Barack Obama & The White House: Playing the Race Card to Deflect Criticism

Apr. 14, 2014 - 6:07 - Dr. Ben Carson on the Obama administration playing the race card

Limiting Immigration: Tearing Up the Race Card. “Integration” and “Cohesion” Are Back in Vogue. But Still No Mention of Islam and Shari’ah
THE SUNDAY TIMES: For years the baleful shade of Enoch Powell silenced debate about immigration numbers, however rational. Playing the numbers game, as it was called, was always associated with the even more shameful misdemeanour of playing the race card.

As recently as November 2003, David Blunkett as home secretary blithely announced that he could not see the need for a limit on immigrants, nor did he think there was a maximum number of people that could be housed in this country.

This astonishingly silly comment passed almost without protest; it was expressing the unthinking orthodoxy of the day. It was fortunate perhaps that Blunkett and the government believed that numbers didn’t matter, since they hadn’t the slightest idea what the numbers were.

The director of enforcement and removals at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate admitted last year that he had not “the faintest idea” how many illegal immigrants were living here. Not only has the government lost control of this country’s boundaries; until recently it didn’t think that mattered.

How quickly things change in politics. Now even the most right-on Labour figures are playing the numbers game, with the race card up their sleeves. Last month Margaret “Enver” Hodge appeared to be doing just that with her announcement that indigenous people in her constituency of Barking felt justly aggrieved that they could not get council housing, while recent immigrants could. They had indeed “a legitimate sense of entitlement” that should not be overridden by new immigrants. The wind was clearly changing. Should we limit immigrants to Europeans? (more) By Minette Marrin

Mark Alexander