As usual from Ms Snuffy, a blast of common sense. In addition to ditching the oppression Olympics, we also need to scotch the notion that racism is something that only white people exhibit towards non-whites. In fact, it permeates in every possible direction. The casual enslavement of domestic servants from SE Asia by rich, Gulf families is racism and I have witnessed savage racism from N African Arabs towards sub-Saharan Africans. No continental solidarity there. Is the hatred of the English displayed by many SNP activists racism or merely xenophobia? Overall, not much chance of a kinder, gentler politics emerging anytime soon.
It’s what’s known as oikophobia: placing other cultures on an idealistic pedestal while demonizing your own culture (or the subset that doesn’t blindly follow your own way of thinking).
You know the answer to the rhetorical question you finish with, don’t you? If not, yes off course it’s racist. The SNP are polluted by spite and consumed by envy, and who can be surprised, given the miserable state of North Britain? A North Britain they are rapidly turning into a pseudo Gaelic hell hole. As John Cleese reminded us recently the definition of a Scottish Presbyterian was “someone who has a nasty, sneaking feeling that someone, somewhere is having a good time”. Well those days are long past, and you are correct in your assumption that there is no chance of any gentler politics emerging soon.
“As John Cleese reminded us recently the definition of a Scottish Presbyterian was “someone who has a nasty, sneaking feeling that someone, somewhere is having a good time”.”
Borrowed from Mencken who applied it to puritans more generally.
,,,well I’m a Presbyterian and I’m very happy for people to have a good time, indeed if the pubs open I will be joining in, but then I’m not Scottish so maybe that’s the difference
I am very glad to here it. Until David Morley so kindly corrected me I had always thought it applied exclusively to Scotch Presbyterians. Mencken was obviously relying on his American experience I suppose.
Yes, I have said for some time now that Katherine should be in charge of education for the UK. She is perhaps the most inspiring person I have ever seen interviewed on various podcasts etc. And a real hero for the way in which stands up to the left-wing bullies and assorted race grifters.
Well, that too, but it would be a shame not to use her relevant expertise.
Vicki Robinson
3 years ago
I think the left have developed a mindset of, ‘We are the good guys and over there are the evil Tories (boo, hiss)’. It prevents them from seeing their own weaknesses.
Some on the left really don’t like it when people from less well-off backgrounds do well. A young man in my area was discouraged from applying to the highly regarded Slade School of Fine Art by his lefty teacher who actually told him it was elitist and he didn’t stand a chance. Fortunately he applied anyway. Some on the left need to take a good look at themselves.
Incidentally, the hierarchy of oppression tends to exclude the white working classes who face disadvantages. I do wonder what the people in red wall areas such as Bolsover and Redcar make of the idea that they have white privilege.
Of course they don’t like it. The poor tend to vote left and the better off right (except tech billionaires). It is not in the interests of the left for people to better themselves because they lose punters. Keep em poor, keep em on their side
Envy and hatred are the driving forces of the Left.
Richard Morrison
3 years ago
An excellent article, except for the last line “the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves.” For white people too there is a concerted attack on their right to think for themselves. Activist authoritarians feel entitled to condemn, as wicked, anyone with a different, including any more complex view of history, and indeed anyone who does not accept the mantra that anything done by white people was both privileged and racist and therefore (even when it might seem to have been beneficial and indeed part of the gradual progress towards democracy, human rights, the rule of law, universal education or public health) to be erased from history.
YOU’RE right-I suspect that being too outspoken has held me back in life.Among many other things!
Stephen Follows
3 years ago
‘saving the least oppressed for the Jews or the Chinese’
Well, actually, no. Bottom of the pile are the whites, which is why the white working class are always bottom of any league table for exam results and university entrance.
