The Brits are (becoming?) racists

I’ve been waiting for and seeing interesting fallouts from the recent British riots.  Two of the more interesting consequences are whom the establishment and media continue to blame, and the actions taking in the aftermath.

As told in my last blog ‘London Bridge is burning down”, the first persons to be blamed were black people, a tune that had to be changed when the preponderance of white images began to flock the media.  So it ‘became’ a criminal activity, which while not naming a class, still projected ‘Black’, especially in the context of the earlier racist statements of non-facts.

But then there are some like so-called historian David Starkey, who while obviously couldn’t help himself going on BBC2 to argue that the riots happened  because “the whites have become black”.  Aaah, huh?

Incredulously Starkey still defends assertions, telling the British newspaper, the Mail that plain speaking was needed, ‘I said until I was blue in the face on the programme that I was not talking about skin colour but gang culture. A large group of whites have started to behave like blacks. I think that is the most unracial remark anyone can make’.

Huh?   Sorry but though I wasn’t England-born, I think I have more than a reasonable understanding of the language.  I can’t see how Starkey can claim that his statement is ‘unracial’.  The implication is clear.  If whites didn’t behave like blacks they would not have rioted.  Rioters are bad, thus blacks must be bad.

Here’s a link to perhaps the best response to Starkey and others like him, so I won’t go into an analysis or refutation of what he said.  But this I will say.  Starkey is one of the most dangerous of racists… the intellectual racist.

When a ‘yob’ says something racist, he can be excused as ignorant, unlearned (and smelly) because that is generally what racism is, pure ignorance.  But a man of Starkey’s intellectual background gives a veneer of authority (not respect) on the subject.  As Starkey shows, even racists have doctoral degrees.

I say this accepting there’s a chance he might merely be misguided.  But continuing to defend his comments as ‘unracial’, clearly implies that ‘it can’t be racist if it is true’.  But it isn’t true and it is racist.  Many racists will find comfort in quoting Starkey time after time, as he quoted Enoch Powell.

I suggest that readers go to this link and read the forum, especially this one, “9 — Anonymous wrote at 7:32 PM on August 15:

All present please remember the name David Starkey and pass it on to your children and grandchildren. He is to be immune from retribution by the Citizens’ Councils of the future.   Piers Morgan? Congratulations! You have placed yourself top of the list. Expect a knock on the door in 2040 or whenever Brits finally get their act together and retake their country.  I, for one, will watch your Citizens’ Council trial with relish when that long off day finally comes to pass”.    “Retake their country”?  Where have I heard that before?

We must understand that what makes racists dangerous is not what they say, but that they believe what they say, and when someone believes in what they say then they are apt to act vigourously on it.  Take this post #34, August 16, “Chavs are the remnant of the earlier British “skinhead” movement, which grew out of the New Wave Punk style of the late ’70s and 80s. Many of them were put out of work or denied work as the impact of growing immigration (usually from Pakistan, but Africa and Jamaica too) displaced them. They felt abused by their government and society. So they turned to those most sympathetic to them, Nazi inspired skinheads. They never were from the best class, but they were British.

Notice the reference to the timeline and to the countries in bold.  But historically, as far as I know about the Jamaicans, the ‘great migration’ took place in the late 50’s, and early 60’s and that’s because there were a shortage of British workers for ‘lower class jobs’ such as bus drivers, garbage workers, post men etc.

While Starkey is correct in saying that many white youths have adopted some of the influences from foreign cultures including Jamaica, these posters and racists have deliberately and selectively missed the point.  It was not the Jamaican patois or subculture that caused the riots.

Violence has long been a part of British culture (not just subculture), and not just within the last 50 years.  Pirates and the buccaneers, were not black Jamaicans. Bombing, looting, stealing, rape and murder have long been sanctioned by the Crown, even before Jamaica was ‘discovered’.  Most Jamaicans historical link to slavery was on the part of the enslaved, not the slave master.  If Starkey is referring to the Paul Bogles and Sam Sharpes creating disturbances to gain freedom and betterment, then he is right.  Perhaps those are the Jamaicans that the British youths are emulating with obvious reasons.

I visited London in 1986, in the midst of ‘Paki-bashing’… white gangs beating up anyone with a semblance of East Indian ancestry.  In fact, the same gangs used to beat up blacks until Jamaican ‘gangstas’ put an end to that thuggery, and then all other minorities sought refuge under the Jamaican umbrella.  T’was interesting to hear a Pakistani take on Jamaican nationality.

Part of what attracts the British youth to ‘yaadies’ is not the violence, but the fact that Jamaica has much are proud of, beyond its size.  Very embarrassing for the British is that in the 2008 Olympics track and field, Jamaicans took home 11 medals (6 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze) while jolly ol’ England took home 4 medals, only one of which was gold.

Adding insult to injury, Britain’s high jump silver was earned by a born Jamaican Germaine Mason, and their 400m hurdle bronze medalist Tasha Danvers, is of Jamaican parentage.  The other two track and field medalists for the UK, were both of Nigerian parents.  I should think that people like Starkey should actually be grateful for Jamaicans.  We add value to the British culture.

If your kids are turning from skinheads to dreadlocks, from Shakespeare to Miss Lou, from Handel to Marley, from Roger Bannister to Usain Bolt, then perhaps you should look at your collective parenting skills.

Cultivating a reputation for tolerance, the British are proving to be increasingly racially insular.  But I’m more concerned of the hypocrisy of people like Starkey talking about the failure of the ‘foreigners’ to assimilate, and of them becoming too influential in British culture.   Really?

I have never seen any British expat community wearing saris, speaking patois or converting wholesale to Confucianism.  They have always held the home country’s culture proudly in front of them wherever they go.  Why shouldn’t others do the same.  The British expats not only take their identity with them, they spread it around, even to the point of erasing the culture of where they migrate to (yes, the British can be immigrants).  And like Americans, they have no problems calling other cultures ‘uncivilised’.

The rioting has given the government the excuse to do things they always wanted to do.  Suppression by fear.  Whole families are being thrown out of government housing if one member was involved in the riots.  That’s fascism. You don’t punish a family for the misdeeds of one. It doesn’t appear to involve proof of involvement or the level of involvement.  Just being there might just be enough. No trial. That’s what Hitler did in the 1940’s.

Cameron has demanded limiting social media, and monitoring of social media to convict users who have used the media to exhort violence.   In the latter, it is perfectly fair for the police to use as evidence, but is important to the exact wording of the communication. Right now, it appears to me that there is some looseness there.  Telling others that there is a riot going on is not necessarily a crime.  But it appears you can be arrested for doing so.

And when the boogeyman  appears, there’s always the call for harsher prison sentences, and tougher police responses including greater arming of the police with lethal weapons.  Cameron himself, has asked the police if they need any other new ‘powers’.  Interestingly, because of the demand from Cameron for remand for hundreds involved in the riots, the prison population of Britain and Wales hit a record high. ………………………………………

Gas prices are going again as I predicted but it will go up again shortly, but not as high in average as the last time.  Truth is it should continue to drop what with the ‘freeing’ of Libya (‘s oil), but games are still being played in the market.

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And talking about Libya.  So Ghaddafi is overturned.  What next for Libya.  I kinda think that the west didn’t really think this one out because of their pathological hatred for him (the same as America’s hatred for Castro).  I doubt if they know what is going to replace him.

But what intrigues me is that the west still thinks they know best what is good for others and don’t realize yet how that arrogance makes them easily manipulated.

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and to the lighter side.