From Megxit to Manchester grooming gangs, politically correct discourse has become prejudiced and toxic

We need to talk about racism. With news items like Megxit and Manchester’s failure to crack down on grooming gangs not so much sparking debate as detonating ever-deeper dividing lines, that much is clear. It is true that a virulent strain of prejudice is itching undetected beneath the British social fabric. But not in the way that the virtue-signallers who have so energetically lectured the public this week on their “subconscious” racism would have us believe.

A normalised bigotry is indeed hiding in plain sight. It conceals genuine injustices. Diagnosing it is tricky because it involves confronting human shortcomings. Like any self-respecting epidemic, it also has a chillingly sterile name: identity politics.

Dictating that the most important thing about you is your race or gender, its most obvious manifestation is an infuriating “us versus them” narrative: all white people are racists and all ethnic minorities are victims.

“It is not the job of black people and ethnic minorities to educate white people on racism that is perpetrated by white people,” activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu quipped on This Morning, in a Meghan Markle debate that has gone viral. She then went on to “educate” her audience at length, ironically railing against the “whitewashing” of unconscious racism and critiquing those who see the world “through the lens of white privilege” (as opposed to eyes, presumably owing to their bogeyman status).