Racism

clivex said:
Thats an awful article jeremy and just full of the usual left wing hand wringing rubbish
Click to expand...

Dorian Lynskey's piece is actually a very well-measured one - mindful, throughout, of certain elements of the left to resort to sledgehammer polemic and deftly avoiding any temptation to follow suit.

Lynskey is hardly extolling Ms Abbott as some unalloyed paragon of virtue, either - racist she is not, but a high-profile figure surprisingly (for one with her extensive portfolio of media experience) prone to injudicious and clumsy outpourings she most certainly is.

The reader replies to the article start to get a bit too needly and personal too quickly, with that of the Guardian's Ally Fogg a succinct and evenly tempered exception:


"Great blog Dorian.

Being sympathetic to DA (and you) I’d say that what she meant was ‘the white ruling class’ rather than ‘white people.’ Understood that way, her comment was perfectly sound.

To be less charitable for a moment, I do wonder if her choice of words might reveal a quite deep-seated prejudice or opinion which holds that “white people” and “the white ruling class” are basically synonymous. I’m sure she knows rationally it’s not true, but she does have a bad habit of spouting kneejerk generalisations when her guard is down.

Yes, storm in a twitter-cup. Yes, hideously exploited by those seeking a diversion. But yes, what she said was pretty daft and careless."


gc
 
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What I find offensive about that article and the comments quoted by people who should know better is the reference to the Somali women as "girls". One's 28, by the beard of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him)! They're fully-grown women and the feeble excuse that they'd disobeyed their religion to drink alcohol is just bollocks - my religion says 'an eye for an eye' but that won't wash with the High Court if I decide to extract such justice. They've broken our country's laws and if they'd disrespected their religion like this in their home country, they'd be publicly lashed (probably about 100 times each) and banged up for a year or two.

They've got to do a bit of free work, which they'll probably wriggle out of on the grounds of ill health/not being trained/not knowing the language well enough, and our feeble-minded judiciary will go along with it. Sell them to the pirates, I say!

Jeremy: I was in agreement with most of what you've quoted above apart from the "daft" bit. DA may have compressed her thoughts in a slightly ill-advised shorthand, but the premise of her assertion is not daft.

And now, just to prove we're really not a country of imbeciles whose feet spend more time in their mouths than in their shoes, we have Jeremy Clarkson making truly ugly, insensitive remarks about the 23 drowned Chinese cockle-pickers. I think it's time to retire the buffoon from public view. There's no excuse of alcohol, being Muslim, being attacked, or being black - just another ageing white male with an outdated, patronizingly arrogant attitude to pretty much anyone who isn't like him.
 
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