Marie Morton
3 years ago
Excellent piece. I would add further that the woke left makes assumptions about white people too. We are all lumped together as if our experiences are the same – yet for working class people we have very different experiences. So my dad growing up in the hungry 30s won a scholarship but they couldn’t afford the uniform and his mum died when he was 10 as they couldn’t afford a doctor (1938). As a child we had no car , telephone , washing machine or holidays (till at 13 we had a week in a caravan – this was the only holiday all 4 of us went on ) – this was the 70s. Furthermore my friends came from a wide variety of backgrounds – skin colour was not something that was important to me – like Martin Luther King I feel that it is the content of your character that is important not the colour of your skin.
Clive Mitchell
3 years ago
Brilliant piece. It exposes the whole hypocrisy at play within the BLM movement and the dictatorship of the left.
David Morley
3 years ago
It often feels like we are not allowed to think for ourselves, outside of the orthodoxies set down by Left-wing political groupthink.
White people have a similar (but less severe) experience of being told (usually by other white people) to listen to black (or POC) voices. There is the clear assumption that all black people and people of colour will have exactly the same opinions. And they will all agree with the white person telling you to do the listening.
Decades ago attitudes on the left to working class people were similar. Any working class person who didn’t toe the line was a class traitor or suffering from false consciousness. I can easily imagine them hunting around for evidence that someone who disagreed with them was in fact middle class. Even if they themselves were privately educated.
Paul Theato
3 years ago
“The recent protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement should have provoked serious conversations about the meaning and impact of race; we all need to explore the nature of racism and what to do about it.” That sentence is the only misstep in an otherwise good article. From everything I’ve read, BLM and Antifa are hard-left Marxist organisations and it was the shocking, videoed death (potentially homicide), apparently caused by a Minnesota policeman, of the career criminal George Perry Floyd that gave them and far-left movements everywhere the excuse they needed to whistle up the mob (black and white) to burn down and loot businesses, murder and attack people (black and white) across the world, attack and maim police officers (black and white) everywhere and launch a full frontal attack against culture, history and free speech in Western civilisations. We should not be discussing skin colour because it has very little to do with what is going on. This is the year 2020. Things have moved on. We should be talking about how to rid ourselves of the far-left (and far-right), for whom skin colour is merely an excuse to assert ugly and provenly dangerous power, and about differences within groups such as attitudes towards free speech; education; parenting; integration, hard work, aspiration, acceptance, poverty, crime; etc., etc., ad infinitum, and agree what is acceptable and what is not – together.
David George
3 years ago
I first saw Katharine Birbalsingh with Dave Rubin in that sublime discussion on Youtube; what a delight to see on UnHerd! Love and respect from (your childhood home) New Zealand.
We have a saying here that, if anything does, encapsulates her attitude and beliefs.
Te tiro atu to kanohi ki tairawhiti ana tera whiti te ra kite ataata ka hinga ki muri kia koe. Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. Kia Kaha Katherine.
Adam Huntley
3 years ago
“Meaningless supportive BLM statements on corporate websites” is a pertinent observation. Isn’t it depressing that organisations now feel that signally their adherence to woke culture is a necessary part of their public relations?
Yes, and far worse than that it destroys freedom of speech for their employees, supporting the Marxists in their ultimate mission. One is not entitled to debate what is going on in a FTSE 100 company or other major corporation. Instead, one is forced to undertake mandatory ‘diversity training’ and to shut your mouth.
angersbeagle
3 years ago
Great article by someone I have a lot of time for. I love the term “Oppression Olympics” , it is amusing as things rooted in the truth often are. However, you say in your last paragraph : ” Allow Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch and Munira Mirza the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves.” Well, the BLM mob have turned this one on its head….nobody will be permitted to think for themselves ……..and do not think you safe in later years, Offence Archaeology will be a degree subject before long.
