What is … and what isn’t … so
My subject today is a wide one – I am trying to cover various aspects of race, racial discrimination, inequality in life chances – all from the stance that it is (and/or would be) a ‘good thing’ if everyone in life succeeded according to their potential, talent, personal ambition (drive) and application (hard work): their ‘just deserts’ if you like.
I’m conscious that in addressing the topic I’m coming at it from the viewpoint of a white, Anglo-Saxon privileged-background male. Having admitted that fact, I’d like to state at the outset that I like to regard myself as an example who is doing his best here to ‘look at the issues in the round’ and accepts that many of the genuine and welcome advances made by various disadvantaged sections of the community (ethnic minorities, women, disabled) in the UK over the past fifty years have come as the result of what might be termed deliberate ‘equality promotion’ campaigns (some of them embracing positive discrimination) initiated by those who are either operating within the politically-correct industry or at the very least sympathetic to it.
I’m probably also obliged to declare here that I also tend to the view that some of the ‘right on’ proponents of 21st Century PC orthodoxy – e.g. the BBC and some Government agencies – have taken the nanny state approach to things significantly beyond that which is healthy, or indeed normal and logical, within the context of global humanity and the way the world actually works.
Today I’m commenting upon two recent developments.
The first is the widespread media furore that has erupted over the Dove body lotion advert on Facebook that has been identified – by those who regard it as a right or indeed duty to be offended whenever it is technically possible to be – as racist, racially insensitive and/or generally offensive.
Such was the immediate and sustained explosion of social media ‘chat’ and newspaper comment that within a short space of time Dove was forced to issue a public apology for its supposed cock-up and remove the ad from public view altogether, probably at the instigation of its PR advisers who viewed these remedial actions as the quickest route to closing down what had apparently become a disaster of epic proportions.
For those Rusters who have been recently buried in their nuclear bunkers without access to TV, radio or the internet, or who may otherwise have missed what all the fuss was about anyway, here is a link to the story as covered by the Adweek website – DOVE ADVERTISEMENT ROW
Secondly, for those who haven’t seen the offending advertisement – see here (courtesy of YouTube) – DOVE ADVERTISEMENT VIDEO
Pardon me for seemingly being a total sexist unreconstructed Caucasian male dinosaur of the most beastly disposition, but – simply at arm’s length and thinking entirely rationally and logically – I have to report that personally I can see absolutely nothing either racist or offensive about this advertisement.
Okay, it starts with an image of a black woman who ‘morphs’ into a white girl, who then in turn morphs into an Asian lady … and then repeats the sequence ad nauseam … but what’s racist or discriminatory about that?
To my mind, you’d have to be at a pretty extreme end of readiness to be offended by anything and everything (I’m not going to describe here the state required in order to find fault with this ad as being an eager willingness to self-identify as a ‘victim’) in order to take to the airwaves about it.
Er … that’s all I’m saying.
Well, apart from the fact that – if this Dove advertisement was going to offend me on behalf of black women – I’d probably also be equally offended by it on behalf of fat women, ugly women, disabled women, spotty women, women with Down’s Syndrome, educationally subnormal women, deaf women, blind women and indeed women who suffer from Tourette’s and/or PTSD or autism.
After all, examples of none of the above seem to be represented in the video, so … er … Dove has inexcusably made a really big rod for its own back, hasn’t it?
My second topic of the day is the Government’s ‘Race Audit’ project, commissioned by the Prime Minister a few months back, whose results were launched yesterday to much media attention.
As I understand it, it is not so much the product of new original first-hand research but more the result of a trawl through all the relevant data held by Government departments across the board which has then been brought together on one single website – the better to be able to sift through it and come to some conclusions.
Based upon what I have seen and read, everyone concerned with the issues of racial discrimination and/or unequal treatment – starting with poor starts in life and looking at everything from the courts system to employment, policing and public policy in all its many facets – is pleased that the exercise has been done and (it seems on all sides) are now united in saying to Government and the Establishment “Those are the facts, now what are we/you going to do about it?” [‘It’ being the clutch of obvious examples where it looks as though inequalities between different ethnic origins exist].
See here for a report on the Audit by James Tapsfield, Political Editor of the Daily Mail, as appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
We all know that there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ – a statement often attributed to Benjamin Disraeli – but, it seems to me, this project has thrown up some interesting facts, not all of which subscribe to the basic general thrust of the PC brigade that black and ethnic minorities get a raw deal in life in this diseased and reactionary UK society we inhabit.
It’s not quite as simple as that, is it? The truth is that factors such as the influence of families (and especially parents, both in their personal examples of how they conduct themselves and in their nurturing and bringing up of their children) play a huge part in the life chances of those who live in this country.
Here we find confirmation [for brevity I’m dealing in bucket chemistry here] that the kids of Chinese families routinely out-perform those of most other races. And that those of white working class families seriously under-perform when compared to those of most other races.
A fortnight ago I spent a few days on a guided tour of areas of WW1 interest in France as part of a small group that included a serving policeman – not a senior officer, but one who dealt with the public in a hands-over, day to day, sense in an area of the country far from London and the South-East.
He worked on an every day basis with fellow police officers who were black – both senior and of the same rank as himself – and (based on my time spent touring with him) I would never have described him as racist in the slightest.
He just told things as he – and his fellow officers – saw them, without fear or favour.
Supporters of the PC brigade (no doubt a proportion of them living in Hampstead, steeped in champagne socialism, many miles from the front line where real life is lived) would have been aghast at some of his statements, such as:
All police (of whatever racial background or political view) know only too well that a feature of many Afro-Caribbean families is the lack of male paternal influence, simply because so many Afro-Caribbean males don’t stick around and/or indeed have children with multiple females etc.
Furthermore, whenever gipsy or ‘traveller’ communities move into any specific police area, the order immediately goes out to all police officers on the ground to ‘batten down the hatches’ and prepare for a crime wave.
Because petty criminal behaviour is rife in these communities.
The ‘male leaders’ and their families all tend to drive around in brand new Mercedes and other upmarket cars worth in excess of £75,000, whilst those at the bottom of the community food chain and pecking order are sent out on regular burglary and petty crime expeditions in vehicles appropriate to their status and calling.
All I’m saying in conclusion today is that – in an ideal world – success on every human ladder would be according to merit. What all young people need to know – or to be taught – is that anyone can achieve anything if they have the ability, character, drive and – of course – the willingness to work hard.
Yes, there are always winners and losers in the lottery of life – and sometimes (whichever it turns out to be in a particular case) they don’t deserve it.
There are indeed far too many chinless wonders with no brain but a lot of social connections who do very well thank you in life, but there are also far too many who give up – either because the virtues of application and ambition are not explained to them, or they are indoctrinated with the notion that, however hard they try, they’ll never get anywhere – and that it’s all somebody else’s fault.
It could be, but it ain’t necessarily so … as the song* once said …
(* lyric from the song of the same name by George and Ira Gershwin as featured in the musical Porgy and Bess (1935) …).
