The real offence of racism is to judge individuals via a supposed stereotype of the group. It is to ignore the fact that when applied to specific individuals, stereotypes are almost always misleading. Statement such as: you are black – you must be musical, or: you are Jewish – you must be smart, are unquestionably very harmful. Everyone is his or her own person, with unique strengths and weaknesses, and should be treated as such.

David Reich, geneticist (decrying abuses of his own discipline)

Reading this today has got me thinking. I look around me and I see that many of the good things we used to help ourselves to so liberally are nowadays in short supply and growing scarcer.

The classic market response is to put the price up. But this is manifestly unfair. It says in effect that you ought to get a smaller share of scarce resources than those richer than you simply because you are poor.

Even the most callous and cynical of us see no justice in that as a public policy.

So we look around for some sensible-sounding basis on which to deny a goodly number of people (not us!) the good things they’ve been getting. Such as access to quality healthcare. Or to education, over and above that needed for a population sufficiently literate for administrative convenience. One that knows how to claim its entitlements online, say.

The last thing we want is we ourselves having to forgo some of the good things we’ve been enjoying, so that everyone can receive the minimum for their basic needs. So we look around for easily recognisable groups we can tax, disenfranchise, cheat, rob, collectively punish or starve. One of the most convenient criteria is sex. Another is skin colour, or other conspicuous sign of ethnicity. Unlike, say, having an extra Y-chromosome, these are classifications that need no training to spot.