumably this is because it’s a lot easier to say “you’re no better than them” if you’ve decided in advance exactly who ‘you’ and ‘they’ are.)

Anyway, that’s what you’ve absorbed – or what’s been smuggled past you – by the end of the first sentence. Let’s crack on.

Liberals attack President Trump’s proposal to erect a wall along the US border with Mexico, and his ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, as racist. Many on the right defend them as necessary protections.

The border wall and the travel ban: racist or necessary protections? Ooh, complicated. Or not. Simple question: when Donald Trump proposed “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, and when he said of Mexican immigrants “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists”, was this the language of (a) racism or (b) necessary protections? Second question: why in the world would we imagine that those two things are mutually exclusive? (You see what I mean about good rhetoric and bad logic.) Surely the measures are racist whether they’re taken to be necessary protections or not. If you’ve identified a nationality or a faith group as the source of problems and declared that the solution is to bar those people from the country en masse, it doesn’t really matter whether what you’re trying to achieve is the necessary protection of the people, the preservation of the national culture or the purity of our precious bodily fluids – your analysis of the problem, and the measures you’ve taken to tackle it, are themselves racist. So this really doesn’t work; it’s another example of the author’s apparent determination to unmoor our understanding of the term ‘racism’, and send it floating off who knows where.

A recent study by a London college and Policy Exchange found that 72 per cent of Clinton voters in November’s presidential election consider Trump’s proposed wall to be racist compared with just 4 per cent of Donald Trump voters. But when the views of white and non-white Americans are contrasted, the gap shrinks. So political partisanship, not race, determines whether the wall is seen as racist.

This article refers to a project involving two sets of studies. The second set, which we’ll come to later, was conducted by YouGov and had reasonably chunky sample sizes; more to the point, YouGov’s involvement suggests that some effort was made to make those samples representative (size isn’t everything). The 72% and 4% figures come from what the project report refers to as a ‘pilot’ study conducted via Amazon Mechanical Turk: a quick-and-dirty convenience sample – or a series of them – with multiple quoted sample sizes, ranging from 117 up to 192. There’s no word on sub-groups within those samples other than a note that “MTurk’s sample is skewed toward secular white liberals”. Now, the gap between (professed) White and Black respondents on this question wasn’t just smaller than the Republican/Democrat gap, it was a lot smaller; 45%/55% Y/N (White) plays 55%/45% (Black), as opposed to 4%/96% (Rep) vs 72%/28% (Dem). On its face this certainly seems to suggest that political partisanship, not race, is doing the heavy lifting.

UPDATE 5/3 It has been pointed out to me that the following section is based on a misinterpretation of the figures, which in turn made me treat them as being less reliable than they are. Apologies.

The trouble is, the lack of weighting for representativeness makes it impossible to make this kind of comparison between different cross-breaks – and this particular contrast is so extreme that it’s hard to see how those two breaks could both be divisions of the same sample, just as a matter of arithmetic. Moreover, if those two splits aren’t divisions of the same sample, we’ve got no way to know which of the two samples we can trust – and we’ve certainly got no good reason to trust both of them, which obviously we need if we’re going to compare one with the other.

Let’s not beat about the bush, the Mechanical Turk stats presented here are little better than junk; that London college should be concerned about having its name attached to them.

What I should have written was something more along the lines of

The contrast between the two is so extreme that it’s hard to see how those two breaks could both be divisions of the same sample, which calls into question the comparison between the two. That said, even from different samples, they could both be valid – however skewed your sample may be (and however small it is, to a point), if the cross-breaks are far enough from being evenly distributed you can be sure that something‘s going on. But that’s what we have p-values for – and, although most of the ‘political’ cross-breaks are statistically significant (the 4/96 vs 72/28 split is significant at p<0.001), almost all the ‘race’ cross-breaks fail to reach statistical significance, this one included. So the Mechanical Turk data does support the first sentence quoted above, but it’s not strong enough to support the second and third. The researcher has suggested that the absence of a significant ‘race’ effect in the sample in itself supports the hypothesis that the real effect is small or non-existent, but I don’t find this convincing; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, surely. But I’m not a quants person and will defer to the judgment of any third party who is.

