Thank you for this analysis Helen, which resonated very strongly with me as one of those people you mention who have often and increasingly felt pushed ‘into an ultimatum where they must choose between wanting not to appear to condone racism and wanting to criticise the CSJ movement and immigration policy’. The persistent refusal by perfomatively anti-racist mainstream politicians and journalists to acknowledge and consider the consequences of the now quite substantial evidence - not just anecdotal but also statistical - suggesting some very real and negative effects of the scale, pace and nature of demographic change in this country in recent years has, it seems, left people like me with little choice other than to seek such evidence in places and from people whose framing rhetoric may sometimes makes us feel cognitively very uncomfortable. For what it’s worth, I have found the work of black writers such as Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes to be extremely helpful in easing such cognitive dissonance, arguing as they do so eloquently for the validity of the two truths you mention at the end of your piece.
HP said "Cognitive dissonance only arises if you believe that to do the latter, you have to stop believing the former. You don’t."
I don't believe that there are many (and maybe not any) people who are becoming racist because they have decided that anti-immigration is correct and therefore they must become racist in order to be consistent. How stupid or messed up would your thinking need to be to believe that?
You do not appear racist simply by opposing immigration , let alone mass immigration or islamification. The only people who will call you racist are authoritarian morons on the hard left who push the racism of BLM and the homophobia and misogyny of TQ+. Why on earth would you care if hateful authoritarian bigots claim you are something you are not?
I don’t care if ‘hateful authoritarian bigots’ claim that I am something I am not, but it is rather sad when (soon to be former?) friends appear to distance themselves from me for daring to voice ‘legitimate concerns’ (a phrase they reject) about increasing Islamification and the scale, pace and nature of immigration to this country recently.
Stateside reader here. Physics and Engineering background - Ph.D. level. I have been watching this whole space for > 60 years - My family was very active in the civil rights effort from when I was young and I shared my bedroom with a African American high schooler who moved in with us to go to school when his school shut down rather than integrate. I was in 5th grade. Martin Luther King called for people to be judged on their individual merit - and I could not agree more. But individual merit is NOT the same as group average. They are very different. 50+ years ago I talked with an African Physics Ph.D in the industrial research lab I worked in. While there was some residual discrimination, he found the States to be far preferable to his native Nigeria - as a member of the 4th largest tribe there were no professional jobs available to him there.
In my view the CSJ movement is barking up the wrong tree. The primary problem is cultural / subcultural. The popular culture is primarily hedonistic and anti-academic. The poorer subcultures in general tend to be actively anti-academic, and may be violently anti-academic. In general, it is only relatively small subgoups that are strongly pro-academic. The schools are a reflection of the student body. In many areas strong academic students are violently supressed by their peers. I saw - and experienced this in the mid 1960's when I was in Junior High School in NorthWest Washington DC, which was predominantly poor black at the time. I got beat up for no reason more times than I can remember. There were black girls in my classes, but no black boys - in my opinion they did not dare to be seen as academically successful.
When the DC schools dropped the college track classes in the name of equality, we moved to Baltimore, where I attended a city wide magnet high school. We had a few black boys in the advanced track, but not many. Standing out academically can be dangerous in some environments, but not doing many years of harder academic work puts you seriously behind.
Look for relatively reliable measures of individual merit and capability. Standardized tests - bad as they are, are less biased than the alternatives. The armed forces in the States uses a validated standardized test for a reason. Look for people who have mastered demanding majors that have not surrendered to the grade inflation phenomena. Even 50 years ago the US Civil Service reviewers found that the STEM areas had far more demanding grading standards than the Humanities, Liberal Arts, and Social Sciences. From my youngest daughter's experince a decade ago in Civil Engineering, I think that Engineering, and I presume the other STEM fields, have done a reasonable job holding the line on student expectations.
I am in favor of high skilled immigration to supplement (not replace) domestic workers. It is a question of what is in the national interest. I do not and have not accepted the moral imperitive delusion that so swept the left.
Hold everybody to high standards and disparate impact be dammed. And if somebody calls you racist for it, they condemn themselves.
It’s interesting. The UK has done quite a lot of the “recruiting professionals” thing. This has resulted in a panic because white working class boys are in last place in schools and caused some on the right to claim systemic oppression and demand affirmative action for white boys. In fact, when you break things down, you find that Caribbean boys have the same grades as white boys. The difference is largely caused by the children of professionals recruited from Africa, particularly Nigeria.
