One of the more naïve traits of "caring" left-liberals is their assumption that the objects of their ministrations share their outlook on the world. An Aboriginal friend of mine gets very upset because such people often place her next to gay activists when they invite her to speak at public meetings. She opposes gays on moral grounds, and she is outraged that her Aboriginality is somehow being equated with the homosexuality that she despises.
Such refusals by favoured minorities to go along with socially correct views discomfit the well-meaning members of the café latte set, so they are rarely discussed. But those who believe in a grand sisterhood of victims standing shoulder to shoulder against dominant white Anglo male heterosexuals have had to reckon with some unwelcome news in the last couple of weeks.
A fortnight ago David Howard, a white gay official appointed by Anthony Williams, the newly elected black mayor of Washington D.C., was hounded into resigning after telling two colleagues that he would have to be "niggardly" with the funds for a particular project. One of the colleagues was black, and rumours soon started that Howard had used a racial slur, although "niggardly" has no connection whatsoever with the "n-word". Indeed, our own Kim Beazley, whose caring and lexically informed credentials are beyond reproach, had used "niggardly" when describing some people's attitudes towards Aborigines only a few days earlier.
Howard was of one of the few openly homosexual officials in Washington's city administration, and his departure was strongly denounced by gay groups. The Washington Post suggested that there was more to the situation than met the eye; and that Williams had been willing to sacrifice Howard in order to silence critics who had been claiming that the new mayor was "not being black enough".
The possibility that Howard was also a victim of the antipathy that many American blacks feel towards gays, and particularly towards white gay culture, was not canvassed, perhaps because the issue is so sensitive. But I doubt whether a Hispanic or Native American official who used the word "niggardly" in Washington or anywhere else in America would ever be forced out of a job.
Words are different from physical blows, because any hurt they might cause is usually dependent on who has delivered them. Therefore, when people can be punished for supposedly "insensitive" language, the situation is wide open to abuse. For one thing, the penalty is generally out of all proportion to any offence. And even relatively innocent remarks can be used to get rid of people who are disliked for other reasons, but whose removal on these other grounds might cause too many difficulties.
The sacking of English soccer coach Glenn Hoddle a few days after the David Howard affair provides an excellent example. It also illustrates how satisfying one group can result in antagonising another deserving minority.
The immediate cause of Hoddle's dismissal was his comment that the principle "what your sow, you have to reap" applied across lifetimes, and that people were born disabled because of their karma, the consequences of their actions in previous incarnations. When Hoddle's remarks were published in an interview in The Times at the end of January, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, the press, disabled groups, and other representatives of the great and the good called for his head.
However, as London's Daily Telegraph pointed out, Hoddle had made very similar comments during a BBC interview last May. Then he had told an interviewer, "I think we make mistakes when we are down here and our spirit has to come back and learn ... Why are some people born into the world with terrible physical deformities while other families may be physically perfect? It's a very unjust creator if it is just like that. We are the ones that are making that imbalance individually and as a group of souls down here on Earth. This is our test and I believe we are here to spiritually grow again because we have fallen from where we were at some stage".
But last May there was no fuss because then Glenn Hoddle was England's darling, the man who might take his team to England's first World Cup victory since 1966. Things changed after England's dramatic second round loss to Argentina at the end of June. Complaints began to focus on Hoddle's eccentricities and misjudgements, including his witless claim that the biggest mistake he made during the World Cup campaign was not taking his faith healer, Eileen Drewery, along to help the team.
As soon as England's Football Association sacked Hoddle, fury emerged from an unexpected corner. A succession of Hindu and Buddhist commentators and letter writers, together with their sympathisers, claimed that they had been deeply insulted by the dismissal.
While Hoddle might claim to be a Christian, he had merely stated a fundamental tenet of the Hindu and Buddhist religions. A theologian suggested that England could be making it impossible for a Hindu to be appointed as the national soccer coach.
But such complaints miss the point. A real Hindu or Buddhist, particularly if he was Asian -- as many of the letter writers obviously were -- would never have been dismissed under such circumstances.
The café latte set seems to have created an implicit moral hierarchy of group identities. The more elevated their position on this ladder of virtue, the easier it is for minority members to make outrageous remarks about others with impunity. A white woman can make offensive comments about white heterosexual men, but not gays; gays can disparage white women, but not blacks; and so on.
And the lower one's relative position, the more likely that comparatively innocent statements about other minorities will be deemed highly insulting should this ever prove necessary.
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