Blogger Abdullah Noorrudeen questions why the race of paedophiles is selectively ignored whenever the perpetrators are white?
Nothing scorches the mind more than the news of innocent children being subjected to abuse, be it psychological, physical or sexual. It is a scar which remains with the child for the rest of their lives, impacting their ability to form relationships and inhibiting development of their mental faculties.
It is without doubt emblematic of human depravity of the extreme kind.
Race
The right-wing, anti-Muslim racists however are doing their utmost best to attach the horror that is the case of Rotherham to race (Pakistani) and religion (Islam). In the comments section of a Spectator article on the topic, commentators called for Islam to be proscribed, mosques to be bulldozed and the British Isles to be cleansed, Spanish inquisition-style.
One report by the Daily Mail, decrying BBC for not highlighting the race of the perpetrators in some of their reports, highlighted the author of a report on the Rotherham case, Professor Alexis Jay’s comments:
“The issue of race, regardless of ethic [sic] group, should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is known to be a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised abuse in any local community.’”
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The BBC in its response highlighted that it did indeed highlight race and brought it to the attention of its readers. In other words, the right-wing forced an accommodating approach for the need to highlight the race of the perpetrators of a crime.
The result of this racist narrative is that subconsciously, a crime is being attached to a group in a manner which suggests that only one group has the propensity to abuse girls. This despite the fact that other reports suggest other race groups are also involved:
“Sonia Brailsford, a mother of four, said she was “shocked and disgusted” by the abuse inquiry report but that a much deeper problem concerning men in their 20s targeting schoolgirls was still going on today. “That is the biggest problem around here,” she said. “You see groups of young men – white, black, Asian – hanging around outside schools waiting for the end of school all the time. They drive up and down, trying to get girls’ attention.”
To accentuate the race element some articles quoted people making note of the race of the victims:
“Why didn’t the Asian men pick on their own? Because they are at home doing the cooking and cleaning so they saw young white girls from deprived areas as easy targets.”
The above, heavily stereotypical rationale is shocking and most disturbing yet common from the comment sections of the many reports which have been published. The statement is the same as insinuating that white girls of low socio-economic background are “easy pickings” due to the “white” culture they come from. It is a disgusting statement and one which reinforces the notion of rising racism in Britain today. What makes such statements more perverse is that the victims included girls of Asian background.
Is paedophilia a “white” crime?
What really exposes this preposterous discourse is that the right-wing as well as their cheap supporters seemed to experience a collective amnesia with regards to such abuses.
A powerful paedophile network with allegations of up to 20 MPs being involved has been operating from within the government for decades. Countless lives have been potentially ruined. Garry Glitter, Stuart Hall, Jimmy Saville (with the number of abuse victims hitting a thousand), and Rolf Harris have abused countless girls and boys. A “cover-up” has allegedly happened with regards to most of these cases; what is the explanation here? A failure of multiculturalism?
Notably, the above mentioned rings and names are associated with middle-class whites. The burning question remains, why hasn’t the skin colour or the religion (Christianity) of these individuals been plastered across the papers? Side-stepping the comparatively non-existent outrage by the public for papers not highlighting their “ethnicity”, the political elite, such as neocon Michael Gove, have even taken an apologist attitude towards such repugnant actions and have said that inquiries are not needed.
When an inquiry is instituted (by white, middle-class neocons), the people summoned to conduct the investigation are linked to alleged paedophiles. In fact they have a history of advising child care reforms!
All those implicated are from a middle-class, white background and yet no concerns are raised that this maybe an endemic “white” problem. Are the right-wing people, papers and politicians being “politically correct” here?
Systematic failure
In the Rotherham case, the police did not act on issues brought forward to them, because the girls, who may have been pregnant, self-harming and addicted to heroin, were regarded as “undesirables”. There was a failure on the part of the Council who blamed the “fear of being labelled a racist”. This common get-out clause which seems to be a convenient way of passing the buck was invoked by the Birmingham City Council too during the failures highlighted in the Trojan Hoax “investigations”.
It seems that whenever “white” people are caught failing in their duties they have to blame another ethnic minority to somehow mitigate the failure. We arrive in a situation where, not only is the crime perpetrated by “Pakistani” criminals, but white people have failed in their duties because of Pakistanis too. Thus the victims are too varying degrees perceptively always white. Indeed.
There was and still is a systemic failure of the government to identify the paedophile rings in the government and public services. One wonders how Muslims or ethnic minorities who happen to be Muslim will be blamed for this failure: The stress of preventing these terrorist, extremist, Islamist Muslamics in my alcohol-slurred rage caused me to overlook the partying of MPs with rent-boys subjected to kiddie fiddling. Based upon the ridiculous get-out clause, anything is conceivable.
Perhaps we can also conclude that repeated systemic failure in protecting children from abuse is also a “white” problem?
Crime is a crime
There is more that could be said on this. The viral paedophilia sweeping the Catholic Church, the downplaying by white atheist Richard Dawkins of “mild” child abuse, the white tourists who frequent other countries to satiate their twisted desires with children, the Europe-based paedophile rings being busted; we are merely scratching at the surface of white men and their inclination towards paedophilia. Perhaps it is the libertine values of the “white West”, the perversion of the porn culture and over-sexualising of children which has led to men being unsatisfied in their relationships and which has caused these vile acts to be perpetrated.
If it is argued that what has been written above with regards to “white” paedophiles is inflammatory and stoking racial tensions, and that the centrality of the issue, welfare of the children, is being ignored, then the argument needs to be applied equally because these very same fallacious arguments have been reported and applied by various parts of the media to Pakistanis and Muslims.
The race element has provided the right-wing racists a convenient deflection against the failure in the protection of innocent children. A crime like child abuse has no colour or creed. A crime is a crime.
@CoolnessOfHind