One of the massive disadvantages of immigration - the best academic opportunities are denied to some of the best (but not the absolute best) native Brits because they are out-competed by the more talented immigrants.
Obviously importing talent is a good thing, but obviously reducing opportunities for some of the best natives is a bad thing.
To what extent is the purpose of Oxbridge to educate the best young native talent, and to what extent is the purpose to bring in money from abroad and to educate the global best? I would argue it has a role in doing both, but that we have not necessarily got the balance right at the moment.
To be clear - "native" is not used to refer to skin colour in this post.
This is your best yet, interms of deconstructing the growing brain fever of a disenfranchised majority (including B&B people) and in nailing exactly its complex origins. I'd add my own frustration at seeing critical race and SJ rhetoric blamed on Liberalism, when it is their antithesis. And worse, when it is the only antidote. Thank you for clearing my mind once again 🙏
"I'd add my own frustration at seeing critical race and SJ rhetoric blamed on Liberalism, when it is their antithesis."
CSJ and TQ+ and BLM can all be blamed on brainless "anything goes" liberalism - if classical liberalism had stayed strong and in charge, and behaved in a classical liberal way, it would have recognized the evils of post-modermism and queer theory and treated them in a zero tolerance way right from the start, and we'd be much better off now
Went they went after Lawrence Fox, I stopped listening to accusations of racism, period. I’m just not interested in hearing them any more, they are irretrievably compromised and worthless.
Well, that doesn't really work. Why not object to the accusations that are false and accept the ones that are true? Assuming you believe racism to be a bad thing.
It works because I’m a human being with limited time, and since the %age of accusations about racism that are false is in the high nineties, it makes sense to develop a mental filter that rejects all accusations, and adds anyone making them to my private list of bad actors. That’s what happens when a grift backfires.
Basically, unless Lord Sewell says it, it ain’t landing.
100%, soapdodger. I agree completely. Racism is a bad thing, and I will get back to thinking about it once we have massively reduced immigration and islamification (two big causes of any increases in racism that may or may not be happening), and destroyed the bigoted racist authoritarian hard left with their dishonest accusations.
Trying to combat racism when there is so much going on that risks encouraging it, and the biggest self-identified anti-racists are actually the worst racists and who lie that non-racists are racist, is just pointless.
I genuinely believe that when you hear an accusation of racism in 2025 the person making the accusation is much more likely to have racist beliefs than the accused.
What is there about being "sympathetic to criticisms of the CSJ movement and immigration policy" that is in any way racist? There is nothing racist about not wanting mass immigration or islamification, and there is nothing racist about wanting to keep out different cultures, and there is nothing racist about wanting your town to look and feel like it did when you were growing up, and there is certainly nothing racist about opposing the racism of CSJ.
I do not think that people are feeling cognitive dissonance.
I think some people are quite happy to call out what they think is wrong whilst not giving a flying one about the inevitable accusations of racism they will get from the homophobic, misogynistic racists pushing BLM and CSJ and TQ+ etc.
I think some people are racist, or are not racist but say racist things, and those people are probably stupid and regard increased patriotism and anti-mass immigration sentiment as a green light to be more vocal.
That increase in racist language needs to be blamed on those who allowed mass immigration and islamification and towns to change beyond recognition in very short periods of time, as much as it does on people who oppose mass immigration and islamification and who display patriotism.
I think you're arguing against something that you have made up. Have you any evidence that there are significant numbers of people who have had "reasonable concerns" and that because of this they have felt obliged to become racist?
"Evaluating the worth of one’s fellow human being via their skin colour is stupid and unethical."
Of course. I believe that the racist far right is a tiny tiny tiny minority of the "patriotic right" for want of a better description. These racists hate Tommy Robinson for his failure to be a racist.
Those on the "patriotic right" almost all seem to me to be perfectly happy with immigrants and black people (I would evidence this by the huge amounts of love shown to black Nigerian / british youtuber Shady Shae when he attends various "patriotic right" rallies - he is loved because of his beliefs and personality and no-one cares about his place of birth or skin color or accent - he is one of us because he wants to be and tries to be, and the fact he is not white or british born does not matter at all).
I think people often interpret things as racism when they are not - if someone is rude to a Pakistani immigrant BECAUSE that person's behaviour clearly shows a massive disrespect or hatred of the UK, that is not in itself necessarily racism, even if the immigrant perceives it as such.
