When the pendulum swings too far ...

The trouble with social changes is that they are often far too much like a pendulum.

When a physical pendulum starts to move, it never stops at the balance point at the bottom of the swing, it always goes over onto the other side.

So with social change: when there has been a bias in one direction, and it is finally corrected, all too often things go too far in the opposite direction.

I'm not going to go in detail in this post into the relative treatment by the legal system of men and women because the issue is too complex: A hundred and fifty years ago there was a massive imbalance in favour of men, fifty years ago that was probably still true but to a much lesser extent, but today there are probably some aspects where the law treats men more favourably but others - though it is hard to be sure because of the secrecy surrounding family courts - which have probably passed the balance point and become a problem in the opposite direction.

If there is one thing that the disaster at Rotherham proves, it is that, insofar as MacPherson was right about an "institutional racism" problem within the police, the pendulum has swung to the opposite direction to a wholly unacceptable degree. Criminals who were engaging in the rape and terrorising of women on an industrial were able to get the police to back off by threatening to accuse them of racial harrassment.

We need to ensure that the pendulum swings back to the point where everyone is treated equally regardless of the colour of their skin. And no further.

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