Toryship Leaders

Frances Ryan, writing for the Guardian, declares:

There is nothing funnier or more terrifying than the Tory leadership candidates.

She then goes through each candidate, deriding and mocking their particular virtues and vices. One would expect a Guardian columnist to say this, it’s what they do. Yet one charge that can hardly be levelled is racism. Of the eight candidates as of yesterday, three are Asian (it was four until a few days ago) and one is black. Of the remainder, two are women. Now I set no store by quotas and tokenism- a candidate should be selected on their merits and not their skin colour in a bid to appear non-racist or non-chauvinist. The Tory leadership race, regardless of who wins, demonstrates that ethnicity is little bar to obtaining high office and preferment in this land of Britain. This might be noted by those who see racism everywhere, who topple statues and remove ancient church memorials to long-dead people. Racism was once the preserve of the right and justly attacked by the left, but the roles might now have shifted. In the past few years, it was the left that found itself mired in antisemitism and even now seems to despise Conservative Asians and blacks as though they are race-traitors. See how US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas received more criticism on the Court’s recent abortion ruling than his white colleagues.

Racial prejudice is wrong no matter what its source or where its origins. All humans are made by God, and all bear His image, albeit it in a shattered and broken form. One of the joys of heaven, and, hopefully, the church, is the absence of ethnic prejudice. The old-fashioned skinhead marches and unkind jokes will be a thing of the past, as will the patronising adverts featuring an ethnic minority in every picture. The Bible gives the reason for racial harmony- we are made by the same God.

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. Acts 17:26-27, NKJV

Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay