This whole Jason Arday kerfuffle, particularly the reaction from people like James O’Brien, feels like the 2026, David Brent-esque version of “I’m not racist, I’ve got Black friends.” There’s something deeply peculiar about the modern middle class liberal obsession with race, because for all their endless lectures about “seeing beyond colour”, colour appears to be literally ALL they see. From the 1950s onwards, ethnic minority families settled largely in working class communities. It wasn't some multicultural utopia, there was racism, arguments and tensions, but people also just got on with living alongside each other. By the 80s and 90s, their children and grandchildren weren't exotic political concepts requiring an academic vocabulary to understand. They were Gary from work, your mate’s mum, the bloke who fixed your car, the girl you fancied at school. Nobody needed a training course. Then those children and grandchildren went to university and entered professional Britain, and encountered a particular sort of white liberal who had often spent considerably less time around ethnic minorities than the working class people they regarded as hopelessly prejudiced. Suddenly race became an enormous virtue signalling performance. "Look how much I notice your colour." "Look how loudly I celebrate you." " Look how furious I become on your behalf." "Look how DEFINITELY NOT RACIST I am." And eventually you arrive at the Jason Arday nonsense, where ordinary scrutiny of an extraordinary steaming mound of bollocks becomes suspicious because he's Black. That isn't equality. Equality means Jason Arday gets exactly what everybody else gets: You're a human being. I'm a human being. Same rules. Same rewards, same punishments. As Thomas Sowell said, “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” If your "anti racism" requires you to notice somebody's race first, and then adjust how you praise, criticise or judge them accordingly, perhaps it's you thats the racist?