Posted by Peter Ceresole on August 02, 2009 at 23:19:17 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Bowdlerisation (was Profound disagreement (was Thoughts on ) posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 01, 2009 at 20:28:17:
You haven't got the point.
Peter Ceresole has, thank goodness.
But not through any virtue on my part... It's horribly easy for white people in Britain to believe that race prejudice is something that other people do, and that people at the receiving end of it are being over sensitive. This is because unless you experience something, or are forced to see it from the sticky end, it's incredibly hard to feel that it's real.
Some years ago I made a Panorama programme about the dismissal of a teacher in Brent, Maureen McGoldrick, who was believed by some to have made a racist remark on the phone, or indicated that she was contemplating making a racist decision. At first sight this was a ludicrous business, 'political correctness gone mad'. Having talked to many of the people involved, and the campaigners on both sides, they appeared quite mad, perfectly irrational. But it was also clear that if there were some people who had their own, sometimes malign agenda (racial politics were alive and kicking there) it was just as clear that there were others who had been scarred and distorted by their experience of prejudice, day in and day out. They were dreadfully damaged people, and it wasn't their fault. But by their reactions those people themselves had a serious, and horrible, effect on events there. Making the programme, I became aware of my own prejudices; they haven't gone away, either, but at least I'm now very much aware of them and the effect they may have on others, and awareness is the first step in the process of damage reduction. But unless you've been forced up against it, awareness is almost impossible to really feel. Making that programme actually changed my life, because it forced me to be aware.
Does that sound melodramatic? Probably. But it's true. And it doesn't reduce my irritation and contempt for the people who adopt political correctness as an armour against thought. But it still makes me realise that however wrong they may be, fundamentally what they are saying is true. Casual, unintentional racism causes real suffering, and has to be rooted out, even if it costs.
Work that one out...