Aren’t we all “racist” these days? After all, so casually is the word tossed around that it is hard to see how it hasn’t been stripped of all meaning.
If, for example, you voted for Brexit or believe in strong borders, the nation state or the primacy of the majority culture inside Britain, you will inevitably have been branded a “racist” at some point. I know I have.
There was a time when to be hit by such an accusation would be reputation-destroying. But things are shifting. People are no longer easily convinced that someone accused of being a racist is, in fact, a racist.
They realise that the word has been so overused and devalued, especially in political debate, that the threshold for assuming guilt should probably be higher.
It is in that context that the furore over Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s remarks about the number of black and Asian characters in TV commercials should be seen.
Pochin said, during a media discussion about that subject, that it “drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people” before going on to make the argument that such output was rooted in woke ideology and not representative of the country beyond the M25.
Were her words poorly expressed? Unquestionably. But her underlying point – that the demographics in TV advertising are deliberately skewed so as to propagate a DEI-inspired image of the country that is flatly inaccurate – was undeniably correct. And, frankly, everyone knows it.
Only last week, research was published demonstrating this fact. Channel 4’s “The Mirror on the Industry” study showed that black people are massively overrepresented in TV commercials.
While making up only four per cent of the population, they feature in over half of all commercials. Advertising bosses also seem obsessed with featuring mixed-race families, even though they constitute a small minority in the real world.
Of course, liberal politicians and commentators ripped into Pochin and dismissed the concerns of anyone who thought she had a point. Their attitude was: “Only racists care about this stuff.”
It’s remarkable, isn’t it? The very people who have spent years seeing race in every area of life – literally counting the numbers of ethnic minorities in parliament, our public services, in industry, the media, entertainment and our universities, and telling us that white people were overrepresented everywhere - are suddenly pretending that they don’t see race at all and that any disparity in one particular sphere isn’t worth bothering about.
What hypocrites they are. Who do they think they are kidding?
It is plain right that black people are represented in advertising. But that’s not the issue here. The point that Sarah Pochin was making, albeit clumsily, was that the massive overrepresentation of black people cannot be incidental.
It is instead a blatant attempt to force-feed us a view of Britain that is bogus. And it is being done for political reasons. Advertising executives, like other members of the professional and managerial classes, are desperate to be seen as “progressive” and “inclusive” – the better to win social kudos. And so they portray the world in a way they know will meet with elite approval.
But, ultimately, it’s a false world. We know we are being subjected to a relentless political lecture. We are being told: “This is what our society should look like, and if your world doesn’t resemble it, you are doing something wrong.” That’s why it jars. Not everyone sees the country from the vantage point of a well-heeled liberal sophisticate from Islington.
Why shouldn’t we be allowed to call out this fakery when we see it? After all, if it’s acceptable to say that a particular group is underrepresented in a certain field, it should be acceptable to say that it is overrepresented, too.
Better still, why don’t we dispense with these attempts at social engineering altogether? All that matters is that nobody should be prevented from pursuing their chosen path on the grounds of skin colour. Beyond that, there is no duty to enforce certain demographic outcomes.
Our elites have been obsessing about race for a generation. They did so because they believed it would make us a more unified and harmonious country. How wrong they were.
The entrenchment of racial identitarianism throughout our public life and institutions has, in fact, made us more divided than ever.
That is why millions are exasperated with race activism. They see its disuniting effects around them and understand how it now infects and devours everything before it, to the point where many are scared to begin honest discussions about race.
And it’s why, unlike those in the SW1 bubble, most people won’t be frothing at the mouth with anger at Sarah Pochin or condemning her as a “racist”.
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