And another thing…

Of course it is possible that he’s actually so progressive that he’s come out the other side to a point I hope we’ll all be at in 100 years (optimistic) or so when the idea of racism is so preposterous that ‘blacking up’ wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

Man- Hello Fred

Fred- My names not Fred

Man-Yeah it is !

Fred- Nah! it’s Dan Dare

Man- Thats ridiculous your Name is Fred

Fred picks up brick and throws it up at window of Tenement flat.

window opens and sambo looks out and calls to the two.

Hey! you down der!

Fred turns around and says to man- see I Told yah!

one of Jim Davison’s as told on T.V
funny? I’ll let you judge

Actually there are more Tories (and not just bloggers) than you think who are embarrassed by his unreconstructed views. I cringed when I read the piece in the Guardian, having hoped – in vain it seems – that such views belong to the dim and distant past. What I am going to say is simple: I strongly suggest that such views are becomming rarer and rarer (not sadly unknown). To put it into perspective the Tory attitude to gays is now, mercifully, totally different to what it was in the past and people who are openly gay are now accepted without hesitation.

I am not defending his view – I find such attitudes abhorrent – but I am saying is that it is far less common that it was within the Tory party.

You seem to be suggesting that your Dad and the elderly constituent are both racist, or am I reading it wrong (i.e. hitting 80 and not much of an excuse for… what?).

What a deadful thing to suggest, if it’s not true.

It’s one of those situations where I think I can sort of see both sides.

On the one side, having decided, for some reason, to impersonate someone accurately, wouldn’t their colour be relevant? Wouldn’t it be as relevant, say, as their voice? Their mannerisms?
Are we saying our skin colour is no part of us?

On the other side, apart from an innate disdain for the unspeakable ignoramus Davidson, I just feel uneasy to see these depictions. Perhaps it’s the weight of history. Perhaps it’s just the particular reason or motive for any depiction.

Difficult to know, to be honest.

Mel

Don’t be an arse we were all brought up in a racist country its just we decided to change(some didn’t).

I don’t understand your ‘not much of an excuse’ either re your dad and the ‘elderly constituent’.

Cut the oldies some slack for god’s sake, and don’t be so judgemental.

Philip Davies – well he’s cut his own length of rope for his own hanging is my view. Apart from anything else, this is a monumentally stupid thing for any modern politician to write.

Agreed that Love Thy Neighbour was pretty desperate. But come on… golliwogs?… Al Jolson? Rather smacks of guilt-tripping, hand-wringing, pretrendy lefties (like yourself) telling ‘people of colour’ what and whom they should be offended by.

Love Thy Neighbour is unmissed, but It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum (Perry & Croft racist were they?) is a hundred times better than the dross BBC serves us up with these days in the name of ‘comedy’.

And it ill-behoves you to joke along the lines of, ‘What about the promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty?…” as you and your chums will find out in spades on election day.

Sammy you said, ‘in spades’.

You can’t, can’t, can’t say that these days.

So far as I recall “It ain’t half hot Mum” was a pretty friendly satire so far as the Indian characters were concerned. Michael Bates, who was brought up in India played the lead.

The Black and White Minstrel show was a reprise of a US tradition which may have had such nuances, but not in its BBC incarnation.

If it takes the michael from people whose skin colour is different from that of those who imagine they are being humourous then it needs careful examination before any performance imho.

Y’know, avoid any Boris Johnson moments.

The Two Ronnies blacked up, so did Spike Milligan, Monty Python, Lawrence Olivier, etc, etc.

Were they all recruitment sergeants for the BNP? No they weren’t and I don’t think the people who enjoyed their comedy or acting performances were insensitive or racist.

I must admit I never enjoyed the Black and White Minstrel show, but never saw it as racist. Nor, by the way, did Lenny Henry who became the Show’s resident comedian.

I did however, very much enjoy Alf Garnett and understood fully the wonderful irony Jonny Speight wrote into the script, an irony which appears completely lost to the current generation who choose to take it at face value.

Oh dear, whatever happened to the British sense of humour?

@Mr. Mxyzptlk

Remove the ’sambo’ from the Jim Davidson joke and all you have is someone laughing at how a phrase in one accent sounds like another phrase in a different dialect.
That’s not racist.

I find it disturbing that we’re indoctrinated into what is an acceptable phrase and what isn’t, I remember speaking to a New Zealander about someone in work from Pakistan and they called them the shortened version and I was shocked, told him you can’t say that here. Turns out it was the racism in the 70’s and 80’s that made the word bad which NZ didn’t have.

Funny how you can shorten a British person to Brit, an Australian to Aussie and a Nigerian to … oh, wait.

