History > 2007 > UK > Racism (I)

Mandela's message to black Britain

'Scale the mountains':

the call from Mandela to black leaders

Published: 29 August 2007
The Independent
By Cahal Milmo

Nelson Mandela, the hero of the global battle for racial equality, last night made an impassioned appeal for leading black Britons to take a lead in countering violence and low achievement in the inner cities.

At the start of a visit to Britain to celebrate his own life, the former South African president said it was vital that the achievements of the UK's successful black people were harnessed to inspire those "who scale the mountains with you".

The challenge from the 89-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who will today unveil a 9ft statue of himself in Parliament Square, comes at a time of intense debate about the need for a new generation of role models for black teenagers.

A report this month estimated that tackling under-achievement among young black men and boys would boost the British economy by £24bn over 50 years.

Mr Mandela said the gathering was "testament not only to the achievements of all of you gathered but also to the ability of a city to harness the talents of all of those who come in search of opportunity, and all of those who follow them".

Mr Mandela added: "Leadership comes with responsibility. It is important for you as leaders to harness those responsibilities and ensure that you also empower those around you who scale the mountains with you."

The message was delivered by Mr Mandela's grandson to a dinner held at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair for leading black Britons to recognise their success, much of it in areas that go unrecognised by mainstream media.

Mr Mandela said of the gathering: "Although this evening may only represent the first-ever Londoner Black Leader dinner, it is your job to ensure that this is only the first of many such events to follow."

Among the guests last night were Stanley Musesengwa, the head of multi-national sugar conglomerate Tate & Lyle, and Damon Buffini, the boss of the private equity firm, Permira.

Mr Mandela, who was too frail to attend last night's event, took the opportunity to underline the message that black communities should be seeking equality during an earlier visit to Downing Street.

Speaking alongside his wife, Graca Machel, after a meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr Mandela said: "My wife and I are happy to be here because, as you know, they were one of our rulers, but we overthrew them. We are on an equal basis now."

Gordon Brown described the one-time prisoner of apartheid as "the most inspiring, the greatest and most courageous leader of our generation".

Mr Mandela's intervention takes place amid growing concern that youths in inner cities are being drawn into gangs because they see a lack of alternatives.

Tony Blair caused anger among black community leaders when he used a speech shortly before his resignation to insist that a spate of fatal shootings and stabbings in London was caused by a distinct black culture rather than poverty.

According to Home Office figures, some 75 per cent of gun crime victims - and 79 per cent of suspects - come from the African-Caribbean community.

US civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson said last week that stemming the flow of guns and drugs into the UK was "critical".

But he echoed the thoughts of many black leaders when he said that equal importance needed to be attached to bringing ethnic communities into politics and investing in issues such as job opportunities, wage inequality, the impact of debt and day-care provision.

Reach, a report by 20 experts on how to tackle the issues faced by black youngsters published this month, highlighted mentoring as key measure alongside investment to prevent the creation of US-style ghettos in the inner cities.

Leading campaigners welcomed Mr Mandela's message. The Reverend Nims Obunge, the chief executive of the Peace Alliance, a leading campaign group against gang crime, said: "There is an African saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. I believe he is calling on Britain's village elders to take a greater role in raising the children of our own village."

Dr John Sentamu Archbishop of York

"The criminalisation of generations of black men is being accompanied by the demonisation of Asian, Muslim men. Criminality does not belong to one ethnic group, nor is it innate. It is learnt. It is not a 'black problem', it is a human problem.

"Physical poverty can breed the conditions in which criminality flourishes, but spiritual and moral poverty will lead to crime. As long as idolatry and rampant materialism replace faith and hope, criminality will continue to take hold of our young.

"Ultimately it is not politicians who will lead us out of this but parents. It is parents who have primary responsibility for teaching values to their children and it is the duty of the rest of us to support them. There are shared values that can be both taught and learnt. Values are learnt in the home and then replicated in the street. If there is a vacuum of values at home, if parents absolve themselves of this responsibility, the values of the street will be replicated in the home and violence will come home to roost.

"Parents must shoulder the responsibility for where their children are, who they are with and what they are doing. The state cannot do this and nor should it be expected to."

