Not just racism: homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia and terrorists, and opening it out a bit, drug dealers. I’m lucky enough, living in sunny Yorkshire, to not know any terrorists or any of the above personally. This allows me to judge or at least view people in totally different terms. Terms like honesty, humility, empathy, intelligence, awareness and curiosity. Score on these and you’ve got a friend for as long as you want one. But racism and all of the above are divisive. They set ordinary people against ordinary people, and then other ordinary people react against them and become anti- racism, anti-homophobia etc. All well and good but it creates further division. So where in all this division are my terms, terms that ameliorate division, that promote acceptance and understanding? More importantly, as the public debate becomes ever more divisive, people who score lowly in my terms are getting away with murder. People who are arrogant, sociopathic, unintelligent, mean spirited and dogmatic are hording wealth, destroying the environment and gaining power. Surely they would say ‘thank you racism’ for distracting the public to fight amongst themselves while they force their merry way to personal gain and universal disaster. It’s not for nothing that Russia seeded public division in our UK referendum and the US presidential election. Because division always weakens even though it has a certain base appeal to the unthinking ego. Better to be honest, humble, empathic, intelligent, aware and curios. Then you can be my friend.
