Late on the evening of the McGrath affair, I put up a post about the matter, explaining why it seemed to me that although McGrath's answer to Wadsworth could not reasonably be construed as racist, Wadworth's response to McGrath's answer certainly was racist. A commenter rightly pointed out that my article was pointless, for Wadsworth was not an important enough person to merit 1000 words, and for that reason I deleted my piece.
However, Wadsworth himself continues to bask in his self-created limelight, and in a Guardian Comment is Free article yesterday, he repeated his racist error. Here is what he said:
When I put to McGrath that an influential black columnist for the Voice newspaper suggested that older Caribbeans in London might want to go back to the islands from which they came after Johnson's election, surely the right response was for him to have said: "Neither Boris Johnson nor I would want that. Black people are an important and valued part of London and we want them to stay."
No!! That is a racist remark, Mr Wadsworth, because you are saying that anything that is true of one black person must be true of all. You are saying that if McGrath thinks it is fine for Jeanette and Michael to leave London because they don't like it here, then he must think it would be fine for all black people to leave London because they don't like it here.
But, Mr Wadsworth, not all black people think or act alike, and on behalf of my family - my black wife; my bronze children - I am offended that you take the attitude that all black people must think and act alike. That is a racist attitude, and I don't see why I should put up with it without offering a response. I dare say that, as the commenter on my other piece noted, you personally do not justify my time and effort, but I do think it important to stand up against the notion that all black people are the same. People of Caribbean extraction - such as my own family - are themselves; they are not mere members of a race. They each have their own goals and hopes and talents and weaknesses, and you do not get to put my family in a "black" box with others and say that they are all the same, and claim immunity from criticism.
Mr Wadsworth says that it is "hurtful and untrue" of me to suggest that it is actually he, and not McGrath that has been racist here. I suspect that the irony of this remark is not lost upon McGrath or the many other perfectly innocent non-racist people who have been pilloried by "anti-racist campaigners" over the years. Hurtful it may be, but untrue it is not. To suggest that all black people think the same way - that if some of them might want to leave London then all must want to leave; and that everyone obviously believes that all black people think the same way, so that if McGrath thinks that it is fine for some "older Caribbeans" to leave London if they don't like it here, then he must believe that "Blacks should 'go back home if they don't like Mayor'" - to make such a suggestion is racist, Mr Wadsworth. And if you don't like being called a racist, then I suggest you stop acting in racist ways.
