That's Racist!

Twenty-first century British kids are more comfortable with ethnic diversity than ever before. The 'mixed race' population is rising exponentially. In school playgrounds across Britain, kids are inventing a version of colour-blind, multi-ethnic interaction that should teach the adult world a thing or two - not least about the amazing, superdiverse generation that is to come. And yet, for over a decade, playgrounds and classrooms have endured unprecedented interference in the form of official racist-incident reporting, training on the importance of racial etiquette, and the reinforcement of racial identities. Such interference is viewed by modern day anti-racists as a necessary bulwark against the creeping influence of the far-right, 'Islamophobia', and more generally the supposed covert racism of the wider population. Many official policy documents written under the influence of this approach insist a failure to tackle racist behaviour at the earliest age will allow racism to incubate and grow. Here, 'racism' is something defined by the notion of what constitutes hate speech or wounding words. Often it can be detected from an entirely innocent phrase, so long as the phrase is perceived by the offence-taker or another party or policy as 'racist'. This mindset has, in recent years, permeated public discourse on the subject.