There’s also a broader question about data and methodology. Throughout the project report – including the sections that rely on YouGov-sanctioned sampling – there are charts with multiple ‘n’ values, with no explanation of which applies to what, or of why it’s appropriate to plot those apples and these pears on the same Y-axis. The exclusive presentation of the results in chart form also rings alarm bells. Methodologically-sound projects can generate nonsense, and projects that keep their methods and raw data to themselves may produce good data, but that’s not the way to bet. I could say something similar about think tanks that are open and informative about their funders as compared to those that aren’t; Policy Exchange scored zero in Transparify‘s 2016 report (“Highly opaque; no relevant or up-to-date information”).

There’s another, more fundamental point here, which the third sentence casually gives away: according to this article (and, indeed, the project) there is such a thing as ‘race’, and it can in principle ‘determine’ our point of view with regard to racism. (If it didn’t exist or couldn’t affect our point of view, there wouldn’t be any point contrasting it with political partisanship; it wouldn’t take a study to establish that your political loyalties are more important than your shoe size or the colour of your aura.) For contemporary sociologists it’s axiomatic that ethnic divisions are socially constructed, the distinctive markers of ethnic division varying from time to time and society to society – skin colour, facial features, language, script, religion, dress, cultural practice – and having no correspondence to any identifiable physical or genetic reality. There are no races, plural; the only reality of ‘race’ is racism, the social practice of dividing Czech from Roma, English from Welsh, Sephardim from Mizrahim, Tutsi from Hutu and so on. UPDATE 6/3 For the avoidance of doubt, self-identification with a group is also a social practice which we experience subjectively as reality; someone may wake up in Streatham and feel entirely confident that he is Black, African, Nigerian, Ibo, Black British, British, English, a Londoner, a south Londoner, a Christian, a Pentecostalist or some combination of the above, just as in the 1980s somebody might wake up in Sarajevo confident in her identity as a Slav, a Yugoslavian, a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Bosniak, a Muslim, a Sunni, a Communist, a speaker of Serbo-Croat or some combination of those. But I stand by the statement that the only reality of ‘race’ is racism: identities like these are plural, fluid and basically liberating rather than coercive, up to the point where one identity is set against another. At that point they become a lot less benign, and also – not coincidentally – a lot less plural and fluid: only a few years later our 1980s Sarajka would have been calling herself a Bosniak, a Bosnian Muslim, a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a speaker of Bosnian and that’s it. ‘Race’ in this sense – an exhaustive and discrete set of categories in which everyone has their place – is the end-product of racism.

By contrast, the formulation used here suggests (if only in passing) that it is racism that is a floating signifier, tacked down in different places by different people, while the reality of race is – or may be – one of the reasons for those differing perspectives. We’re through the looking glass, and I don’t much like where we’re headed.

The argument is not just about physical or economic protection, but cultural protection too. Modern liberals tend to believe that preference for your own ethnic group or even your own nation is a form of racism. Conservatives regard it as common sense and resent being labelled as racist.

As we’ve already seen, physical or economic protection is a red herring: implementing apartheid and saying it’s your way to save the ozone layer doesn’t get you onto the environmentalists’ table. There’s no further discussion of what cultural protection might actually mean, so I think we can discard that too. No, what we’re talking about is the same thing we’ve been talking about all along: racism. And here we get to the meat of the article: some people regard preference for one’s own ethnic group as racism; other people, who regard it as common sense, don’t like being called racists. (That little grace-note or even your own nation is another red herring, incidentally; there’s no reference to nationality in the rest of the article.)

You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to get to the facts of the matter here – or, if not facts, strong and uncontroversial probabilities. You feel most comfortable with your partner and members of your family, all of whom are of the same ethnic group as you? Almost certainly not racist. You’d take your Mum’s shepherd’s pie over a lamb dupiaza any day? Probably not racist (although it may depend how often and how loudly you tell people about it). You wouldn’t want to have anyone regularly making lamb dupiaza in the house next door? Probably racist, unless you’ve got an onion allergy or something. You wouldn’t be happy if you saw an Asian couple looking at the house for sale down the road? Almost certainly racist. And finally: you don’t like seeing Asians moving in, but you regard it as common sense and resent being labelled as racist? Tough titty. Cuiusque stercum sibi bene olet; everyone regards their own prejudices as common sense, and nobody likes having their prejudices labelled as prejudices.

But that’s not the way this article is going. Rather, we’re being sold the proposition that, maybe, those conservatives are actually right; maybe, preference for your own ethnic group isn’t a form of racism. Huge if true.