Peter Kriens
3 years ago
Mixed feelings. Overall I am agreeing with the central thesis of it. However, I feel quite mixed about how it still feels like drawing the race card. For example:
Allow Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch and Munira Mirza the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves
Why don’t they have that right? Someone on twitter has no power to deny you anything? If you take a public position then people might disagree. They might even yell at you, or make an attempt to insult you, but that is not denying. What kind of privilege does Boris Johnson have as a white man? I see a lot of people quite violently disagreeing with him, but you cannot say they deny him anything.
Don’t be so darned sensitive to what other people think of you. Engage the ones that respectfully disagree but ignore the idiots with their insults, you only empower them.
What happened with: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me …
That is well put. The other side doesn’t deny you anything. That is why what Priti Patel did was rather admirable. She refused to let the other side make her deny her her own voice and her own experience.
Greg C.
3 years ago
Admirable.
P C
3 years ago
An excellent piece. When we see it published in the Guardian we’ll have progressed – just a little, but every step counts.
Believe me, nothing like this will ever be published in the Guardian, or broadcast on the BBC.
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago
This just in from BBC online: “BBC commits £100m to increasing diversity on TV” -of course this ‘diversity’ won’t include writers like this one, or Candace Owen, or Patel, or anyone who represents actual diversity in thinking or opinion.
It’s a particular sort of diversity the BBC has a use for – the one that rounds all the ‘blacks’ up and makes them uniformly a class of victim.
The BBC wants the ones that make nice white middle class people of a leftist persuasion feel all warm inside -ones they can adopt as pet projects -and enlighten all us racist gentiles with their wisdom and beneficence.
The perverse racism inherent in all this seems to go completely over BBC heads -but presumably that’s because they are so busy gazing admiringly at their own halos of virtuousness.
Just one of several reasons why the BBC licence fee should immediately be cancelled and the corporation left to beg for private money like its twin, postmodernist sister, the Guardian.
Paul Ridley-Smith
3 years ago
Fantastic essay. It is assuring to know that each child (whatever ethnicity) that graduates from your school will have the capability for independent thought, hard work and be well prepared for society’s challenges. That’s a contribution way beyond social media sloganeering.
Yes-the aim of education should be to produce “a thinkin’ lad,A readin’ writin’ doubtin’ laddie” (
Pierre Brute
3 years ago
More of this lady, please.
Fitzroy Andrew
3 years ago
I think the fundamental point – that there needs to be greater acceptance of diversity of opinion amongst different ‘visible minorities’ within those (our) communities – is well worth making. The Conservative Party has missed a major trick, for example, in not being able to tune into the resident social conservatism of many in the African-Caribbean community. There is a need for a more mature outlook than is often on display, and I agree that BLM have not always helped themselves in this respect.
I’m not sure I go along entirely with the analysis presented here – there is a lot more to ‘minority opinion’ that what we see and hear in political circles, and there’s a bit of over-reliance on that here. Elements of this piece seem to be more about playing to the gallery than advancing the argument for diversity of thought, but that’s just me so I’m not arguing that I’m right.
But there’s definitely a conversation worth having here, so good on the author and her work in education. More power to her elbow.
spencer_martin
3 years ago
Race & class are inextricably linked as well as gender, to a lesser extent. Racists use racial slurs but when talking about wider attainment and representation in society – class (or who your parents are) has the impact. White privilege to a working class boy in a northern mining town is meaningless. White privilege because more of the upper class are white – that I understand.
jonathan.hoffman
3 years ago
Well said Madam! Please keep speaking out!
The attack on Patel by those Labour MPs was an utter disgrace
My surname is a Huguenot name. The Huguenots were certainly oppressed, admittedly not by the British and it was centuries ago. Nevertheless, can I join the totem pole of oppression?
