Isms Are No More!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 16:48 | Filed in Equality, Life, Media, Politics

Now we’ve had a black president, various women premiers, and now the first openly gay head of state (Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir), I would appreciate it if the media would stop caring about the skin colour, gender, sexual preference, religion, and sexiness (or otherwise) of partners of politicians and concentrate instead on things that actually matter like what their policies are.

That is what matters. The rest is just fluff.

However, it should not be taken to mean — as the headline seems to imply — that this means that the world has seen an end to racism, sexism, (non-)religious bigotry/hatred, homophobia and so on. The very fact that we feel the need to remark upon the fact that Barack Obama is black or that Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is gay shows that we see these things as unusual and different — that their skin colour or sexuality is worthy of comment.

And to me, that shows that we aren’t where we ought to be.

Sadly, this is only reinforced for me by things such as Carol Thatcher comparing a tennis player to a golliwog and then seemingly being annoyed that a private conversation in the green room has been leaked (note: for strict accuracy, she was apparently referring specifically to a comparison with the golliwog which used to feature on Robertson’s Jam) . This is along the same lines as BFR‘s idea that it is perfectly okay to be racist so long as you don’t do it during a broadcast.

And that’s wrong. It also demonstrates that the person exhibits a certain belief “well, everyone uses these terms, don’t they? I just made a mistake doing so in public…” which is dangerously wrong. Carol should be concentrating on apologising whole heartedly and saying that she shouldn’t have made the comment she did, instead of attacking the BBC because someone reported her for being a big racist (Well done Adrian, if it was you — but I still hope we beat you on Saturday). She’s also missed the point with her apology, too:

Carol is mortified that anyone should take offence at a silly joke.Carol Thatcher’s spokesman, quoted on BBC News

Basically, she’s sorry that someone took offence. She’s sorry that she’s pissed her TV career down the pan, no doubt, but the plain fact is that if she didn’t see the tennis player as looking like a golliwog, she wouldn’t have bloody said so. It’s the standard ‘in-the-public-eye’ apology, where the celebrity figure apologises, not for doing something wrong, but for saying something that has been misinterpreted. And it’s bollocks. At least Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand had the balls to accept that they were the ones who had said something offensive, rather than pretending everyone else had wilfully misinterpreted them.

And you know what really galls me? The fact that I’d watched that episode of the One Show, and had thought to myself “I can’t stand that woman, but at least she’s not as bad as her mother”.

It’s important to remember you can dislike specific people — Eddie Murphy, Carol Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, David Blunkett, Osama bin Laden, Will Young and so on — without being racist, sexist, disablist, a religious bigot or a homophobe, provided that the reason you dislike them isn’t because they are black, female, blind, Muslim, gay or whatever.

For example, I dislike Osama bin Laden because he’s a monstrous, murderous fuckhead, responsible for the deaths of lots of people. I have to admit that my reasons for disliking the others in that list aren’t as good, but I still do have ‘em.

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21 Comments to Isms Are No More!

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    February 8th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    This was a super post. I read it on Tuesday but was in a bit of a stupor at the time. Very well put!

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