The challenge here is to distinguish between white racism and white identity politics, or what Muslim-American writer Shadi Hamid terms white “racial self-interest”. The latter may be clannish and insular, but it is not the same as irrational hatred, fear or contempt for another group — the normal definition of racism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the star of our show: white racial self-interest. Sadly, the author neglects to cite a fuller definition of this crucial concept – the well-known fourteen-word definition formulated by David Lane, perhaps? In all seriousness, the overlap with the vocabulary of white supremacism is striking. To speak of interest, after all, requires that there is some entity that has interests: if we speak of white racial self-interest, in other words, we presuppose the existence of a white race. (Including, or excluding, Arabs? Sicilians? Roma? Jews? Slavs? Hours of fun.) The report on which this article is based doesn’t help greatly, defining ‘racial self-interest’ as ‘seeking to maximise the demographic advantage of [one’s] group’. Which, again, presupposes that each of us has a ‘racial’ group, and that maximising the advantage of that group as against others is rational in some way. Why would it be, though? If the argument is that increasing the size and power of my racial group is a good thing for the group as an entity, and that it’s rational for me to recognise this, then the argument is simply and straightforwardly racist. But if the argument is that bulking up my ‘racial’ group will benefit me individually, by making it easier for me to employ, marry and generally surround myself with people of my own ‘race’ – well, once again, why would that be a benefit? All roads lead back to racism.

The author suggests that we should only speak of racism where irrational hatred, fear or contempt are in evidence. This is a familiar move but a vacuous one. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, as our contemporary understanding of racism started to develop, there was a brief rearguard action involving a distinction between ‘racialism’ and ‘racism’. ‘Racists’ were violent bigots motivated by irrational hatred, fear or contempt; ‘racialists’ (usually including the person speaking) didn’t bear non-Whites any ill will, they just didn’t want to have to live near them. It was self-deceiving, self-exculpating nonsense then and – under the name of ‘racial self-interest’ – it still is now. To see why, let’s look at some normal definitions. We’ll take clannish and insular first – those venial sins which may occasionally mar the otherwise rational face of ‘racial self-interest’, but which don’t have anything to do with irrational hatred, fear or contempt. The OED defines ‘clannish’ as ‘having the sympathies, prejudices, etc. of a clan’ and ‘insular’ as ‘narrow or prejudiced in feelings, ideas, or manners’. So the author is saying that ‘racial self-interest’ may dispose a person to prejudice but not to irrational hatred. Let’s see how the OED defines ‘prejudice’:

unreasoned dislike, hostility, or antagonism towards, or discrimination against, a race, sex, or other class of people

In short, racism involves irrational hatred, fear or contempt, whereas ‘racial self-interest’ involves unreasoned dislike, hostility, or antagonism. Much better. The only way of differentiating ‘racial self-interest’ from ‘racism’, even on the author’s own definition, would be to change course and maintain that the rational pursuit of racial self-interest never involves clannishness, insularity and prejudice in general – which would be interesting to watch, if nothing else.

But that’s only the author’s definition of ‘racism’. What does the OED say?

A belief that one’s own racial or ethnic group is superior, or that other such groups represent a threat to one’s cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being; (also) a belief that the members of different racial or ethnic groups possess specific characteristics, abilities, or qualities, which can be compared and evaluated. Hence: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of other racial or ethnic groups (or, more widely, of other nationalities), esp. based on such beliefs.

That’s the normal definition of racism, that’s the Oxford way, and that’s how you beat Capone. Well, maybe not. But it’s radiantly clear that ‘racism’, per the OED, includes ‘white racial self-interest’ in every last detail – including the implicit belief that there is such a thing as a white race, with identifiable characteristics, in the first place.

(Note to anyone who thinks this is overkill. Look, this isn’t rocket science; as I write I’ve got the OED open in another tab, and I’ve only gone to those lengths because I couldn’t get the browser widget to work. I’m not even using my academic credentials to log in. Got a public library card? You’ve got the OED. Want the normal definition of racism? It’ll take you two minutes, tops. Want to come up with an alternative definition that’s more convenient for your argument and call that ‘normal’ instead? Go ahead, but don’t think nobody will notice.)

(Note to anyone who appreciates that but still thinks it’s taking rather a long time to get through this column. You may have a point. I’ll try and speed up.)

The next bit is tricky, so watch closely.

