I’ve seen this mentioned on several blogs lately — a government-funded advisory group in England says that nursery schools should report racist incidents involving children. Racist incidents could include things such as saying “Yuck” about an unfamiliar food. Anyone who disagrees with the measure is themselves a racist, as evidenced by their disagreement.

The best reaction I’ve read comes from Rachel Lucas, who writes:

Setting the bar for racism so ridiculously low dilutes the meaning of the word to the point that it has no meaning at all.

She’s absolutely right, of course. That’s probably the most frustrating and annoying part of these sorts of policies, which have many, many frustrating and annoying parts — they make accusations of racism utterly meaningless. When “racism” is defined in this way, it becomes something completely not serious. The problem is, racism remains a serious issue, and diluting that issue with “racism” is unconscionable.

What makes it worse is that the people coming up with this nonsense probably have their hearts in the right place, and actually believe that fighting this sort of “racism” actually does something to benefit the fight against real racism. This is idiocy that is founded in good intentions, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is idiocy.