by Joe Dixon

Created on: March 10, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Is racism as big a problem as the media make it out to be? Personally I don't believe that many of the matters sensationalised by the media are nearly as big or widespread as they would like us to believe. I put this sensationalism down to the desire for profit. The more exciting the front page and the subsequent stories, the higher the readership and hence higher profits.

Gripes about the media and money aside, I feel frequently offended as a white English man, that we must pussyfoot around the matter of race. Today a top politician was forced to resign over comments he made about certain sections of the armed forces of this country. The comments were something like; he had met a lot of idle and useless ethnic minority soldiers who used racism as a cover. This came from a highly respected officer in the British army, and I am inclined to agree with him. A further example of this "racism" was given when describing a method of encouragement used within army training. When recruits were completing obstacle courses, higher ranking officers would be heard shouting "come on you fat bastard! Come on you ginger bastard! Come on you black bastard!". This must mean then that we must sympathise with the fat bastard and the ginger bastard and whichever other bastard they care to berate at the time. My point is this, in a situation such as that, where bullish, full-blooded encouragement is being proffered, the man in command of the situation will pick out the most obvious physical attribute of a person, be it as the MP in question stated in an interview defending himself, that they are "over-weight, red-haired" or any other attribute. Name calling, as it is at school is described as "part of the establishment". Whether name-calling is acceptable or not, now there's a debate! But as far as racism goes, this is no example of it.

I have experienced similar attitudes amongst black colleagues where I work. I heard complaints along the lines of "they'll never make me a supervisor because I'm black". Nine months later that employee is one of the most effective and hard-working supervisors the company has.

I have no doubt that racism was rife throughout the end of the nineteenth and the majority of the twentieth centuries, and this was entirely unacceptable. However I feel that it is time that the next generation of black and Asian people grew to see more than the past. Of course we should never forget the heinous nature of the events in the past, but you don't Jewish people skulking

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