The question of legitimate ethnic interest is complex. Multiculturalism is premised on the rights of minorities to maintain certain traditions and ways of life. But liberals have usually been reluctant to extend such group rights to majorities.

They have justified this reluctance on two grounds. First, the white majority in the US and Europe is itself so diverse it makes little sense to talk of a culturally homogenous majority (though the same might be said for most minorities too).

Second, majorities have been so numerically dominant that their ways of life have felt threatened only in a few small pockets. The latter is clearly no longer the case, especially in the US where the non-Hispanic white population is now only a little over 60 per cent. In several UK cities, the white British are now a minority too.

As so often in bad syllogistic reasoning, the first premise is the one to watch. Multiculturalism certainly involves the belief that it’s generally a good thing for members of minorities to maintain certain traditions and ways of life (if they want to), but whether it’s premised on the right to do so is more debatable. (Would such rights be absolute? Who would they be asserted by?) I see multiculturalism more in terms of a recognition that individuals who are members of a minority group have a strong and legitimate interest in maintaining the traditions (etc) of that group. In which case, those individual interests are being confused here with a right held by a group collectively. This point is important because of the next step: the proposal to extend such group rights to majorities.

The argument then proceeds with a perverted dexterity that would do any propagandist proud. Why don’t we (liberals) recognise the rights of the majority, or (more broadly) attend to the safeguarding of the majority’s traditions and ways of life? It’s actually not a hard question; the answer is “because it’s the majority and doesn’t need it”. Whatever you may have heard about unaccountable elites, we’re not in Norman England – the ruling class comes from the majority group, speaks its language and shares its culture (give or take). A maj-ority and a min-ority are not just two different kinds of ority, they have fundamentally different positions, needs, vulnerabilities – a superior and more powerful position in the case of the majority, and fewer needs and vulnerabilities.

The author is obviously aware of this objection and tries two routes around it. The first is to throw out another red herring: perhaps our real problem is that the White majority is too diverse to have a single body of traditions ways of life ect ect. (I don’t know who’s supposed to have said this.) If this were the case, though, it would only make White people more like members of ethnic minorities; not one majority but multiple minorities (and we know how much those liberals like minorities). The second approach takes on the argument that majorities don’t need protection more directly, pointing out that in the USA the White population is little more than one and a half times the size of all the other population groups put together, as long as you don’t count Hispanics as White. And if that’s not scary enough, remember that White British people are a minority in “several UK cities”. Again, we are being asked to bring the White majority within the ambit of our sympathy for ethnic minorities, by considering them as a minority.

(You may be surprised to hear that Whites are an ethnic minority in “several UK cities” – and so you should be. Part of the trick is using the phrase “White British”; the White British population is defined considerably more tightly than the non-Hispanic White population of the US, as it excludes people of Eastern European and Irish origin, among others. The other part of the trick is a creative interpretation of the words “several” and “cities”. Although the statement in question is backed with a link to a blog post, the post only lists one city (Leicester), two towns (Luton and Slough) and five London boroughs in which White British people account for less than half of the population. In Leicester, Luton and Slough the White British population accounts for 45%, 45% and 35% of the total respectively – a minority, although by far the largest single population group in all three cases. (It would also be true to say that the Conservatives received a minority of votes cast in 2015, and that more than half of the MPs elected received a minority of votes cast in their constituency.) In short, it would be true to say that White British people are a minority in a handful of UK towns, although it would be grossly misleading. Saying that they’re a minority in “several UK cities” is straightforwardly false.)

So here’s the argument: liberals believe in giving ethnic minorities the right to maintain their traditions, etc; the White majority is an ethnic minority, sort of, a bit, if you look at it a certain way; so surely liberals should support their rights. The syllogism is even more flawed than I realised – the major and minor premises are both dodgy – so the conclusion hasn’t really earned the right to be taken seriously. That said, at this point we only appear to be speculating about recognising the right (if it is a right) of the White majority (if there is such a thing) to maintain its own traditions and ways of life – the Sunday roast, Christmas trees, Preston Guild. And none of those things is under any kind of threat, so the whole argument seems to be academic. No harm done, or not yet.

