My defence against the army of the outraged? Laughter
On Wednesday night, I went on the BBC Radio 4 debate programme The Moral Maze to discuss the morality of diversity. My brief was to echo what I had written here a few weeks ago: that our institutions are being taken over by a “diversity dictatorship” which decrees that skin colour quotas and ethnic box-ticking are more important than quality, merit and fulfilling the purpose of whatever the thing in question is, be it comedy or television production.
The response to the show by furious political correctness warriors was laughably, almost ludicrously, predictable. Immediately, there was incandescent rage and abusehurling under the programme’s Twitter hashtag that those of us called upon to debate the issue were all “white”. Prof Catherine Harper kicked off the army of the outraged with this tweet: “Did I just hear this correctly – 4 speakers are on @ BBCRadio4 #MoralMaze debate on ‘The Morality of Diversity’ and they are ALL white. Is this correct? If so, it is quite simply outrageous, immoral and appalling. Please confirm?”
What was actually being said – eg, a range of views one could describe in terms of ideological diversity – was of zero interest to Ms Harper and her friends because the skin colours didn’t suit. Cue immediate cries of
racism. This is exactly the kind of toxic effect of the diversity dictatorship that we were discussing, and rightly, too.
In fact, the producers did approach at least one person of colour but were, in one case, rebuffed in the following terms, posted proudly on the person’s Twitter account: “Thank you for thinking of me but I do not participate in discussions for the need for inclusion. To participate in panels such as the ones you are organising is to be complicit in a hateful violent discourse that questions, if not outright denies, my humanity.”
Meanwhile, Priyamvada Gopal – the Cambridge don famously waging a war on the university for what she calls its “racism problem” – tweeted that the BBC might just as soon have debated “Were concentration camps all bad?” The implication that questioning the morality of diversity quotas in employment and entertainment in modern Britain – over which there is a legitimate question mark – could be grounds for such a comparison is so genuinely offensive that I’d be upset (not only as a Jew) if I weren’t so amused. They’re all so predictable, the Oppressed of Britain, that all you really can do is chuckle. And fight back.