On what racism isn't

This from this thing of beauty

Who said this?

Racist jokes can be an important element in the development and maintenance of a cohesive, non-racist society.

Was it perhaps an unusually articulate piece of self-justification from Jim Davidson? Or an offering from Philip Blond or one of his henchmen?

Nope, it was a prominent left-wing blogger.

But he has an argument, here you go:

The concept of utani, a Kiswahili word of Arabic origin meaning something like ‘joking relationship’, encompasses  the complex social system of mutual inter-dependency between ethnic groups, who may pre-colonially have had warring a warring relationship around land and livestock, or who may have come into first contact via newly established trade route to the coast.  Utani was, in effect, a swiftly developed social structure that enabled different ethnic groups to cope with the massive changes brought upon them by the first wave of exploitative, international capitalism.

I take his word for it. But here's the basic problem, what he is describing are not racist jokes. They may be jokes about race. No doubt these can have the kind of socially galvanising effect Paul describes. On other occasions they might be rude, thoughtless, offensive, or whatever. None of this is racism. Racism is a structural relationship of power, which finds expression and is in turn reinforced by racist jokes (and many other things). A joke about race is racist just when a member of a dominant group tells it about a member of an oppressed group in the context of systematic group inequality. Which, let's face it, is exactly what we are talking about in Britain. In as much as namby, pamby, politically correct killjoys complain about racist jokes, which we do, it is because we do not want white people telling derogatory jokes about black people.

It is disgraceful to see somebody on the Left muddying waters that should be very clear. Because, in an odd way, Paul is right. Communities can be brought together by racist jokes. The problem is that it is the job of socialists to destroy those kind of communities and replace them with something better.