What about Catholics? For three hundred years we were forbidden to practice our religion, required to attend the services of the Established Church on pain of fines or imprisonment, not allowed to own a horse worth more than £5, and not allowed to enter the professions, armed services or parliament. We demand reparations!
mike otter
3 years ago
Another great article and evidence that freedom of thought can never be extinguished, regardless of whatever political movement tries to close society down. I would be keen to add that leftist political theory since Marx does hold that the colour of a man’s skin defines his character, the basic creed of historical materialism is that the conditions of history make one race superior to another. This explains their obsession with shades of skin colour and their frantic projection of their guilt and race based ideology onto the rest of us. To them the work of Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker et al never happened. I am willing to bet that some of people who called me “tinker” and my wife “chinkie” at school have grown out of it, of those that haven’t i expect a few support the EDL but many more support Labour.
Carolyn Jackson
3 years ago
A good article. However you state “In fact, spending a lifetime helping black boys realise their potential,”. What about helping white working class boys realise THEIR potential? They are the most marginalised and under-achieving group in this country.
Ruth King
3 years ago
Thank you for an excellent article. What really counts is working hard on the ground to give people inspiration and hope. I sometimes wonder how much more good could be done for society if people exchanged their (often excessive) time spent on social media to helping their communities. I also feel one important step we should push for in our schools is the study of empathy and active listening. Too often prejudice dominates in our world of “I’m right, you’re wrong, so shut up!”
Andrew Best
3 years ago
White people at the bottom of the pile with our original sin of…. Being white Of course white is a colour but that no longer matters as we are no longer part of the human race, just a collection of knuckle dragging scum and so we deserve everything that we get but that will backfire and already has as why should we make any effort any more when we will always suffer the original sin? But I am white so I don’t matter! P.s. I have seen you in multiple interviews online and you strike me as a very decent teacher/school head who is trying to the best for your pupils no matter who they are, full respect to you
mark taha
3 years ago
I fully agree with KB that blacks and Asians can think for themselves and make their own minds up.I agree with her on some things-but my having once referred to her as Burbling Birbalsingh should indicate not on everything!
Roger Sponge
3 years ago
For how long can “British Asians” define themselves as “Asian”? Second, third or fourth generation? Forever?
What’s with BAME/BME? Lumping people together from myriad countries, cultures, languages, histories, religions under one classification is intellectual nonsense.
alistair.gorthy
3 years ago
One can agree with the sentiment of the article, that the BLM protests have, in many cases, been a vehicle for the sanctimonious and and the criminal, but might I also point out that much of the heat generated by the Home Secretary stems from the far right political positions she has been identified with in the past.
Dr Alexander Texter
3 years ago
Courageous article. If the writer worked in academia as I do her position would become untenable.
bob alob
3 years ago
The Jews are not at the bottom of the oppressed list, they are on the oppressor list, “The reality of being anti-racist requires years of reading and discussion, befriending a variety of black people, including ones who think differently from you politically (oh the horror of it) and really coming to terms with one’s own uncomfortable feelings around race.” I have to take issue with this statement, to say someone cannot be anti racist without cuddling up to some black people is nonsense, it also implies everyone is racist until they have undergone a cuddling up as it were.
I came across this whilst re-reading the original piece. Palestinians are oppressed by Israel. So Israeli Arabs, Christians, Atheists and Jews in the IDF and police do the hands on oppressing. You may not have realised this but if you did then your racism is of the worst and most extreme kind. As much a throw back to the 1930s as the British Labour Party.
I was just pointing out that Jews are no longer seen as oppressed by those in control of western culture and are seen as the opposite, I have no sympathy for the Palestinian cause since they are largely the architects of their own misery, certainly in more recent times, and as Rebecca Long Bailey discovered recently Israel is the only Jewish state in existence, and the defining line between what is Jewish and Israeli has become more blurred in recent times, the two are difficult to separate and this is where Labour have had difficulty.
Not my racism, when I say that Jews are on the oppressor list I am referring to those who practice identity politics, such as the Labour party, they obviously have antisemitism issues because of their support for the Palestinian cause, and see Israel, as the oppressors, Israel being the only Jewish state.
As usual from Ms Snuffy, a blast of common sense.
