An Unending Festival of Grievances

Essay May 24, 2021

 

Small children do not like to have their toys forcibly removed from them, and frequently react with rage when they are taken away. For a short time, the children’s rage is genuine, but then it becomes formulaic: they continue to be angry after their anger has ceased and, enjoying their own rage, don’t like to stop.

The recently-published report of the UK’s government-appointed commission on racial disparities in Britain provoked precisely that kind of response from those with a vested interest in race relations being as bad as possible. For if despite everything, immigrants or people of immigrant descent, especially those of different races, are prospering and integrating well into society, there is no need of a providential class of academics, journalists, bureaucrats, and others to rescue them from the slough of despond supposedly brought about by prejudice and discrimination. Many a career opportunity would be lost if there were no systemic injustices of this sort to untangle.

The commission (eight of whose members were of racial minorities) found that, in certain respects, the group that was most disadvantaged socially, educationally, and economically in Britain was the white working class—the children or grandchildren of those who once worked as labour, unskilled or semi-skilled, in industries that had become obsolete and had not been replaced by anything else. In fact, most ethnic groups were doing better than they, in some cases far better. Furthermore, the commission found no serious institutional obstacles to social or economic advancement for persons of ethnic minorities in Britain. It provided a large number of statistics to prove it..............To Read More....