What people flippantly call “political correctness” is often something far more sinister: state-initiated intimidation, violence, and coercion. How else would you describe the arrest of an English girl (called Codie), by British law enforcement, for asking to be paired in class with English—as opposed Urdu—speakers?
Following the girl’s reasonable request, the disgraceful teacher began “shouting and screaming, ‘It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police’.” (Teachers, who score very low on college admission tests, are quality people in all state run, union-dominated establishments, aren’t they?) “Codie Stott’s family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers.”
Codie “said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.”
Get this, instead of apologizing to the girl, in the hopes of avoiding litigation, “the school is now investigating exactly what happened before deciding what action—if any—to take against Codie.” As if the school has not done enough damage already.
The man behind this regime of gunpoint tolerance is “Headteacher Dr. Antony Edkins.” Under his totalitarianism, “a ten-year-old boy [had been] hauled before a court for allegedly calling an 11-year-old mixed race pupil a ‘Paki’ and ‘Bin Laden’ in a playground argument at a primary school in Irlam.”
Robert Whelan, of the classical liberal think tank CIVITAS (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in April this year), defended Codie. “It’s obviously common sense that pupils who don’t speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers. A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions—they aim to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.” (Whelan’s colleague, my good friend David Conway, comments here.)
You’d think this act would be hard to follow, but British Airways gave it a bash, suspending without pay a Coptic Christian for wearing a small cross to work, “even as Muslims and Sikhs are allowed to wear headscarves and turbans,” reminds Lawrence Auster.