Thank you for this analysis Helen, which resonated very strongly with me as one of those people you mention who have often and increasingly felt pushed ‘into an ultimatum where they must choose between wanting not to appear to condone racism and wanting to criticise the CSJ movement and immigration policy’. The persistent refusal by perfomatively anti-racist mainstream politicians and journalists to acknowledge and consider the consequences of the now quite substantial evidence - not just anecdotal but also statistical - suggesting some very real and negative effects of the scale, pace and nature of demographic change in this country in recent years has, it seems, left people like me with little choice other than to seek such evidence in places and from people whose framing rhetoric may sometimes makes us feel cognitively very uncomfortable. For what it’s worth, I have found the work of black writers such as Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes to be extremely helpful in easing such cognitive dissonance, arguing as they do so eloquently for the validity of the two truths you mention at the end of your piece.
HP said "Cognitive dissonance only arises if you believe that to do the latter, you have to stop believing the former. You don’t."
I don't believe that there are many (and maybe not any) people who are becoming racist because they have decided that anti-immigration is correct and therefore they must become racist in order to be consistent. How stupid or messed up would your thinking need to be to believe that?
You do not appear racist simply by opposing immigration , let alone mass immigration or islamification. The only people who will call you racist are authoritarian morons on the hard left who push the racism of BLM and the homophobia and misogyny of TQ+. Why on earth would you care if hateful authoritarian bigots claim you are something you are not?
I don’t care if ‘hateful authoritarian bigots’ claim that I am something I am not, but it is rather sad when (soon to be former?) friends appear to distance themselves from me for daring to voice ‘legitimate concerns’ (a phrase they reject) about increasing Islamification and the scale, pace and nature of immigration to this country recently.
I love how rationally and concisely you navigated this issue. If only everyone could be this sane.
Stateside reader here. Physics and Engineering background - Ph.D. level. I have been watching this whole space for > 60 years - My family was very active in the civil rights effort from when I was young and I shared my bedroom with a African American high schooler who moved in with us to go to school when his school shut down rather than integrate. I was in 5th grade. Martin Luther King called for people to be judged on their individual merit - and I could not agree more. But individual merit is NOT the same as group average. They are very different. 50+ years ago I talked with an African Physics Ph.D in the industrial research lab I worked in. While there was some residual discrimination, he found the States to be far preferable to his native Nigeria - as a member of the 4th largest tribe there were no professional jobs available to him there.
In my view the CSJ movement is barking up the wrong tree. The primary problem is cultural / subcultural. The popular culture is primarily hedonistic and anti-academic. The poorer subcultures in general tend to be actively anti-academic, and may be violently anti-academic. In general, it is only relatively small subgoups that are strongly pro-academic. The schools are a reflection of the student body. In many areas strong academic students are violently supressed by their peers. I saw - and experienced this in the mid 1960's when I was in Junior High School in NorthWest Washington DC, which was predominantly poor black at the time. I got beat up for no reason more times than I can remember. There were black girls in my classes, but no black boys - in my opinion they did not dare to be seen as academically successful.
When the DC schools dropped the college track classes in the name of equality, we moved to Baltimore, where I attended a city wide magnet high school. We had a few black boys in the advanced track, but not many. Standing out academically can be dangerous in some environments, but not doing many years of harder academic work puts you seriously behind.
Look for relatively reliable measures of individual merit and capability. Standardized tests - bad as they are, are less biased than the alternatives. The armed forces in the States uses a validated standardized test for a reason. Look for people who have mastered demanding majors that have not surrendered to the grade inflation phenomena. Even 50 years ago the US Civil Service reviewers found that the STEM areas had far more demanding grading standards than the Humanities, Liberal Arts, and Social Sciences. From my youngest daughter's experince a decade ago in Civil Engineering, I think that Engineering, and I presume the other STEM fields, have done a reasonable job holding the line on student expectations.
I am in favor of high skilled immigration to supplement (not replace) domestic workers. It is a question of what is in the national interest. I do not and have not accepted the moral imperitive delusion that so swept the left.
Hold everybody to high standards and disparate impact be dammed. And if somebody calls you racist for it, they condemn themselves.
It’s interesting. The UK has done quite a lot of the “recruiting professionals” thing. This has resulted in a panic because white working class boys are in last place in schools and caused some on the right to claim systemic oppression and demand affirmative action for white boys. In fact, when you break things down, you find that Caribbean boys have the same grades as white boys. The difference is largely caused by the children of professionals recruited from Africa, particularly Nigeria.