In addition to ditching the oppression Olympics, we also need to scotch the notion that racism is something that only white people exhibit towards non-whites. In fact, it permeates in every possible direction.
The casual enslavement of domestic servants from SE Asia by rich, Gulf families is racism and I have witnessed savage racism from N African Arabs towards sub-Saharan Africans. No continental solidarity there.
Is the hatred of the English displayed by many SNP activists racism or merely xenophobia? Overall, not much chance of a kinder, gentler politics emerging anytime soon.
It’s what’s known as oikophobia: placing other cultures on an idealistic pedestal while demonizing your own culture (or the subset that doesn’t blindly follow your own way of thinking).
I’ll remember that word-although Gilbert and Sulivan put it better!
You know the answer to the rhetorical question you finish with, don’t you?
If not, yes off course it’s racist. The SNP are polluted by spite and consumed by envy, and who can be surprised, given the miserable state of North Britain? A North Britain they are rapidly turning into a pseudo Gaelic hell hole.
As John Cleese reminded us recently the definition of a Scottish Presbyterian was “someone who has a nasty, sneaking feeling that someone, somewhere is having a good time”. Well those days are long past, and you are correct in your assumption that there is no chance of any gentler politics emerging soon.
“As John Cleese reminded us recently the definition of a Scottish Presbyterian was “someone who has a nasty, sneaking feeling that someone, somewhere is having a good time”.”
Borrowed from Mencken who applied it to puritans more generally.
Thank you. I shall remember to use it for other candidates in future.
What about this ‘woke’ mob, they seem devoid of any humour?
They are indeed devoid of all humour. Just ask Konstantin Kisin.
Yes, precisely the sort of man we need to “ruffle a few feathers”.
Humour is supreme in both attack and defence.
My general attitude to religion.
,,,well I’m a Presbyterian and I’m very happy for people to have a good time, indeed if the pubs open I will be joining in, but then I’m not Scottish so maybe that’s the difference
I am very glad to here it. Until David Morley so kindly corrected me I had always thought it applied exclusively to Scotch Presbyterians.
Mencken was obviously relying on his American experience I suppose.
Also colourism in the sub-continent and the Caribbean. There’s a very good article in Cricinfo (of all places) about this.
Why isn’t this woman in the House of Lords as Education Secretary?
Yes, I have said for some time now that Katherine should be in charge of education for the UK. She is perhaps the most inspiring person I have ever seen interviewed on various podcasts etc. And a real hero for the way in which stands up to the left-wing bullies and assorted race grifters.
Because she would be utterly wasted there. She should be PM, she is perfectly qualified, don’t you think?
Well, that too, but it would be a shame not to use her relevant expertise.
I think the left have developed a mindset of, ‘We are the good guys and over there are the evil Tories (boo, hiss)’. It prevents them from seeing their own weaknesses.
Some on the left really don’t like it when people from less well-off backgrounds do well. A young man in my area was discouraged from applying to the highly regarded Slade School of Fine Art by his lefty teacher who actually told him it was elitist and he didn’t stand a chance. Fortunately he applied anyway. Some on the left need to take a good look at themselves.
Incidentally, the hierarchy of oppression tends to exclude the white working classes who face disadvantages. I do wonder what the people in red wall areas such as Bolsover and Redcar make of the idea that they have white privilege.
Of course they don’t like it. The poor tend to vote left and the better off right (except tech billionaires). It is not in the interests of the left for people to better themselves because they lose punters. Keep em poor, keep em on their side
Though rhe 3ducated left make samb sure they scoop up the majority of public sector/academia jobs with the f….g eye-watering large salaries..
It’s the politics of envy.
Envy and hatred are the driving forces of the Left.
An excellent article, except for the last line “the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves.” For white people too there is a concerted attack on their right to think for themselves. Activist authoritarians feel entitled to condemn, as wicked, anyone with a different, including any more complex view of history, and indeed anyone who does not accept the mantra that anything done by white people was both privileged and racist and therefore (even when it might seem to have been beneficial and indeed part of the gradual progress towards democracy, human rights, the rule of law, universal education or public health) to be erased from history.
