AND ANOTHER THING
In race there is no substitute for absolute equality before the law
PAUL JOHNSON
Race problems can never be solved except on the basis of absolute equality under the law, in theory and as far as possi- ble in practice. The liberal belief that they can be magicked away by Affirmative Action, Reverse Discrimination, or whatev- er you like to call it — I call it anti-white discrimination — is an illusion, and persis- tence in it in the face of all the evidence of failure is just plain wicked.
The vast majority of Americans, includ- ing virtually all the blacks, except their paid leaders who have a vested interest in the illusion, have now accepted that there is no substitute for genuine equality and are making their feelings forcefully plain. They did so in the mid-term elections in Novem- ber 1994, and in California they intend to make all forms of AA unlawful by mass vote.
Now in three historic decisions the US Supreme Court, reflecting public feeling, has begun to dismantle the system. The black justice, Clarence Thomas, who gave the casting vote in the most important deci- sion, made what to me seems the most sig- nificant point in the whole controversy. Not only is this form of racial preference by law wrong in itself, he said, but it is demeaning to blacks and it makes it far more difficult for them to achieve things on merit. He might have gone further and said what I believe to be true, that white liberals do much more harm to blacks than white racists.
Affirmative Action still appears to be going strong here, as anyone who glances at local authority job advertisements can see. Many of them are blatantly racist and make it plain that 'whites need not apply'. This is legal under the present law and is strongly encouraged by the Race Relations Board, which is the only truly racist institution in the country apart from the National Front. In fact, officials of the race relations indus- try deliberately promote a kind of Orwellian doublespeak. If, for instance, a council declares itself to be 'an equal opportunities employer', you can be sure it is racist and systematically denies equal opportunities to whites. The system is not only grossly unfair to working-class whites, who have no redress — not even the emo- tional one of moral outrage — but demeans and degrades blacks, who are implicitly presented as inferior people unable to get on without legal discrimina- tion in their favour. The only beneficiaries, so far as I can see, are black and Asian pseudo-intellectuals, who get cushy, self- important jobs within the system, and mid- dle-class white liberals who earn a bogus living as bureaucrats or academics extolling its merits. The imposture is so blatant and, in the light of its failure, so doomed that sensible Labour people like Tony Blair should come out and condemn it now, before they are forced to do so by coming events. None of the Tories believes in it and they profess to do so only for humbug- ging reasons.
However, there is another aspect of the race problem which is not quite so easily dealt with — reverse discrimination in the treatment of crime. A case in point is the persecution of the three police officers who were desperately trying to restrain the demented Joy Gardner when she, in effect, killed herself. These officers should never have been prosecuted. The evidence that they merely did their duty was overwhelming, one being discharged by the judge, the other two by the jury. I believe the only reason they were prose- cuted was that Gardner was black and it looked as though there might be a black riot unless charges were made.
Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has treated the three decent and conscientious officers with a degree of disloyalty and unfairness which almost defies belief. There is no one in London — except perhaps Michael Grade — whom I would more like to see sacked, and replaced by someone who is tough and colour-blind.
The trouble with the Gardner prosecu- tions is that they have the effect of deter- ring police officers from applying the law conscientiously to all, regardless of colour. Although acquitted, the three officers have had their careers permanently damaged and have had a huge chunk taken out of their lives. Other humble police constables will take note of that, and will tend to avoid trouble with blacks behaving unlawfully, unless they have no alternative.
It is no secret, for instance, that black crime in London is increasing. Of course you cannot prove it, as statistics are delib- erately concealed by scared or political cor- rect authorities. But it seems to be a fact. A great many people and not just Taki (see his column last week), have been mugged by two- or three-man black gangs recently, and the police seem to be doing nothing special about it. Mugging in a big city can be dramatically reduced by firm, intelligent action on the part of the law-enforcers, as the recent history of New York City has shown. New York is a much safer place since the present Mayor, a no-nonsense public prosecutor type, took over from one of the silliest and weakest mayors in the city's history. (He has also got most of the beggars off the streets, another good exam- ple London could follow.) If New York can do it, why not London? The answer, I suspect, is that if the police took vigorous and effective action against young black men behaving suspiciously in mugging target areas, there would be a hul- labaloo from black 'community leaders' and more threats of riots. So nothing is done, whites continue to be mugged increasingly — and anti-black feeling among the whites grows and will, sooner or later, spill over, as it has done in the United States.
Once again, it is in the interests of the blacks themselves for a policy of absolute equality to be followed. In the end, doing what is morally right is socially, politically and racially right too.
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