When YouGov, Policy Exchange and a London college asked 2,600 Americans whether it is racist or “just racial self-interest, which is not racist” for a white person to want less immigration to “maintain his or her group’s share of the population”, 73 per cent of Hillary Clinton voters but just 11 per cent of Donald Trump voters called this racist. In a companion survey of 1,600 Britons, 46 per cent of Remainers in last June’s EU referendum but only 3 per cent of Leavers agreed this was racist. When respondents were asked whether a Hispanic who wants more immigration to increase his or her group’s share was being racist or racially self-interested, only 18 per cent of Hillary Clinton voters called this racist. By contrast, 39 per cent of Donald Trump voters now saw this as racist.

Hey! A minute ago we were talking about preserving cultural traditions and ways of life and so forth – where’s that gone? All of a sudden the rights – or interests – we’re talking about aren’t to do with maintaining certain traditions and ways of life; they’re about numbers, and maintaining one’s own group’s share of the population. Is it racist (associated with irrational hatred and fear) to want one’s own group to have a larger share of the population? Or is it only racial self-interest, which ex hypothesi is not racist (although it is associated with unreasoned hostility and antagonism, but never mind that)? And what if the group in question is itself a minority – what then, eh?

This is truly dreadful stuff. The results of the survey are based on a distinction which makes no difference; moreover, it’s not a distinction which was surfaced by the participants, but one which the survey specifically and overtly prompted. There is no difference between ‘racism’ and ‘nice racism’, a.k.a. ‘racial self-interest’; to believe that there was a difference, one would have to believe that ‘racial self-interest’ was a valid concept, and that belief is in itself racist. This being the case, asking whether behaviour X is (a) ‘racism’ or (b) ‘racial self-interest’ is a bit like asking a rape defendant whether he (a) committed rape or (b) made a woman have sex with him against her will, although it was OK and it definitely wasn’t rape. ‘Racial self-interest’ is what you call racism if you approve of it; the author more or less said so at the top of the article. All we’re measuring is a differential propensity to euphemistic labelling.

The survey did measure that, though – and the results don’t point the way the article suggests they do. If we want to explain Clinton voters’ seeming reluctance to apply the label of racism to a hypothetical Hispanic’s desire for a larger population share, we can easily do so by evoking sympathy with the conditions that go along with being a member of an ethnic minority – conditions of powerlessness and discrimination. The idea that there is some sort of symmetry between this and Trump voters’ reluctance to call White majority racism by its name – and that having named this symmetry one can simply say “hey, political partisanship!” and walk away – is an insult to the intelligence. Both of these things may be temporising with racism, but one of these things is not like the other. The full report, to be fair, acknowledges the argument that Clinton voters may have good reasons – grounded in considerations of social justice and inclusion – for not wanting to label that hypothetical Hispanic as racist. It then ignores this argument and concludes that they’re just biased.

When Trump and Clinton voters were made to explain their reasoning, the gap on whether whites and Hispanics were being racist or racially self-interested closed markedly in the direction of racial self-interest. This points to a possible “third way” on immigration between whites and minorities, liberals and conservatives. As a new Policy Exchange paper argues, accepting that all groups, including whites, have legitimate cultural interests is the first step toward mutual understanding.

(Just to be clear (since this article isn’t), the recent study by a London college and Policy Exchange, the survey in which YouGov, Policy Exchange and a London college asked 2,600 Americans to waste their time making meaningless distinctions and the new Policy Exchange paper referred to just now are one and the same project. Also, our author works at Policy Exchange. Small world.)

When nudged in the direction of applying euphemistic labelling more broadly, then, both ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ were willing to do so. The full report, in fact, argues that it’s liberals rather than conservatives who have work to do here: ‘liberals’ are supposedly more biased than ‘conservatives’, because they’re more likely to be selective in condemning racism. The way to reduce bias, then, is for liberals as well as conservatives to hop aboard the ‘racial self-interest’ train. Brave new world! All we need to do is agree that it’s good and appropriate to think of oneself as the member of a race, and to believe that each race has the right to preserve itself by maintaining or expanding its population share. Then the members of different races can come together in mutual understanding – or else agree to stay apart in mutual understanding. That’s always worked before, right?

This, incidentally, is where the jaws of the traditions and ways of life trap start to close. We’ve conceded – haven’t we? – that minority groups have rights, in a happy fun multicultural stylee? And we’ve agreed that the White majority is, well, kind of a minority, sort of, in its own way, when you think about it? Well, what more fundamental right could a group have than the right to preserve itself – the right to assure its own existence and a future for its, you’re ahead of me.