Yes. The verbs in that sentence should be in the past tense.
I was under the impression that ‘the right to think for ourselves’ has now been banned and it is only practiced by subversives.
YOU’RE right-I suspect that being too outspoken has held me back in life.Among many other things!
‘saving the least oppressed for the Jews or the Chinese’
Well, actually, no. Bottom of the pile are the whites, which is why the white working class are always bottom of any league table for exam results and university entrance.
Excellent piece. I would add further that the woke left makes assumptions about white people too. We are all lumped together as if our experiences are the same – yet for working class people we have very different experiences. So my dad growing up in the hungry 30s won a scholarship but they couldn’t afford the uniform and his mum died when he was 10 as they couldn’t afford a doctor (1938). As a child we had no car , telephone , washing machine or holidays (till at 13 we had a week in a caravan – this was the only holiday all 4 of us went on ) – this was the 70s. Furthermore my friends came from a wide variety of backgrounds – skin colour was not something that was important to me – like Martin Luther King I feel that it is the content of your character that is important not the colour of your skin.
Brilliant piece. It exposes the whole hypocrisy at play within the BLM movement and the dictatorship of the left.
White people have a similar (but less severe) experience of being told (usually by other white people) to listen to black (or POC) voices. There is the clear assumption that all black people and people of colour will have exactly the same opinions. And they will all agree with the white person telling you to do the listening.
Decades ago attitudes on the left to working class people were similar. Any working class person who didn’t toe the line was a class traitor or suffering from false consciousness. I can easily imagine them hunting around for evidence that someone who disagreed with them was in fact middle class. Even if they themselves were privately educated.
“The recent protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement should have provoked serious conversations about the meaning and impact of race; we all need to explore the nature of racism and what to do about it.”
That sentence is the only misstep in an otherwise good article. From everything I’ve read, BLM and Antifa are hard-left Marxist organisations and it was the shocking, videoed death (potentially homicide), apparently caused by a Minnesota policeman, of the career criminal George Perry Floyd that gave them and far-left movements everywhere the excuse they needed to whistle up the mob (black and white) to burn down and loot businesses, murder and attack people (black and white) across the world, attack and maim police officers (black and white) everywhere and launch a full frontal attack against culture, history and free speech in Western civilisations. We should not be discussing skin colour because it has very little to do with what is going on. This is the year 2020. Things have moved on. We should be talking about how to rid ourselves of the far-left (and far-right), for whom skin colour is merely an excuse to assert ugly and provenly dangerous power, and about differences within groups such as attitudes towards free speech; education; parenting; integration, hard work, aspiration, acceptance, poverty, crime; etc., etc., ad infinitum, and agree what is acceptable and what is not – together.
I first saw Katharine Birbalsingh with Dave Rubin in that sublime discussion on Youtube; what a delight to see on UnHerd! Love and respect from (your childhood home) New Zealand.
We have a saying here that, if anything does, encapsulates her attitude and beliefs.
Te tiro atu to kanohi ki tairawhiti ana tera whiti te ra kite ataata ka hinga ki muri kia koe.
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
Kia Kaha Katherine.
“Meaningless supportive BLM statements on corporate websites” is a pertinent observation. Isn’t it depressing that organisations now feel that signally their adherence to woke culture is a necessary part of their public relations?
2,
Yes, and far worse than that it destroys freedom of speech for their employees, supporting the Marxists in their ultimate mission. One is not entitled to debate what is going on in a FTSE 100 company or other major corporation. Instead, one is forced to undertake mandatory ‘diversity training’ and to shut your mouth.
Great article by someone I have a lot of time for.
I love the term “Oppression Olympics” , it is amusing as things rooted in the truth often are.
