Integration

During a recent short visit I made to Balham town centre all of the most notable incidents happened to come from the black community.

First of all I witnessed a boy revving his moped menacingly and then zooming off down the busy road doing a wheelie. The moped was of course extremely loud. Needless to say, nothing could be done about this irresponsible behaviour. What police officer would dare to arrest? Who could spare the time for the copious paperwork and who would risk the virtually guaranteed accusations of racism?

The next notable incident involved a woman yelling so loudly at her small son, who was in the passenger seat of her car, apparently doing nothing, that I literally had to break off my phone call and wait until her savage tirade had finished. I felt extremely sorry for that boy.

The final one involved a debate at a bar between a black man and a white man. Apparently another white man had said the black man resembled a leading actor. Quite a compliment, one might have thought. But in politically correct, “multicultural”, fragile Britain, one would have to think again. Due to the fact that many black people seem to carry very large chips on their shoulders, no such comments can be risked, however innocent they might be.

The black man asserted “You’re saying we all look the same” – and he wasn’t joking. A debate ensued involving the hapless whites trying to placate the man, and explaining they meant nothing by the comment. This continued for perhaps 10 minutes. It disturbed me from my reading and I would not have been surprised it had turned to sudden violence (though not from the whites).

Personally it makes no difference to me if people are black, white, or any shade in between. While I am culturalist (as I believe every moral person should be), I’m not racist. This notwithstanding, I wondered to myself, having witnessed this: how can there be “integration” when such innocuous remarks as this can cause such profound offence?

Here is an article by the great writer Theodore Dalrymple on this subject.