Majority rights are uncharted territory for liberal democracies and it is not always clear what distinguishes legitimate group interest from racism. Hardly anyone wants to abolish anti-discrimination laws that ban majorities from favouring “their own”. But while few people from the white majority think in explicitly ethnic terms, many feel a discomfort about their group no longer setting the tone in the neighbourhood. Labelling that feeling racist risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, driving white resentment.

You get the feeling the author feels he’s made his point now; he can afford to sit back and concede a few minor points. Yeah, sure, sometimes it actually is racism. Outright discrimination? No, no, nobody wants that – well, hardly anybody. Who’s going around thinking in explicitly ethnic terms? Nobody! Hardly anybody. Just a few people. Still, you know…

many feel a discomfort about their group no longer setting the tone in the neighbourhood

Sweet suffering Jesus on a pogo-stick, what in the name of Mosley is this? People feel a discomfort about no longer setting the tone? This stuff makes me weirdly nostalgic for the respectable racists of old – can you imagine what Michael Wharton or John Junor would have made of the prissy whiffling evasiveness of that sentence? Wharton could have got an entire column out of it. (He’d have ended up advocating something much worse, admittedly.)

But I shouldn’t mock; this column wasn’t just slung together, and we need to keep our wits about us. I said, a couple of paragraphs back, that the jaws of the “it’s just like multiculturalism!” trap were closing; this is where they slam shut – and where we get the payoff to all that equivocation about min-orities and maj-orities. We’ve conceded that minority groups have rights; we’ve conceded that the majority group also has rights – including the right to self-preservation. (This was never about culture, ways of life, traditions. It’s about people; it’s about numbers.) Well now: how can our majority group preserve itself, and preserve its identity as a majority group, if not by remaining the majority and continuing to do what a majority does? Our rhetorical conveyor belt is complete: you go in at one end believing it’s a good idea for Muslims to have time off for Eid, then you discover that this means you believe in group rights, which in turn means that you believe in racial self-interest and the right to pursue it, which means believing in rights for the White majority. Before you know what’s happening, you’ve come out at the other end unable to object to Whites maintaining their dominance and their ability to set the tone in the neighbourhood (a nice pale tone, presumably).

This is bad, bad stuff. Fortunately there’s not much more of it.

Minorities often have real grievances requiring group-specific policy solutions. White grievances are more subtle. For instance, lower-income whites sometimes lack the mutual support that minority communities often enjoy – this can translate into a sense of loss and insecurity. This, too, should be recognised and factored into the policy calculus.

“We’ve lost a lot, haven’t we, over the years? Think of the community spirit we used to have. Immigrant communities seem to have kept much more of a sense of community – they’re more fortunate than us in many ways. Really, they’re quite privileged, aren’t they, compared to poorer White communities in particular…”

Faugh.

The liberal reflex to tar legitimate majority grievances with the brush of racism risks deepening western societies’ cultural divides.

Of course – couldn’t go a whole column without using some form of the phrase legitimate grievance. The blackmail logic underlying the “legitimate concerns” routine is showing through more clearly than usual: either we legitimise these grievances by taking them seriously, calling them rational, making out that they’re not really racism, or… well, cultural divides, innit. Could get nasty, know what I’m saying? Nice racially integrated society you’ve got here, shame if something were to happen to it.

And let’s not forget just what we’re being asked to legitimise. Bring me my OED of burning gold! (Or the one in a browser tab, if that’s more convenient.)

racism, n.

A belief that one’s own racial or ethnic group is superior, or that other such groups represent a threat to one’s cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being; (also) a belief that the members of different racial or ethnic groups possess specific characteristics, abilities, or qualities, which can be compared and evaluated. Hence: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of other racial or ethnic groups (or, more widely, of other nationalities), esp. based on such beliefs.

The belief that groups defined on racial or ethnic lines “represent a threat to one’s cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being” – and hence that it’s appropriate to maximise one’s own group’s demographic advantage – is racism. There’s literally nothing here to argue about. The entire tendency of this very well-written, very ingeniously argued column – and of the rather less impressive report on which it’s based – is to legitimise racism, normalise racism, promote racism. (Specifically, the argument advanced here most closely resembles the ‘ethno-pluralism’ of the French New Right; that said, the ‘racial self-interest’ that it celebrates is hard to tell apart from the fourteen-word catechism of white supremacism.)

This racist work has no place in academic or policy debate; it calls not for discussion but for denunciation.

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