Listening to the appalling news from Rotheram this morning one sentence stuck out. A man who knew a little of what was going on failed to act because he didn't want to be labelled a rascist!
This brought back memories of teaching in a multi racial school in Essex where every time I tried to make one young man behave properly I was immediately accused of being a rascist because the boy , a West Indian was black. He would grin at me as he said it, it had become the charm by which he expected to get away with disrupting the class on a regular basis.
This accusation is hard to live with for me. As a child one of my best friends was the daughter of a West Indian cricketer. I had taught English as a second language for ten years to the Asians in Rochdale. I can say in all honestly that when I look at anyone I am not aware of their colour....people are just people, I don't see them as black., brown or yellow....
I don't think I am a racist and would defend my position vigorously if attacked but the label can hurt and I can appreciate that some people faced with this dreadful crime might fight shy of trying to bring those guilty to justice.
I hear the voices of those who were used, degraded, exploited for sex and it really doesn't matter what the colour of their exploiters are...it happened. It is a crime. They should be caught and prosecuted. And if that makes me or anyone else a rascist so be it....
Hiding behind the liberal fear of being accused of racism has now gone too far. Children have been hurt, brutalised and will bear the scars for the rest of their lives....those who knew and did nothing in case they were accused of being racist should take some of the blame...if they had acted and spoken out it might have been stopped. To do nothing is cowardly....
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1 comment:
Well said Jean,
I don't know enough about the background to comment sensibly, but the cowardice of those working in Childrens Services, the Council and South Yorkshire Police stinks to high heaven.
As yet, nobody has been sacked, nobody has accepted any blame (apart from the leader of Rotherham Council who resigned) and ther is a huge blame game going on among them, Meanwhile most of those who committed the offences have gone undetected and unpunished. That's another disgrace.
As in many of the child abuse inquiries, there seems to be collusion which went across racial and social boundaries or class - an evil axis or organisation that needs rooting out to allow the thousands of victims some closure.
My prayers are for the victims, and those who've committed these offences, but not for the ones who covered it up or ignored it - they don't deserve my prayers until they repent their inaction.
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