To: Electronic Telegraph <et.letters@telegraph.co.uk>

Re: For the guardians of political correctness, just mentioning race is "racist"

Date: Wed, 18 April 2001

 

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Short correspondence with Gavin

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Dear Sir/Madam,

While agreeing with Gavin Coles’ response in today’s Feedback section to Theodore Dalrymple’s commentary on youth violence  (Summer of love, 18 April 2001; Why Asians have adopted this culture of violence, 17 April 2001), I find his decrying of the 2001 census as “racist”, very naïve and an epitome of the stultifying political correctness I protested in my recent letter to you, “Contra political correctness” (17 April, unpublished) (Taking Stock, Feedback, 18 April 2001).

For Gavin Coles, it seems, race must not even be mentioned; he does not wish to know that it exists.

Race does exist and is important. To deny this is not only naïve, but also very dangerous.

To maintain that race in unimportant is to say that our parents and ancestors and their history are all unimportant.

The guardians of political correctness would no doubt tell me that I should be as interested in Chinese, Indian or African history as I am in British and European history. But I am not. Any more than a Chinese, Indian or African is more interested in British history than in his own.

This makes me wonder about the extent to which Britain’s non-European  population can truly become integrated, when their history and ancestors are not British or even European. Perhaps like many Jews they will develop two, parallel identities, one British, the other relating to their country and culture of origin. At any rate, it will remain a potential source of conflict that we need to be aware of and not sweep under the carpet or try to suppress or deny, as Mr Coles would have us do.