Let’s have a look at what’s going on in this post, Tom, because it reveals far more about you than it does about Mr Davies.

Now, Tom, I consider you to be almost a friend, albeit, one of those friends that you wonder how you ever became friends, hardly ever agree with anything they say, and want to hit continually, so I’m saying what follows in the hope that you will learn from your mistakes, but I digress.

Mr Davies says this acc. to the Guradain:

“It’s one of my bugbears. Lots of people are castigated for being racist when that’s not their intention.”

He said he believed in equality and as such disagreed with “positive discrimination”. “That builds up a resentment that doesn’t exist before.”

Isn’t this true? But that’s what I’ve been arguing for a while now, that the ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ industry was set up precisely so you could divide us, then sit in your ivory towers and rule us.

Your penultimate paragraph reveals your own disdain for ‘the democratic process’ as you mimic the public’s reaction to your treasonous policy of near-unlimited immigration to upset the Tories and socially engineer the UK; your sickening attempts to criminalise as many ordinary people as possible with thousands of new laws; your lies and manipulation in worming your way out of your promise to give us a vote on the EU.

Should I give you the benefit of the doubt that you offer this shameful smorgasbord of anti-British New Labour policies out of embarrassment and regret? This post makes politics appear to be nothing more than a game where you try to win for the sake of it, and if slagging off your opponents will help, then so much the better.

Yes, this is a major b*ll*cking.

As between the Jim Davison tories and the Bernard Manning tories I am glad they both look increasingly likely to become fodder for Labour’s next General Election victory.

Chameleon moved his Chairman who described them as “the Nasty party” out and replaced her by “Nannygate” Spelman, and then top chum Eric Pickles.

Will their next leader adopt a stricter attitude and go for someone to beef up their multi-cultural aspirations?

I agree with Mr Davies. I don’t see what’s offensive about it either and even if it does cause offence to a handful of people, who cares?

Take away the controversial aspect of this stunt and all you’re left with is something thats not very funny.

I don’t see what any of this has to do with politics and politicians though.

Being offensive is a crime now? Seriously, why should people have the right not to be offended? I mean, where do you draw the line? I could say i am offended every time my licence fee is spent producing an episode of Songs of Praise, but i don’t.

If this guys constituants find him offensive, then they won’t vote for him. Its the same with me, when it comes to Songs of Praise. I choose not to watch it.

It’s not fair that Doctor Who has had, like 8 lives, yet Doctor Who fans don’t even have one

Racism is largely about power and humour is often about handling anxieties about power.

A dismissive attitude towards those perceived to be in a different ‘race’ to oneself is impolite, which is a keystone of whatever PC is taken to mean.

Small wonder Mr Davies bangs on about things being PC & etc as his party trick I gather.

When the Bullers used to call Geo Osborne “The Oik” because he went to St Pauls, rather than Eton, they were behaving in much the same way, and if this persisted throughout his life by non Buller members it would become objectionable.

If he faced this sort of ragging throughout his life this minute uppercrust class prejudice would become objectionable in the same way as racism is.

Qz, the difference between Manning and Davidson is surely that Manning was funny – often appallingly funny – but a comic genius none the less. And his Falklands veterans routine (look it up if you don’t know it) must be one of the great shock-ending sketches of all time (in fact so powerful he may only have done it a couple of times).

Also, no idea about Davidson’s charity work but Manning gave money quietly to Asian families who needed help.

Re blacking up, that’s the reason we never get repeats of Milligan’s Q series, which was often truly brilliant. At least Youtube gives us Milligan’s Pakistani Dalek sketch.

But while I would argue for Milligan, some things should certainly stay in the archives. Another Spike, Spike Lee, did an eyepopping compilation of Hollywood clips involving degrading portrayals of black actors which make truly uncomfortable viewing.

I think the difference is that Milligan saw all people as inherently ludicrous, but old Hollywood saw only blacks and other minorities as inherently ludicrous. That’s my view, anyway.

Tom, why not explain to him and chefdave why it’s offensive…

It’s much easier to say that things are offensive to explain why. Much like it’s easier to make things illegal than explain why they should be illegal.

Why the fuss?

After all, there are lots of Labour MPs doing lots of illegal things or lying to us:
like thieving
or telling us the world will end in 50 days if we don’t sign an agreement .. and then when it is not signed, telling us it does not matter

and
declaring illegal wars and lying to the HOC.

But I realise these are not important compared to a Tory MP saying something which is neither lies nor illegal..

Ah I realise. he’s a Tory MP. Not only do they eat babies and kill kittens they also impersonate negroes. Disgusting.

He would probably find he has a lot in common with my dad, who still doesn’t quite understand why The Black and White Minstrel Show was taken off the air.</i.