However, you say in your last paragraph :
” Allow Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch and Munira Mirza the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves.”
Well, the BLM mob have turned this one on its head….nobody will be permitted to think for themselves ……..and do not think you safe in later years, Offence Archaeology will be a degree subject before long.
Mixed feelings. Overall I am agreeing with the central thesis of it. However, I feel quite mixed about how it still feels like drawing the race card. For example:
Allow Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch and Munira Mirza the right that so many white people enjoy and take for granted: the right to think for themselves
Why don’t they have that right? Someone on twitter has no power to deny you anything? If you take a public position then people might disagree. They might even yell at you, or make an attempt to insult you, but that is not denying. What kind of privilege does Boris Johnson have as a white man? I see a lot of people quite violently disagreeing with him, but you cannot say they deny him anything.
Don’t be so darned sensitive to what other people think of you. Engage the ones that respectfully disagree but ignore the idiots with their insults, you only empower them.
What happened with: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me …
That is well put. The other side doesn’t deny you anything. That is why what Priti Patel did was rather admirable. She refused to let the other side make her deny her her own voice and her own experience.
Admirable.
An excellent piece. When we see it published in the Guardian we’ll have progressed – just a little, but every step counts.
Believe me, nothing like this will ever be published in the Guardian, or broadcast on the BBC.
This just in from BBC online: “BBC commits £100m to increasing diversity on TV” -of course this ‘diversity’ won’t include writers like this one, or Candace Owen, or Patel, or anyone who represents actual diversity in thinking or opinion.
It’s a particular sort of diversity the BBC has a use for – the one that rounds all the ‘blacks’ up and makes them uniformly a class of victim.
The BBC wants the ones that make nice white middle class people of a leftist persuasion feel all warm inside -ones they can adopt as pet projects -and enlighten all us racist gentiles with their wisdom and beneficence.
The perverse racism inherent in all this seems to go completely over BBC heads -but presumably that’s because they are so busy gazing admiringly at their own halos of virtuousness.
Just one of several reasons why the BBC licence fee should immediately be cancelled and the corporation left to beg for private money like its twin, postmodernist sister, the Guardian.
Fantastic essay. It is assuring to know that each child (whatever ethnicity) that graduates from your school will have the capability for independent thought, hard work and be well prepared for society’s challenges. That’s a contribution way beyond social media sloganeering.
Yes-the aim of education should be to produce “a thinkin’ lad,A readin’ writin’ doubtin’ laddie” (
More of this lady, please.
I think the fundamental point – that there needs to be greater acceptance of diversity of opinion amongst different ‘visible minorities’ within those (our) communities – is well worth making. The Conservative Party has missed a major trick, for example, in not being able to tune into the resident social conservatism of many in the African-Caribbean community. There is a need for a more mature outlook than is often on display, and I agree that BLM have not always helped themselves in this respect.
I’m not sure I go along entirely with the analysis presented here – there is a lot more to ‘minority opinion’ that what we see and hear in political circles, and there’s a bit of over-reliance on that here. Elements of this piece seem to be more about playing to the gallery than advancing the argument for diversity of thought, but that’s just me so I’m not arguing that I’m right.
But there’s definitely a conversation worth having here, so good on the author and her work in education. More power to her elbow.
Race & class are inextricably linked as well as gender, to a lesser extent. Racists use racial slurs but when talking about wider attainment and representation in society – class (or who your parents are) has the impact. White privilege to a working class boy in a northern mining town is meaningless. White privilege because more of the upper class are white – that I understand.
Well said Madam! Please keep speaking out!
The attack on Patel by those Labour MPs was an utter disgrace
https://onthedarkside410122…
My surname is a Huguenot name. The Huguenots were certainly oppressed, admittedly not by the British and it was centuries ago. Nevertheless, can I join the totem pole of oppression?
What about Catholics? For three hundred years we were forbidden to practice our religion, required to attend the services of the Established Church on pain of fines or imprisonment, not allowed to own a horse worth more than £5, and not allowed to enter the professions, armed services or parliament. We demand reparations!
Another great article and evidence that freedom of thought can never be extinguished, regardless of whatever political movement tries to close society down. I would be keen to add that leftist political theory since Marx does hold that the colour of a man’s skin defines his character, the basic creed of historical materialism is that the conditions of history make one race superior to another. This explains their obsession with shades of skin colour and their frantic projection of their guilt and race based ideology onto the rest of us. To them the work of Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker et al never happened. I am willing to bet that some of people who called me “tinker” and my wife “chinkie” at school have grown out of it, of those that haven’t i expect a few support the EDL but many more support Labour.
A good article. However you state “In fact, spending a lifetime helping black boys realise their potential,”. What about helping white working class boys realise THEIR potential? They are the most marginalised and under-achieving group in this country.
Thank you for an excellent article. What really counts is working hard on the ground to give people inspiration and hope. I sometimes wonder how much more good could be done for society if people exchanged their (often excessive) time spent on social media to helping their communities. I also feel one important step we should push for in our schools is the study of empathy and active listening. Too often prejudice dominates in our world of “I’m right, you’re wrong, so shut up!”
White people at the bottom of the pile with our original sin of….
Being white
Of course white is a colour but that no longer matters as we are no longer part of the human race, just a collection of knuckle dragging scum and so we deserve everything that we get but that will backfire and already has as why should we make any effort any more when we will always suffer the original sin?
But I am white so I don’t matter!
P.s. I have seen you in multiple interviews online and you strike me as a very decent teacher/school head who is trying to the best for your pupils no matter who they are, full respect to you
I fully agree with KB that blacks and Asians can think for themselves and make their own minds up.I agree with her on some things-but my having once referred to her as Burbling Birbalsingh should indicate not on everything!
For how long can “British Asians” define themselves as “Asian”? Second, third or fourth generation? Forever?
What’s with BAME/BME? Lumping people together from myriad countries, cultures, languages, histories, religions under one classification is intellectual nonsense.
One can agree with the sentiment of the article, that the BLM protests have, in many cases, been a vehicle for the sanctimonious and and the criminal, but might I also point out that much of the heat generated by the Home Secretary stems from the far right political positions she has been identified with in the past.
Courageous article. If the writer worked in academia as I do her position would become untenable.
The Jews are not at the bottom of the oppressed list, they are on the oppressor list, “The reality of being anti-racist requires years of reading and discussion, befriending a variety of black people, including ones who think differently from you politically (oh the horror of it) and really coming to terms with one’s own uncomfortable feelings around race.” I have to take issue with this statement, to say someone cannot be anti racist without cuddling up to some black people is nonsense, it also implies everyone is racist until they have undergone a cuddling up as it were.
“The jews are on the oppressor list”
How come?
Palestine, obviously.
I came across this whilst re-reading the original piece. Palestinians are oppressed by Israel. So Israeli Arabs, Christians, Atheists and Jews in the IDF and police do the hands on oppressing. You may not have realised this but if you did then your racism is of the worst and most extreme kind. As much a throw back to the 1930s as the British Labour Party.
I was just pointing out that Jews are no longer seen as oppressed by those in control of western culture and are seen as the opposite, I have no sympathy for the Palestinian cause since they are largely the architects of their own misery, certainly in more recent times, and as Rebecca Long Bailey discovered recently Israel is the only Jewish state in existence, and the defining line between what is Jewish and Israeli has become more blurred in recent times, the two are difficult to separate and this is where Labour have had difficulty.
Not my racism, when I say that Jews are on the oppressor list I am referring to those who practice identity politics, such as the Labour party, they obviously have antisemitism issues because of their support for the Palestinian cause, and see Israel, as the oppressors, Israel being the only Jewish state.
Thank you for so elequently reminding us why the Jews will always have a place on the “oppressed” list.