Everything Is Racist | Is this the “new normal”?

This article was originally published for Over to the Youth on August 31st, 2022. It is re-published here for your reading pleasure.

It seems not a day goes by without someone, or something, being a target for accusations of racism. Should you watch legacy media or spend enough time on social media, it can feel like there is almost ubiquitous agreement that there is at least one thing in all our lives that is somehow inherently denigrating minority ethnic groups within society.

But what are some of those insensitive and inappropriate artefacts of our existence that have no place in the 21^st century? I have compiled this list of the following offenders, all of which have been deemed racist at some point within the past few years:

• Milk
• Medicine
• The countryside
• Babies
• Wearing Latex gloves
• Science
• Quoting Beyonce
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Mathematics
• Rocks
• Dogs
• Meat
• Plants
• Veganism
• Chess
• Soft drinks
• Education
• Supermarkets
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computers
• Gyms
• Camping
• Hockey
• Pattern Recognition
• Dr. Seuss
• Picnics
• White people
• Non-white people
• Climate change
• Climate change denial
• The police and the army
• Cryptocurrency
• Sandwiches
• Scuba diving
• Gay men and women
• Covid
• Knitting
• Archery
• Ballet
• Dentistry
• Glasses
• Fishing
• Furniture
• Psychotherapy
• Abolitionists
• The entirety of Western civilisation
• Being nice to people
• Condemning racism

This will undoubtedly be far from an exhaustive list. Are these things truly racist, or, in a world where being called a racist is about the worst thing a person can be called, are things simply being decried as racist as a means of discrediting something that someone else doesn’t like? Is this therefore counter-productive in fighting genuine racism, and even risks the possibility of creating racism where it didn’t exist previously? Is it normal to be calling everything racist?

Stop Press: In the process of publishing this piece, another example came to my attention; gardening. It is interesting that this be the latest target for racism accusations, given the apparent effort to discourage people from growing their own food.

For those looking to explore this topic further, consider reading Douglas Murray’s book “The Madness of Crowds”. In this book, the author examines race, sex and identity in the modern era, including an analysis of cultural events such as the Evergreen Riots, BLM and the ‘Sokal Squared’ publishing hoax.