Why is the Welsh government so worried about racist buildings?

It’s hard to keep up with what is racist these days. It used to be straightforward. You know, discriminating against, hating or depriving rights to certain groups for no other reason than the colour of their skin. But that quaint definition just won’t do anymore.

Nowadays, the countryside is racist, maths is racist, telling a Japanese person you like sushi is racist, wearing a sombrero if you’re not Mexican is racist, compliments are racist, babies are racist. To that yawning list we can now add… buildings. Particularly those in Wales, it seems.

The Welsh government has pledged to ‘eradicate’ systemic racism by 2030, and apparently it’s starting with those notorious bigots, the librarians. There are proposals to train them up in ‘critical whiteness studies’, aimed at displacing the ‘dominant paradigm of whiteness’, as part of a project costing £130,000.

The snag: where to hold all these ‘anti-racist’ training sessions, given the ‘racist legacy’ of too many buildings in Wales? Guidance for the project warns that sessions should not take place in buildings originally owned by, or named after, or even vaguely, distantly associated with slave owners, colonialists and the like.