One of the massive disadvantages of immigration - the best academic opportunities are denied to some of the best (but not the absolute best) native Brits because they are out-competed by the more talented immigrants.
Obviously importing talent is a good thing, but obviously reducing opportunities for some of the best natives is a bad thing.
To what extent is the purpose of Oxbridge to educate the best young native talent, and to what extent is the purpose to bring in money from abroad and to educate the global best? I would argue it has a role in doing both, but that we have not necessarily got the balance right at the moment.
To be clear - "native" is not used to refer to skin colour in this post.
This is your best yet, interms of deconstructing the growing brain fever of a disenfranchised majority (including B&B people) and in nailing exactly its complex origins. I'd add my own frustration at seeing critical race and SJ rhetoric blamed on Liberalism, when it is their antithesis. And worse, when it is the only antidote. Thank you for clearing my mind once again 🙏
Well said!
And thanks!
"I'd add my own frustration at seeing critical race and SJ rhetoric blamed on Liberalism, when it is their antithesis."
CSJ and TQ+ and BLM can all be blamed on brainless "anything goes" liberalism - if classical liberalism had stayed strong and in charge, and behaved in a classical liberal way, it would have recognized the evils of post-modermism and queer theory and treated them in a zero tolerance way right from the start, and we'd be much better off now
Went they went after Lawrence Fox, I stopped listening to accusations of racism, period. I’m just not interested in hearing them any more, they are irretrievably compromised and worthless.
Well, that doesn't really work. Why not object to the accusations that are false and accept the ones that are true? Assuming you believe racism to be a bad thing.
It works because I’m a human being with limited time, and since the %age of accusations about racism that are false is in the high nineties, it makes sense to develop a mental filter that rejects all accusations, and adds anyone making them to my private list of bad actors. That’s what happens when a grift backfires.
Basically, unless Lord Sewell says it, it ain’t landing.
100%, soapdodger. I agree completely. Racism is a bad thing, and I will get back to thinking about it once we have massively reduced immigration and islamification (two big causes of any increases in racism that may or may not be happening), and destroyed the bigoted racist authoritarian hard left with their dishonest accusations.
Trying to combat racism when there is so much going on that risks encouraging it, and the biggest self-identified anti-racists are actually the worst racists and who lie that non-racists are racist, is just pointless.
I genuinely believe that when you hear an accusation of racism in 2025 the person making the accusation is much more likely to have racist beliefs than the accused.
What is there about being "sympathetic to criticisms of the CSJ movement and immigration policy" that is in any way racist? There is nothing racist about not wanting mass immigration or islamification, and there is nothing racist about wanting to keep out different cultures, and there is nothing racist about wanting your town to look and feel like it did when you were growing up, and there is certainly nothing racist about opposing the racism of CSJ.
I do not think that people are feeling cognitive dissonance.
I think some people are quite happy to call out what they think is wrong whilst not giving a flying one about the inevitable accusations of racism they will get from the homophobic, misogynistic racists pushing BLM and CSJ and TQ+ etc.
I think some people are racist, or are not racist but say racist things, and those people are probably stupid and regard increased patriotism and anti-mass immigration sentiment as a green light to be more vocal.
That increase in racist language needs to be blamed on those who allowed mass immigration and islamification and towns to change beyond recognition in very short periods of time, as much as it does on people who oppose mass immigration and islamification and who display patriotism.
I think you're arguing against something that you have made up. Have you any evidence that there are significant numbers of people who have had "reasonable concerns" and that because of this they have felt obliged to become racist?
"Evaluating the worth of one’s fellow human being via their skin colour is stupid and unethical."
Of course. I believe that the racist far right is a tiny tiny tiny minority of the "patriotic right" for want of a better description. These racists hate Tommy Robinson for his failure to be a racist.
Those on the "patriotic right" almost all seem to me to be perfectly happy with immigrants and black people (I would evidence this by the huge amounts of love shown to black Nigerian / british youtuber Shady Shae when he attends various "patriotic right" rallies - he is loved because of his beliefs and personality and no-one cares about his place of birth or skin color or accent - he is one of us because he wants to be and tries to be, and the fact he is not white or british born does not matter at all).
I think people often interpret things as racism when they are not - if someone is rude to a Pakistani immigrant BECAUSE that person's behaviour clearly shows a massive disrespect or hatred of the UK, that is not in itself necessarily racism, even if the immigrant perceives it as such.
Banger title.