best thing I’ve read on this kind of thing for a while (and apparently co-written by an Irishman and an Englishwoman):
“The insistence on an apology evinces a new standard of racial sensitivity among rightwing commentators. Racist jokes are always “taken too seriously”, but Abbott’s sentence is offensive, no contextualisation allowed. Minorities “cry racism” on a whim, but endless coverage of a digital blip is serious political commentary. Anti-racism is “victimology”, but white people are victims of reverse racism. And once the rehearsal of outraged equivalence is in gear, anything goes. Cole noted that the unfortunate proximity of Abbott’s tweet to the Stephen Lawrence convictions demonstrated how “racism works both ways”, illustrating Richard Seymour’s contention that as the verdict “drew attention to institutional … racism in British society, it was a dead cert that the media would search for a way to restore white victimhood”.
Beyond the opportunistic timing, this discourse of victimisation demonstrates why racism does not work both ways. Bias, stereotyping and violence are human actions, but racism is not a synonym for individual prejudice. Instead, racism is the systemic discrimination of whole groups of people cast as outsiders, deemed incapable of full incorporation into society, and treated with suspicion on this basis. It has a deep and lasting effect on individuals’ life chances and consequent wellbeing, and is damaging to the social fabric as a whole. For all the equivalences drawn between clumsy and prejudicial references to skin colour, racism is inherently political; it requires the power to contribute to racial oppression*.”
*the good bit from this link (a sort of Onion-like satirical take on the Abbott ‘story’ - vs. the actual news of the Lawrence case):
“Already, there are reports that police officers have been pouring into “white” areas, where they have been stopping, searching and harrassing white youth, on suspicion that they are “conspiring to divide and rule”. Officers are said to be arresting any white males who are caught in possession of Machiavelli’s The Prince.
