The Words I Never Thought I’d Write…

…Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is absolutely correct:

The unrepentant British Pakistani gang leaders who violated young girls in Derby have been rightly reviled and given indefinite sentences. Their victims were almost all white. There it might have ended but for Jack Straw, who rekindled passions on all sides when he said that such Pakistani men thought these females were easy meat who deserved no respect or consideration ( I paraphrase). No solid evidence is provided by Straw to back these assertions. In fact, when he was Home Secretary he could have funded research on the matter, but failed to.

So, she's going to let him have it, right? With both barrels?

Still, even a man used to controversies must be nonplussed by the reaction to his comments. His words were thrown on to blazing pyres by fulminating leftie liberals, feminists, Muslims, Pakistanis, anti-racists and influential individuals who think of themselves as gravely responsible.

Hmmm, who do I know who fits into all those categories?

It was unacceptable, they said, to racialise or ethnicise a particular crime; some even declared that any discussion of cultural factors was dangerous and racist.

Sounds familiar....

No. Actually, it doesn't:

Being avowedly a leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani, and yes, a very responsible person, I should be in the circle with these objectors – particularly as I can't stand the Rt Hon MP for Blackburn, his devious, shady politicking and moral expediency. However, just as when he criticised the full veil, I cannot condemn his views.

*speechless*

I accept that on the basis of the evidence presented in court, this Derby gang was no different from that of the white grooming posse convicted in Cornwall in November.

But..?

But I still say we need to expose and discuss more openly the underpinning values of the Asian criminal rings in many of our cities. If we don't, the evil will grow. Fear of racism should no longer be the veil covering up hard truths. What the Derby gang did has planted and raised more racism – possibly even among good, benign people – than my words ever could.

Oh, my stars and garters!

The conversations can be heard every day around dining tables and on streets; they are embedded in thought and language. I once interviewed the mother of a man who had been convicted of repeatedly raping his young wife, who came from a rural village in Pakistan. The head of the nursery school the couple's child attended had helped the victim report what was happening. In Urdu, the mother hissed: "How lucky was she to get my son? The dirty, ungrateful bitch – went to a white woman to complain. They sleep with everybody. She just didn't know how to make him happy. We have thrown her out. She can go on the streets like those whites now."

Have you ever heard anything like this before? From a columnist in a progressive newspaper?

If I were Yaz, I wouldn't accept any cups of coffee from her fellow left-leaning journalists! That's in any are still even talking to her...

I have been writing about these culturally- sanctioned injustices for two decades, and have interviewed countless people. I will not melt the misdemeanours into generalities, and do not accept that ethnicity and sexual abuse cannot and should not ever be linked.

/applause

Shouting down Jack Straw, busying ourselves with warnings about feeding the BNP, are displacement activities that will do nothing to stop Asian groomers, who, from childhood have developed distorted ideas about themselves, society, females, vice and virtue.

The piece doesn't accept comments. Which is a shame, because this is probably the only one of hers I'd have ever recommended...