Is dog-walking racist?
The Welsh government has been on a crusade to rid Wales of racism, largely the imaginary kind.
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In the eyes of every Welsh public body, quango and activist group, Wales is apparently dominated by ever-more insidious forms of racism. Since 2020 and the rise of Black Lives Matter, the Welsh state has been engaged in a farcical attempt to find racism in every nook and cranny, encouraging various third-sector organisations to join in the hunt.
In August, it emerged that the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals now views the names of various Welsh buildings as a potential source of racial enmity. Allegedly, pubs with names like The Buccaneer Inn – due to pirates’ liminal association with the slave trade – ‘represent a racist legacy’.
Now a new potential source of discrimination has been identified. Namely, dog-walking. This, at least, is the implication made by a report by environmental group Climate Cymru BAME, submitted to the Welsh government.
The Welsh state has been seeking input on how to make good on its ‘Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan’. Devised in 2020, the plan aims to make Wales ‘anti-racist’ by 2030 and has asked various groups, like the librarians, for their input. The Climate Cymru BAME report was produced specifically to help address ‘racism relating to climate change, environment and rural affairs’.
While the report doesn’t explicitly say that dogs, or dog-walking, are racist, it does at least suggest that the unbridled presence of dogs in parks and other green spaces is hampering the government’s aim of turning Wales into a bastion of inclusion. It proposes the creation of ‘dog-free areas in local green spaces’, among other recommendations.
The group’s vaunted ‘qualitative and quantitative’ research methodology appears to have consisted of lobbing questions at the unsuspecting Caribbean community in Bangor, a seaside town in north-west Wales. That ethnic-minority Welsh people also own and like dogs does not seem to figure in the reasoning.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this latest comical suggestion. The Anti-Racist Action Plan has already generated plenty of other hilarious headlines. Reports produced by other groups have pointed to all manner of other ‘barriers’ to multiracial harmony, including the alleged dominance of ‘middle-aged white women’ on allotments.
While it is unlikely to achieve anything other than more embarrassing news stories, and a further drain on public resources, here’s hoping the Welsh state’s patronising crusade against imaginary forms of racism doesn’t end anytime soon. We could all do with a few more laughs.
Hugo Timms is an intern at spiked.
Picture by: Getty.
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