Originally a comment by Tim Harris on WHO snake oil.

A small logical, and ethical, point: The claim that most Western countries are ‘the least racist countries there has (sic) ever been, anywhere’, whether it is true or not (I happen to think it largely true), does not entail that no racism occurs in them, nor that instances of racism should be ignored. And we might remember that the existence of these ‘least racist’ societies has depended upon people struggling to achieve fairness & justice. I wonder on which side certain commentators would have been on fifty, a hundred, or 150 years ago? I wonder also why, say, the Windrush business in the UK, or Republican efforts to suppress the Black vote in many parts of the USA do not interest them. We do not live in a fantasy world, a perfected present where the ill consequences of slavery have somehow been magically expunged. There is a complacency, a refusal to face realities, in the view that we do live in such a fantasy present.

I also think that certain commentators should broaden their acquaintance, not necessarily personally, but at least with what animates the American & British extreme right as well as the self-righteous & Chomskyian left. The complacency and hypocrisy of certain British acquaintances of mine, who suppose that once the slave trade and slavery in the British Empire were ended, that was that and we should congratulate ourselves on our humanity, whereas those dreadful Americans – just look at them! They forget that their slaves were on islands thousands of miles away (out of sight and happily out of mind – so long as the money kept coming in) and did not form a large population within their own shores. They consider it bad taste to be presented with the facts of slavery, what it did for the British economy, and its continuing effects.

I find this debate, if you can call it that, infantile and ridiculous. It consists in reducing things to sentimental ‘woke’ lefties on one side, and complacent fools, virulent racists and the type of people who would no doubt be happy to be on the faculty of Prager University, if it existed, on the other. When a debate is reduced to this level, it becomes a face scowling at itself in a mirror. Why is it so difficult to recognise what happened in history, a history that does not magically stop at some (never specified) point and works in our changing present? Moral cowardice? Complacency? A desire not to be upset in any way?

One may certainly dislike Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ (I do), though its title certainly points to something (a craven distaste for recognising realities), but there are other books that certainly do put their fingers on realities:

Isabel Wilkerson: ‘Caste’

Eric Williamson: Capitalism & Slavery

Sathhnam Sanghara: Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

Vincent Brown: Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

Padraic X. Scanlan: How Slavery Built Modern Britain

I recommend them all to those who want to get away from the sterilities of the present debate.