Peter Simple, Call Your Service

In the Brave New World Department, Princeton University psychology researchers Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske claim to have found a way to observe prejudice directly on the brain

It isn't often that one sees reality lurching in the direction of The Way of the World, but when does, all one can do is acknowledge that Peter Simple was there first.

American scientists have developed a brain scan which they claim can detect racial prejudice.

It works by examining a region of the brain where surges of activity occur in racially biased white people when they are shown photographs of black people and try to suppress their feelings of prejudice.

"ETHNOLEFT" comments: "Some of us keen anti-racist fans think everybody should be scanned for racial prejudice by these methods, and that regular attendance at special scanning centres should be compulsory for all.

"Certainly very few of us would be prepared to carry about the bulky, elaborate and expensive machinery needed for those scans. Just how accurate are they anyhow? Most of us, I fancy, will prefer to stick to tried and tested methods and go on using the racial prejudometer, the handy, portable device originally developed by Ethnicaids for the race relations industry, but now obtainable from any good anti-racist stockist.

"Incidentally, Ethnicaids have now moved their factory from Willenhall, Staffs, to more commodious premises on the North Circular Road in London, where their boffins are now working on a new universal prejudometer which can detect and measure not only racism but also sexism and homophobia."

"It's early days yet," a spokesman told me when I called there yesterday. "We've still got a lot of snags and headaches to iron out." A deafening explosion inside the research unit lent force to his words.

A scientist with his laboratory overalls blackened and in shreds and his ballpoint pens all anyhow, appeared at the entrance, gesticulating and shouting "It's hell in there!" until he was pulled back inside by colleagues.

A pall of appropriately multi-coloured smoke hung over the neighbourhood, where housewives complained of stress and a temporary TV black-out. Very soon heavily armed police, paramedics, counsellors and Kurdish language interpreters appeared, followed by a group of enterprising briefcase-wielding lawyers.

Tip o' the hat to Samizdata.