Is it time for black commentators to evacuate the media circus?
A few weeks back I sat down and prepared myself to write an article on the peculiar relationship that the British tabloids held with Meghan Markle. I wanted to understand why these incidents of racism could be so clear to people of colour yet be treated with such indifference and doubt by so many white voices in the media. What was it that they understood about racism that we didn’t? Yet, before I could write a single word, a not-so-insignificant number of rebuttals, articles and think pieces from white commentators emerged.
These articles were combative and hawkish as if those who wrote them were consumed with constitutional repugnance for any person of colour that dared to voice an opinion on racism in public forums that didn’t chime with theirs. I witnessed a platinum-selling artist being told he should show gratitude to white people for raising him (they didn’t). I saw countless brilliant black intellectuals, personal heroes of mine, such as Afua Hirsch and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu be told by white men, some genuinely foaming from the mouth, that their expert opinion, a combination of lived experience and a lifetime of study, is actually misinformed drivel. I witnessed a Labour Party activist suggest that reinvigorating the Party would require a ‘patriotic’ leader, which, long time black MP, David Lammy, could never be. I saw the upholding of a single complaint against BBC Breakfast host, Naga Munchetty, for answering a question on racism. Sky News felt a need to instantly distance themselves from Gary Neville and an important conversation on racism in sport, and so on. Each analysis of racism was becoming more aggressive, more stunted and more juvenile. Racism was presented as a two-way street, up for debate, where the loudest and most contrarian views would be legitimised through ‘debating’. When there is nothing to be gained, I had to question why black commentators would continue to participate in such a fixed game?
These exchanges, each more bizarre and distasteful than the last should have called into question the very purpose of these discussions. Who has licence to discuss racism? I wanted media institutions, many of whom were embroiled in their own stories of racism, to start to transform their formats and provide space and voice for people of colour to speak in an area they grasp with unique intimacy. Instead, I turned on Question Time and watched what I can only describe as a racist orgy, where a shit and nameless actor was rapturously applauded for telling an actual lecturer, with a research specialism in race, that “to call (him) a white privileged male is to be racist”. Laurence Fox, a man I can’t imagine possessing the intellect or attention span to finish a children’s book was now being lauded as a voice worth applauding on the complex and labyrinthine world of racism. Rather than denunciation, the British media has been obsessed with turning Fox, into some kind of folkloric anti-black, anti-hero — a new Nigel Farage. In the aftermath, his Twitter following doubled and he was welcomed into the ‘tell it like it is’ circuit of middle-class so-called mavericks who vocalise the racist ‘common sense’ many must share but rarely let slip from beneath the veil of their British ‘manners’ and ‘tolerance’.
It became clear to me that, through these exchanges, the power behind the language of racism in Britain was being shifted. Racism is being removed from its etymology, from a commentary on structural and systemic oppression and reduced to mere incendiary diction, bastardised and deformed. Now, the word racism is a type of racial slur, but against white people.
Through the perpetuation of these engagements, black intellectuals are removed from their doctorates and degrees, from a lifetime of study and a desire to translate oppression into a language that can be universally understood. More simply, in the words of Piers Morgan, they’re just ‘woke morons’.
While LBC’s James O’Brien, who I have a lot of time for, may agree that we “need to find a better way”, when it comes to on-air debates about politics and racism, the truth is that ‘finding a better way’ doesn’t appear beneficial to networks profiting from the resurgence of right-wing populism. The same radio station that houses O’Brien’s show also presented Nigel Farage, the anti-woke, white, racist archetype, with his own slot — to great success. For too long the media has been manipulating ‘discussions’ on racism for its own benefit, to turn it into a form of pop-culture entertainment where even the most insignificant news story on race can form the most aggressive of headlines - a ‘race row’ — even when the situation may only involve nothing other than an angry white man.
In an attempt to provide white people with a deeper understanding of racism, black commentators have become inadvertent participants in the enabling of these reductive counter-arguments to racism — and the fake martyrs that rise from it. Good Morning Britain, BBC, the Daily Mail, LBC and the whole host of ‘anti-woke’ platforms misprize what they call ‘wokeness’, detach black commentary from its intellectual base and turn evidenced insight into “you’re overreacting”. Ethnic minority guests on these platforms exist only to explain their oppression to a cast of dubious and exasperated onlookers, as if participating in a talent show where they must dance before a panel of ill-equipped judges who, while assessing the validity of their claims, have never actually danced themselves. Britain’s Got Racism.
It’s not that networks like the BBC or formats like Question Time are morally evil, or that these white hosts are horrific monsters that hate ethnic minorities (they may) — but that their racism, like all racism, is lazy and stupid. It co-opts the language of black liberation struggles, quoting black folkloric heroes such as Martin Luther King and Bob Marley without comprehending the true radicalism of their words. They turn ‘wokeness’ into a pejorative term for what they regard as detestable social justice warriors whose sole purpose is to make white people feel bad about themselves.
This resurgence of right-wing populist punditry sits within a world emboldened by Brexit. A political position that has been invigorated by a largely unchecked analysis that immigration and multiculturalism have had its role to play in a supposed forgotten and maltreated white, working class. In the four years since the Referendum, little has been done to counter this narrative and, if anything, it has been allowed to putrefy in political discourse. The word ‘white’ has been affixed to the idiom ‘working class’ to suggest that there is an inherent structural disadvantage these people face because they are white and not because they are working class. It is a term used to racialise class and detach the many people of colour who also reside within British class structures. For decades, politicians of all colours accepted that there is a ‘problem with immigration’ and that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable with those that look different to you. Xenophobia is softened to ‘cultural anxieties’ where ‘skilled and unskilled migrants’ is an acceptable language to separate desirable and undesirable ‘others’.
For some time I’ve been trying to find a way to discuss racism in Britain in a way that doesn’t incense every white person in the country. I have been trying to ascertain what we woke idiots have to gain from our ‘PC racism agenda’ (someone tweeted this to me). Because, if there really is some universally understood benefit to ‘crying racism’ that every black person in the country somehow uniformly understands then why haven’t we seen the benefits? And when was this meeting because the FOMO in me can’t handle that kind of rejection. The very suggestion of an agenda, and a collectivity of cunning minorities, is older than religion and has provided the fertile ground to some of the most atrocious acts of world history. Black commentators need no longer to play into this preset narrative.
I am aware that without the brilliance, braveness and patience of these black commentators, the situation would be far worse, as the saying goes, “until the Lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” Yet, each encounter seems to only embolden the racist and demean the expert.
I am also aware that the issues I speak of have been raised on many occasion.I will not be the first to write about the tendency for the BBC to provide a platform to white supremacists and not very intelligent racists. I will not be the first to highlight the hypocrisy of a British media that fetishises blackness in popular culture but denigrates blackness in every other walk of public life. I will not be first to mention that racism is clear, overt, not one-sided and to present it in a format of debate only fuels the racist. I will not be the first to mention the challenges people of colour face in this country, that crime is not unique to black boys, that rape is not unique to Asian men, nor terrorism to Islam, and that white privilege doesn’t mean every white person is born with a bag of gold in their hands.
So, if I am not the first to mention this, and many far more intellectual and accomplished than I have, then why continue to engage? What has been gained? Perhaps the incredible canon of literature from black British writers, the ubiquity of black music in the charts and the increasing successes of boys and girls of colour in education and work, despite the overwhelming forces set against them, tells us it is now time to focus less on adding fuel to the growing populist fire, let these shows get drunk on their bigotry white we continue to focus on safeguarding the communities truly at risk.
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