Discrimi-nation?

Frank Hester was furious as he criticised a female executive: "I try not to be sexist, but... It's like trying not to be racist but you see Diane AbbottThe first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country's first Black MPs. on the TV and you're just like... you just want to hate all Black women because she's there. And I don't hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot."

Hester's tech firm has earned over £400m from the government.¹ He has donated £10m to the Conservative Party.

His remarks about Abbott were made in 2019 and reported in The Guardian. In the same year he told staff that although he made a lot of jokes about racism he hated prejudice.

A statement from TPP claims that he has tried to apologise to Abbott and sees racism as "a poison".

Abbott was suspended from the Labour party last year for claiming that Irish people, Jews and Travellers were not affected by racism as much as Black people were.

The government initially refused to call Hester's remarks racist. But it later said they were.

The incident raises some deep and troubling questions:

Immoral money Can politicians uphold proper standards when the rich can influence them through donations?

Legal enlightenment Can laws eliminate racism? Britain banned all forms of discrimination in 1976, but it still persists.   

School rules Are teachers the best people to instil moral values? What happens if parents have different ones?

Bad jokes Should only members of a particular racial group be allowed to talk about their own ethnicity? How can that be reconciled with freedom of speech?

Blind bias? Can people be racist without realising it? Some say no, when race is such a hotly debated issue. Others claim that everyone is subconsciously racist.  

Generalising despising Some people hate an entire community because of a meeting just one member of it. How can this be prevented?

Yes: It clearly is when someone like Frank Hester can be accepted into the heart of the Establishment, welcomed as the Conservatives' biggest donor ever and awarded the OBEThe Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE..  

No: If it were, Rishi Sunak would not be prime minister. A survey last year found that only 2% of Britons felt uncomfortable about the idea of living next to someone of a different race.

Or... It is hard to unpick racism from other forms of hostility. The Gaza crisis has brought an increase in anti-Semitism from people who confuse Judaism with Zionism, as well as in religion-based Islamophobia.