The Last Acceptable Racism

I wouldn't ordinarily reprint something originally published only under a name like "Clairwil", but this (http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/1091) is so good that I'm prepared to make an exception:

Disparaging the white working-classes

by Clairwil on 13th April, 2007 at 9:04 am

From Little Britain, to newspaper opinion columns. The message is clear: the white working classes are fat, lazy, thick morons and as such they can be spoken of in ways that would be unthinkable if applied to blacks or Asians.

The white working classes are given no credit for doing work that is dirty, tiring , often demeaning and almost always poorly paid, yet are blamed for all society’s ills. To add insult to injury we are now told that immigrants do all that work better, unlike the ‘bumptious’ natives who fail to show gratitude for their minimum wage pittance.

The Dept for Work and Pensions website for ‘benefit thieves‘ for example provides information in a number of languages to help ensure no-one is missing out on their entitlement. Yet the only minority language provision on the section dealing with benefit fraud is Welsh. I am not suggesting for a moment that this is anything more than an oversight but why is it only important to be inclusive when handing out benefits?

Is benefit fraud exclusively committed by fluent English and Welsh speakers? It’s fine with me that government departments are making efforts to make minorities feel included, it would be lovely if they would consider the feelings of the white majority while they did so.

The colour bias to be found in the attitudes of the liberal snob is breathtaking. Writer Michael Collins recalls attending a media party and hearing one white middle class woman complain that the working class area she’d moved to was ‘very white’.

If you doubt the influence these attitudes have, take a look at these quotes from members of the public commenting on the topic of asylum and immigration on this BBC website.

Immigrants and asylum seekers come here to work, not to sponge. I wish I could say the same about elements of our own home-grown, welfare-dependent white population. I’ll vote for any party that promises to increase immigration and the granting of asylum and which promises to deport those elements of our own white population that are a far greater burden on the state in terms of welfare, crime, anti-social behaviour and terminal un-employable than any ethnic minority or asylum seeker. [Garth, Hull, UK]

How about we make more room for immigrants with a bit of enforced migration? There are an awful lot of stupid, unpleasant white Britons in this country who have no skills, can barely speak their first language and contribute nothing to society. I’d be more than glad to see the back of them and the front of someone who has come here to make a better life for themselves. [Sue, UK]

Can you imagine the uproar if someone argued that UK born blacks were sub-literate lazy morons who should be deported to make way for hard working white immigrants? Yet the most vicious prejudice and contempt is considered acceptable if it’s directed towards the white poor.
In reality immigrants and asylum seekers are just people from wide variety of cultures and social classes. They do not come from a planet where everyone conforms to the values of the middle class liberal and can no more be regarded a uniformly fine bunch of people than the native poor dismissed as scum.

Building up immigrants and asylum seekers at the expense of the white native population is more likely than anything else to provoke a racist reaction. I cannot see how simultaneously telling a whole section of society it is worthless scum and accusing them of racism is likely to improve race relations.

In fact if I were a BNP activist I’d be dancing for joy each time whites are trashed and I’d be over the moon as an issue white class hated is barely even on the radar. It’s about time anti-racists started speaking up, if not there are plenty thugs and racists who’ll be more than happy to do so.

One thing is for certain, if and when the backlash happens it won’t be the white middle classes or media snobs that bear the brunt of it.