I confess: I have had some racist thoughts

The head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir David Calvert-Smith, certainly chooses his moments. Speaking on the eve of a Home Office summit called to investigate the increase in crime fuelled by crack cocaine use, he expressed in an interview his belief that "all, or almost all, Britons were racist".

The words are not his, but when asked the question, he replied in the affirmative. I think Sir David was trying only to make the point that while the police and the CPS, in the wake of the Macpherson report, have admitted to "institutional racism", the charge could justifiably be made far more widely.

And indeed it could. I've noticed, for example, that my four-year-old and his friends all seem to be ripe for accusation. Though they attend a highly inclusive nursery school with children from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, it is noticeable that at the birthday parties he's invited to by classmates, these backgrounds are barely represented.

My son managed to go even further. All the children he wanted to invite to his party were not only white, but white-blond as well. I didn't even realise this was happening until the great day arrived, and our house looked like a set for the movies Leni Riefenstahl made in Hitler's dreams.

Yet who am I to judge my son? After almost two decades of living in south London, where the Afro-Caribbean population is high, my own circle of close friends includes only one black face. And even he's half-Italian. All I can say in defence of myself and my son is that everybody seems to be at it. Multi-cultural or not, the tendency in Britain generally seems to be for like to stick with like. My son may not have invited any ethnic minorities to his party, but by the same token, he's never had an invitation from a non-white child at his school either.

There are class reasons for this, as well as cultural ones. It's not just pure racism at work. Or so I tell myself. But that doesn't make the interplay of prejudices any easier to face or to justify.

One dark secret that Sir David's comments have made me face is this: I know in my heart of hearts that when I'm at the cash machine, nothing makes me more nervous than a hovering black youth. This is an awful thing to admit, because the idea that young black men are often criminal is considered to be among the most basic of damaging, racist assumptions. But I only feel this way because I've been mugged twice, and both times my attacker was a hovering black youth. I'm scared in these situations because experience has taught me to be.

No doubt for many this is proof of my own inherent racism, and maybe it is. Except that I realise that there are perfectly solid socio-economic reasons for the racial profile of my assailants. In the inner-city area where I live, many of the poorest, most badly educated, most socially excluded people are black. And that's why there is a high incidence of black crime in the area – not because of any inherent racial characteristic.

This is the reasoning, surely, behind the fact that at the conference about crack cocaine that has entered its second day in Birmingham, the Home Office minister, Bob Ainsworth, is calling for help from black leaders in particular in countering the explosion in crime caused by use of the drug.

There was a time, not so long ago, when such a plea would have been seen as racist in itself. But the good news is that such taboos are beginning to shift. The minister, in fact, is only saying what black leaders have themselves been saying for some time. Diane Abbott, a Labour MP, and the police adviser to the Mayor of London, Lee Jasper, have both spoken out against the crack epidemic among young black men, and the gun crime that has developed with it.

Mike Best, the editor of a black newspaper, The Voice, went even further and suggested that the curtailment of stop and search by police that had occurred in the wake of the Macpherson report should be abandoned. The black community is now moving towards the idea that intelligence-based policing, in which suspects should be stopped and searched on tip-offs, is the best way forward. In the areas where the black community and the police have worked most closely together, the most success in countering crack-fuelled crime has been seen.

This is a move away from political correctness, and towards common sense. But the fact is that without the public soul searching that the police force has done in the wake of Macpherson, and the steps that have been taken since its publication to build bridges between the Metropolitan Police and an alienated black community, this move would not have been possible.

Sir David may not be wrong, in the broadest sense, in the remarks he makes about British society. But for the time being, it is not that helpful for chest-beating about institutional racism to continue. At a time when a post-chest-beating consensus is beginning to emerge, remarks like Sir David's only serve to muddy the waters.

Sir David's remarks play well to the tide of young black men who embrace nihilism, using the idea that Britain is inherently racist as an excuse for them not to try to live life on the straight-and-narrow at all, because all is loaded against them. And at the same time, while right-wingers prefer to seize on Sir David's remarks, and suggest that political correctness still rules, the fact is that many people are continuing to see political correctness where none exists.

When I wrote about a burglar who I'd apprehended in my home, I mentioned that she shouted in a foreign language I did not recognise. A couple of people got in touch with me, accusing me of failing to mention that the criminal was black out of political correctness. In fact, I'd failed to describe the burglar as black because she was white.

But in one respect she did fit in with all of our preconceptions about burglars and street criminals today. The salient detail was not her race, but her addiction.

Addiction has of course been much on the minds of the delegates in Birmingham. Crack is a substance which is even more addictive than heroin – the drug of choice of the woman who burgled me – and it does not bode well that our criminal justice system was not coping at all well with drug-addicted criminals even before the vast increases in crack use over the past couple of years.

The woman who burgled me, Tania Chaves, was sentenced only yesterday, having been on remand since December. She has been released and subjected to a 12-month drug testing and treatment order. Within the limits of the sentencing structure, I think the judge's sentence was the right one.

But it would have been far more sensible for Ms Chaves to have been receiving intensive drug treatment while she was in custody, instead of only now that she is back on the streets. Whether guilty or innocent, addicts need to look hard at the state of their unmanageable lives, and need expert help in doing so.

Remanding the drug addicted to a secure treatment centre rather than a prison should be done as a matter of course. What a pity that such places do not exist in this country. For the time being, we should worry a little less about institutional racism, and a little more about our complete failure to create the new institutions we desperately need.

d.orr@independent.co.uk