Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: The evil that dare not speak its name

Racism is getting worse. We can't name it as those who treat us as inferiors say we're oppressing them

For a couple of days, Britons discussed the state of race relations in this country, a rare foray into a theme that appears to have been buried in a heritage site. We talk incessantly about multiculturalism, faith battles, Islamophobia, integration, assimilation, segregation, immigration, terrorism, the British identity, inner- city problems and ethnic tensions, but not race - even though it colours every one of the above.

The Commission for Racial Equality itself - which by definition exists to fight against racial discrimination - doodles to fill time and space, and instigates confusing extraneous arguments to provoke silly tabloid headlines, perhaps in order to avoid mentioning the R-word.

Now come riots in Birmingham, leaving a man dead, a policeman and several others injured. Once when these streets of Lozells blew up, it was a manifestation of black anger against white racism. This time, apparently, the violence erupted between black and Asian citizens; you know - primitive, dark tribes fighting each other just as they do in Rwanda and Kashmir and Iraq.

These clashes are indeed spreading and causing us anti-racists much heartache. To witness Sikhs fighting Muslims, or Caribbeans stabbing Nigerians, or whites assaulted by brown and black brutes, makes me weep. But the new racial and ethnic flashpoints have not replaced white race hatred; they are only another cause for despair, more cracks in our fragile society. The evil of white racism still stalks our land.

Of course, life is better for Britons of colour than ever before. As it is for women and gays and disabled people, too. But prejudices against all these groups still wreck aspirations and destroy lives. A homophobic attack has just left a young gay man dead on Clapham Common. Neil French, the creative director of WPP, the world's second largest advertising group, said in a speech last week that women didn't deserve to be at the top of his industry because they were "crap". In the same week, the gentle Dr John Sentamu, the first black bishop to be appointed in this country by the Church of England, described the racial abuse that has fallen upon him since he accepted his position. They write to him and call him a nigger, and tell him to go back to where he came from. They post human excreta to a man of God, a Christian who says he prays for this scum.

Progress walks a bumpy road; it staggers, sometimes it falls back or is beaten back. The disheartening possibility we egalitarians have to learn to live with is that the final destination perhaps will never be reached. Reduction does not mean elimination. We have to be grateful for mercies and yet stay vigilant.

This country has a singularly positive narrative on diversity, integration and our evolving and expansive national identity. Why, the Old Etonian David Cameron, (predicted) next leader of the Tories, began his nationwide leadership campaign in Harlesden, at a black community radio station, and was embraced by Rastamen. Our cities have easy interracial mixing and marrying, and, compared with the US or the rest of Europe, this is the best of places if you have a cosmopolitan spirit. And yes, many more of us are seen and heard in places that once admitted us only as cleaners and caterers.

It is true, too, that many of the most successful black and Asian Britons no longer care to talk about racial exclusion. It is so passé. Long ago, when it kept them down and out, these stars did complain, willingly and boldly, in interviews I did with them. They know who they are. Today to raise such uncomfortable issues would mean fewer grand invitations, less enthusiasm from power brokers who simply adore black and Asian luvvies with chip-free shoulders.

I understand these celebs have to think of their professional interests, but their silence does help the illusion that widespread racism is dead and buried and that those who doggedly point it up are PC warriors making a living out of relentless complaint.

Over the past few days, Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen, spoke up once more to express her profound disappointment at how slow and reluctant has been progress towards racial equality. Despite the years, and the millions, spent on the Lawrence enquiry, institutions still remain almost wholly white run, racists still stay in key jobs and the media continues to misrepresent the people who try to struggle against these injustices. A white journalist friend of mine recently said to me that Mrs Lawrence had become a "bloody nuisance".

Black and Asian people are disbelieved when they complain of racism - we are not even allowed to describe our condition, yet another degradation we now have to accept. Those who pronounce racism dead and buried reveal a contemptuous disregard for the truth of our lives as black and Asian citizens of Britain.

Racism is not confined to the extremist parties or the violent thugs on estates and our deadliest streets. Middle-class racism is as common, only it is insidious, canny, courteous even. It talks in mellifluous tones about immigration that threatens the civilisation of this great country; it worries about black and Asian enclaves and removes itself from multifarious cities to the pure white air of Suffolk; it uses the rise of Islamicist terrorism to validate its own concealed revulsion at diversity; it refuses to accept a relationship of real equality with Britons of colour.

This racism is getting worse than any of us ever anticipated. We may not name it, because the people who treat us politely as inferiors fly into a rage and accuse us of oppressing them. They claim we allow them no freedom to express genuinely held views and label them racist to seal their tongues. Really? All I see every day is a media full of siren, cultivated voices warning the nation is dying and it is the fault of the many cultures who came and stayed.

Most white people are like Joan Rivers - either bored or irritated when the subject of racism is raised. We've done race; it's over, say some, enough guilt already. Funny, in all the years I have lived on the planet, though it is much proclaimed, I have seen remarkably little manifestation of this painful white guilt. Perhaps it is stoically kept hidden by the tortured souls whose pain is cruelly ignored by ingrates like me.

What more do you want, they plaintively ask of us black and Asian Britons, as if it is our duty to gently pat them on their heads and say, there, there, rest easy, all is now well with the world: the colour of skin, nature's ID card, no longer matters, thanks to you. It is not possible to take or give such comfort, not yet.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk