How unappealing it is to imagine British Member of Parliament Dianne Abbott being given a “severe dressing down” and “ordered” to apologize “unreservedly” by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. All for the crime of a tweet in which she opined that “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’,” in a discussion that arose from, and has shamefully overshadowed, the conviction of two white men for the 1993 murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Tweeting uncomfortable historical truths about white people, unlike murder, is not a crime even in the United Kingdom, of course. So the fact that police action has even been discussed as a possibility by malicious, partisan members of the media and clueless members of the public is an alarming reflection of the current state of British political culture where race is concerned – not to mention a wider malaise also infecting the United States when it comes to freedom of expression via social media.