Anyway, smokers are the new blacks.

RE blacking up: it’s not so much the physical act of painting one’s face that is offensive, it’s the way that the whole “blackup” character depicts black people. Traditionally, a Blackup act consisted of white people not only wearing makeup to appear to be black, but also acting out a racist caricature of black people – portraying them as cheery yet untrustworthy simpletons.
Golliwogs are often depicted similarly in early 20th Century British children’s books – for example, in a lot of Enid Blyton’s works, Golliwogs are very sinister. I think we can all agree that this seems rather uncivillized by today’s standards, and rightly so.

It’s worth reading these Wiki articles for a bit more depth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwogg

Not sure what happened to my last post.

He would probably find he has a lot in common with my dad, who still doesn’t quite understand why The Black and White Minstrel Show was taken off the air.

I can remember it very well. Not my sort of music. I don’t remember anything particularly racist about it. I seem to remember them singing black southern music a lot, and dancing, and not much else. They weren’t poking fun.

If that’s racist, then it sexist for men to dress as women and vice versa, and ageist for adults to pretend to be children and vice versa, or for anyone to ptetend to be anything other than what they are. Real racism, as far as I’ concerned, makes second class citizens, or subhumans, out of people.

Much like how smokers are treated these days.

Oh, I get it!

You’re not going to launch a class war on Tory toffs. But you’re quite happy to play the race card. That’s your deal with Gordon.

Scraping the barrel.

I thought the silly season was in August.

I read somewhere that every MP has their own obsessive, single-issue bampots who bombard them with letters on their pet subject, and are a general pain in the proverbial. (It seems as if this has been the case for as long as anyone can remember.)

Davies is unusual in being an MP who is himself the obsessive bampot.

Golliwogs were commonly depicted as thieves, or of unquenchably sunny dispositions, because they were Golliwogs.

Such stereotypes are still more unacceptable when they are racial.

We have seen how racism can lead to massive disasters:

http://britishnaziparty.blogspot.com/2009/06/2009-what-is-nazi.html

Re Manning: Enoch Powell even went to the trouble of learning the eastern languages of some of his constituents, but the damage he did by his “Rivers of Blood Speech” (Which was factually inaccurate) could not be undone. Much the same true of Manning, one of whose stories I recall as utterly disgusting.

Tom, you’ve wandered into the stereotype of “typical lefties taking things so seriously that they miss the joke”. It’s okay to mention the war these days: the Germans will be the first ones laughing with you. Calm down: there isn’t a real racism problem outside the narrow section of people who populate the UK Border Agency and the Home Office. Focus on the real problems, such as obsolete government departments that waste colossal sums of taxpayers’ money on scaremongering and economic sabotage.

Surely it depends on whether a white person blacking up is mocking black people or not.

Men can dress up as women in plays, etc, but even the most ardent feminist wouldn’t necessarily complain about it unless the portrayal of the woman was very anti-woman on that particular occasion.

None of those who have posted has suggested that they are black and not insulted by racism, let alone most blackface entertainments:

“Blackface is theatrical makeup used by white people to play black people. In the United States, where the practice became popular during the 19th century, it became associated with certain archetypes of American racism such as the “happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation” or the “dandified coon “.[1]

“Hence Blackface has become associated with racism, particularly in the USA, so that the term may be used in a broader sense to include similarly stereotyped performances even when they do not involve blackface makeup.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface

Of course most black entertainers are happy to take whatever work is available. Lenny Henry has whinges that other black comedians have not broken through.

The funniest black black cameo I can recall was black performers in a US film acting the way whites have blackfaced their performances of “De Kemptown ladies.” and this is also marvellous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H2W1lK7P-I&NR=1

Re Manning vs Davidson

I was forced to listen to a CD of one of Davidson’s shows once and to my surprise I actually quite enjoyed it.

Given his persona’s that of a crude, racist dirty old man I was impressed with the quality of his stand up show. Quite political too so good for anyone that dislikes all this pc stuff (which seems to be almost everyone these days)

I don’t know about this man or his motivation, but he raised a number of issues, some of which I think justify an answer, such as the number of “special interest” sectors of the police force, of which there are many, which emphasise, I think, divisions, not diversity.

Taken to its illogical conclusion, you get instances where white people are discriminated against. Surely the benign purpose of PC is to protect minorities, not to make new scapegoats out of those of us unfortunate enough to be born with white skin?

As a child I was taken to Scarborough for a week’s holiday at the seaside. One of the attractions was the seaside show and of course, that included the “Black and White Minstrel Show”. Between the ages of about 7 and 14 I had to endure this spectacle every year. It was just the kind of utter dreck I am glad we do not have any more, but nobody complained then. Nobody wanted to pass laws or report it to the police or try and get it stopped. My question is this, how many things do we innocently accept in society, which, in 30 or 40 years time will be considered a crime?

Don’t fall into the trap of hindsight. To moralise with the benefit of hindsight is lazy and intellectually crooked.

While Phillip Davies maybe guilty of over egging the cake, and also I am a very hard man to insult or upset, I do think yours is an over reaction.

They say the sincerest form of flattery is imitation and the Black and White Minstrel show ticks the box for me.

My understanding of minstrels were they entertainers who travelled the southern states entertaining the plantation with music. The difference between classical and blues/jazz/rock is that in classical music the accent is on the 1st and 3rd beats of the bar and 2nd and 4th in jazz.

It was the minstrels who developed the synchopated 2nd and 4th beat music that dominates th world today. Jazz BTW is the fusion of minstrel synchopation and the big band feel of classical music, as most minstrels and early jazz musicians tended to have just an acoustic guitar.

So the minstrels were the people who brought us ragtime, the blues, jazz, rock and pop we have today. Ragtime is considered to be classical music and is often described as an African-American Intermezzo. Obviously jazz/blues has gone onto influence country and western music which was originally Scottish and Irish folk music taken over by immigrants.

So my view of minstrels and the golliwog on the back of Robertson’s jars is a reminder of the 20th and 21st century’s enormous debt that we owe African Americans for our music today.

I’m a bit confused by all this really. What about people who want to impersonate Mr T but by genetic fluke, happen to be white? What do you do then?

Also, regarding Spike Miligan et al, his and Peter Sellers Mr Lalkakha routine, which has appeared in a movie and several episodes of the Goon Show always has me in stitches. It’s not as rascist as people like to shriek about.

If anything it’s the acceptance of a differing culture into our own and Miligan was taking the mickey out of it.

Omid Djaili [Who's as British as Spike] makes similar Indian-accented jokes about the ridiclousness of settled Indian minorities today talking about diabolically middle class Indians who adopt a thick Punjabi accents when talking to their parents but suddenly sound like they’re from the Home Counties the second they step away from their home. He also usually responds to the cheers of “Any Indians in Tonight?” with “What part of Birmingham are you from?”

The question becomes, as Omid himself rightly points out is it rascism? Or Playing with Race?

A lot of people seem to be having a pop about accusations of racism flying around.
In fairness, I often think that we on the left throw the word “racist” around too freely, and that by doing so we devalue it (and make ourselves seem slightly hysterical in the process).
Still, there is such a thing as being racially insensitive, and I think that it what Philip Davies is clearly doing.
Racial insensitivity is still worthy of our antipathy, and can have the effect of setting back anti-racist efforts (which I think is relevant in Mr Davies’s case): but it is different to being racist (i.e. believing in the superiority of one race over another).

I agree with you totally. Some people just dont seem to realise what is racism or at least they maybe in denial. When a guy says something condesending about females, everyone quickly recognises it as sexism. If you say something unfair about disabled people, everyone recongises as disability discrimination, say something, same for sexuality but when it comes to race, everyone suddenly cant quite figure why the comments or actions are racist.

A wrote an interesting article about Rod Liddle’s comment about black people and yet some of the comments on the blog seems to find it hard to beleive that it is racism.

If you want to read for yourself, it is http://bit.ly/4K4d3v . It will be interesting to see how many people think it is racism and how many people would go on to defend him.

Of course, to take this article to its logical conclusion, men impersonating women should be banned..

Funny, no one says that.
Typical double standards.. by men?

From the office of the PM:
Dear Mr Harris,
There might be something for yourself in the resignation honours if you could for once publish something which proves you are still one of us. A bit of Tory-bashing, selling your granny stuff.
Deal?

Racism is not solely believing that one “race”is superior to another.

Some who neither know nor care about that use racism to bully others.

That too is racism, and has better analogies with the view that sexism is sister to racism.

Untermenschen is a concept of great use in analysing these situations, and was in use before the nazis adopted it.

Quite interesting comments. Blacking up is of course an American tradition. No-one seems to have made the obvious point that white variety artists used to black up because there were no black variety artists – well, none that were allowed to peform to white audiences. That the B&W minstrel type of perforance presented black people as one dimensional cartoon characters isn’t even the point. These blacked up performers basically took black music, performed it dressed up as a type of black clown in theatres where black people would not have been allowed in – except after the performance when they might have been allowed in to scrub the floors.

Whites blacked up to take advantage of black music and take the mickey out of black people as the WIKI ref says. They stylised black performances as demonstrated with magnificent wit in Blazing Saddles and at least one other film I cannot track down.

There have been few exceptions which are not simply racist.