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Saturday 3 April 2021

Tory Race Report Dead And Buried

The deflection and denial has endured for all of three days, but it is now clear that it has convinced no-one: the report on racial disparities commissioned by the Government of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has run out of any credibility it once possessed. It is an Easter death from which there will be no resurrection.

Munira Mirza, the Spiked representative on Earth

What the exercise has shown is that when report compilation is entrusted to people who have denied the existence of institutional racism in the past, one should not be unduly surprised that the duly compiled report says much the same thing. Or that hiring refugees from the planet Spiked means other Spiked alumni see no problem with their work.


Even so, the scale of criticism has, it seems, surprised the report’s authors, who have, as Alan White of Politics Home put it, “come out swinging”. He goes on to tell that “Among other things - they deny they ever said that ‘racism does not exist in society or in institutions.’ Also: ‘The idea that the Commission would downplay the atrocities of slavery is as absurd as it is offensive to every one of us’”. But this was unpersuasive.


Meenal Viz, who you can tell as she’s a doctor, made a series of observations (thread HERE), noting “This reads like an op-ed rather than a balanced report” and concluding “The 2021 #RaceReport is fatally flawed. Denying the existence of structural racism is to deny the lived experiences of millions … Leaking headlines like ‘BRITAIN'S RACE REVOLUTION’ in an institutionally racist tabloid tells us all credibility is shot”.


Historian Diana Paton picked up on the non-downplaying of slavery. “The report says nothing about the inhumanity of slavery. The only thing it says about suffering due to slavery is that we shouldn’t talk about it too much”. Another historian added “And not only does it not say that Africans preserved their culture, it views it as a good thing that those cultures were destroyed on the path to Britishness”. It got worse.


As the Guardian has reported, theologian Robert Beckford, “professor of Black theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, said the report had reduced slavery’s racial terror and Britain’s racial capitalism to a simple exchange of cultural ideas”. Also, “Hakim Adi, professor of the history of Africa and the African diaspora at the University of Chichester, told the Guardian that the report’s foreword failed to make clear that the subjugation of millions of African people was a crime against humanity”. And worse still.


Historian David Olusoga, professor of public history at Manchester University, wrote that “Shockingly, the authors - perhaps unwittingly - deploy a version of an argument that was used by the slave owners themselves in defence of slavery 200 years ago: the idea that by becoming culturally British, black people were somehow beneficiaries of the system”.


He went on to conclude that “Determined to privilege comforting national myths over hard historical truths, they give the impression of being people who would prefer this history to be brushed back under the carpet”. Olusoga characterised the report as “poisonously patronising” and “historically illiterate”. To no surprise at all, entrusting a report to some who have made a living from denying reality ends up, er, denying reality.

But one useful purpose has been served here, to confirm that putting those Spiked alumni on the Government payroll is in the Bozo tradition: a complete waste of public money.


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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Incredible.

You keep hoping the British establishment will acquire at least some common sense decency. But it never does. Instead, it gets worse with each passing day.

Nothing will change until the whole rotten mess is swept away along with its racist barbaric media.

Arnold said...

Boris Johnson admits he DOESN'T agree with elements of landmark race report as Stephen Lawrence's mother says it gives 'racists the green light' and slams authors as 'not in touch with reality'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9428405/Stephen-Lawrences-mother-says-race-report-gives-racists-green-light.html

Bozo can't even get a rigged enquiry to give the report he wanted.

AndyC said...

I shouldnt think this debacle will be more than a slight hiccup on the onwards and upwards trajectory of those involved. The mediocracy that plagues this country, that manifests itself in the composition of this Commission and its abysmal report, and in the now evident corruption in lobbying by ex-Ministers as examples, will continue to gaslight us and play us for mugs whilst continuing to and enrich itself.

Anonymous said...

People usually flee from a racist country, NOT flock to it!

Anonymous said...

"People usually flee from a racist country, NOT flock to it!"

That's just the bullshit you want to be fed and it has no place in reality.

Only a gammon who reads the Daily Heil can pull off being a useless and a useful idiot with so little effort. Think about that. Or at least try to.

MikeD said...

Anonymous (of course..) said...
"People usually flee from a racist country, NOT flock to it! >splutter!< >rant<"

25 percent of minority citizens have faced direct racist discrimination in the last 5 years. Shocking, unforgivable and shameful but not the worst in Europe by far. We still look like a good bet to most people looking for a better life.

Still, claiming we're not very racist because immigrants come here is not exactly a clever argument, is it?

Anonymous said...

I see we have the usual supercilious comments, with added personal insults. Yet failed to post my comment about my living experience of 40+ years in a mixed community. Par for the course, if it doesn't fit the narrative ignore it. Journalism should be the other way around.

" 25 percent of minority citizens have faced direct racist discrimination in the last 5 years " What the heck does that mean ? Source, proof, what do they consider racism? In the last 5 years I have had many insults thrown at me in the course of doing my job, so what? I bet gingers and slapheads get worse than these "minority citizens" whoever they are!

Creating this non-issue for political gain when the people on the street know it is BS is the reason Labour are now unelectable, get real folks!

Anonymous said...

@13:46.

Nah.

You're just a standard Daily Heil-reading liar.

Nothing different about you at all. One gammon's like another.

Jonathan said...

Bozza's advisor Munira Mirza,hails from Oldham, which has suffered from decades of tension between its differing communities.

In 2001, there were serious disturbances in Gldowick, a ward in the central part of Oldham, predominantly populated by the Asian community.

What never came out was the role of GMP's unfinest stoking tensions with particularly young male Asians..

My ex who was based in Oldham for her police training would come home retail me with tales of winding up young Asian male drivers..
For Munria Mirza to deny there is institutial racism when she would have witnessed it in her home town is rather disturbing...but with all Bozza's gang, they all suspend reality.

Anonymous said...

Once again, the Tories get to grade their own homework, and the media fail to smell a rat.

All that time in the gutter plays havoc with your sense of smell.