Does he (or she) like hot tamales? No? How about Chicken Vindaloo? Or scrambled eggs with hot sauce? If not, she (or he) may have IRS–no not that IRS, but another one that is almost as dangerous: Incipient Racist Syndrome.
Think I am making it up? Check out this story at the London Telegraph:
Toddlers who dislike spicy food ‘racist’
The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.
This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.
The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age.
It alerts playgroup leaders that even babies can not be ignored in the drive to root out prejudice as they can “recognise different people in their lives”.
The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: “Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships.”
It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: “blackie”, “Pakis”, “those people” or “they smell”.
The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk'”.
The scariest bit, as my wife points out, comes at the end:
“Some people [says an NCB guide] think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In fact, the opposite is the case.”
Why? One reason is that the more reported incidents of racism, the more work for the NCB.
This garbage isn’t worth dignifying with a response, only caustic ridicule–Yuk is a mild expression that comes to mind–but it seems to be spreading, so let me just quote these words of wisdom from Sidney Hook:
As morally offensive as is the expression of racism wherever it is found, a false charge of racism is equally offensive, perhaps even more so, because the consequences of a false charge of racism enable an authentic racist to conceal his racism by exploiting the loose way the term is used to cover up his actions. The same is true of a false charge of sexism or anti-Semitism. This is the lesson we should all have learned from the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Because of his false and irresponsible charges of communism against liberals, socialists, and others among his critics, many communists and agents of communist influence sought to pass themselves off as Jeffersonian democrats or merely idealistic reformers. They would all complain they were victims of red-baiting to prevent criticism and exposure.
Indeed.
Hat tips to Instapundit and Jonah Goldberg, whose daughter doesn’t like Salsa (neither does our son).
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