Kano Rapper

"I was raised by a single mother. I know that not having a father affects many people in a deep way. All young people, black or otherwise, need role models. And it's true that black people have fewer role models than most. That's why I want to be one: I know I'm a positive person with a lot to offer.

But politicians who blame everything on family breakdown miss the real point: broken homes will generally only breed criminals if they're poor. This is about young people and poverty, not about colour. Except for a few, black people raised in the UK are not raised by rich families. The children themselves have to raise cash, and from an early age. Of course some of them will be forced into crime. Talking about it in terms of race only entrenches the feeling of difference and opposition amongst communities. If we talk about black people as being particularly predisposed to crime, suddenly everyone becomes afraid of black people. As a result, black people feel victimised. It all gives rise to a kind of 'they don't care about us' feeling within society."

John Regis Olympic medal winner

His nephew, Adam Regis, was stabbed to death in Plaistow, East London, in March

"It's neither useful nor fair to treat this as a 'black' problem. What we're dealing with is a nationwide epidemic. We have to face up to the fact that a generation of young people (mostly men) have lost direction. This is largely because our politically correct adults have lost faith in their own authority. The result is that children have lost all sense of discipline. We need much tougher penalties for children who misbehave. That starts in school.

Teachers used to feel confident about asserting their authority, but now they let kids off lightly because they're fearful of prosecution. This is nonsense: we need our schools to be strict environments where children are rewarded for good behaviour and punished for bad behaviour. People like those who killed my nephew join gangs because they offer a sense of worth. But it is totally false. Gangs are like families which you qualify for through crime. We need to demonstrate to young people that family ties are the truest source of love and security."

Ray Lewis Founder and executive director of Eastside Young Leaders Academy

"Our first flaw has been talking of the 'black community'. That label is hollow: no such community exists. An absence of community is the major problem on British streets: it leaves a vacuum filled by crime. Only be re-invigorating community spirit can we give our young a sense of belonging, regardless of colour.

"Increasingly, young, black Britons become socially excluded as a matter of choice. It's important that we recognise that they are active players in this. Poverty has plenty to do with it, yes, but there is no direct link between poverty and criminality. Instead, many black Britons live on the margins of society because they feel a sense of abandonment and alienation. This leads directly to a collapse in aspiration. Many young black men are suffering from an identity crisis, and don't know how much of themselves they have to give up in order to feel British.

"Beyond this, the collapse of family values has gripped many young black men. I was raised by a single mother, and I don't believe that a single mother can raise a boy to manhood. No family is complete without a masculine voice and presence."

Simon Wooley National co-ordinator, Operation Black Vote

"We need to be clear that racism still thrives in the UK, and the depiction of young black men as criminals is part of that. Black people are still seen as inferior by most people who aren't black. They are still much less likely to get a job than their white counterparts. They tend to be born into deprivation. And deprivation can breed criminality.

The government has openly admitted that black people still face sustained discrimination within the criminal justice system, for example. It's the combination of racial inequality and social inequality that has brought us to our current situation. Black people are unique in suffering heavily from both. When the two combine it's a massive problem: there is an added dynamic of deprivation when it comes to race. If we're to move on from this situation, black people must be the agents of change. We have to break the cycle of exclusion and start creating opportunities. We need black people to have the same chances as everyone else in terms of getting jobs and houses. Incentivising marriage through the welfare system is a total red herring: poverty is the problem, not single-parent families.

    Mandela's message to black Britain, I, 29.8.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2903556.ece

Mandela Statue Unveiled in London

August 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Britain unveiled a statue of Nelson Mandela on Wednesday outside the houses of Parliament, honoring the South African anti-apartheid campaigner as one of the great leaders of his era.

Mandela, 89, saluted all the South African heroes who joined him in the struggle against apartheid.

''Though this statue is of one man, it should in actual fact symbolize all those who have resisted oppression, especially in my country,'' Mandela said at the ceremony attended by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

''The history of the struggle in South Africa is rich with the stories of heroes and heroines, some of them leaders, some of them followers. All of them deserve to be remembered.''

The 9-foot bronze statue of Mandela joins those of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.

Mandela appeared frail as he made his way to the platform, leaning on the arm of his wife, Graca Machel. But he spoke clearly as he invited the crowd to celebrate his 90th birthday next year at a concert in London's Hyde Park in support of his efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. The concert will support his foundation, which is called ''46664'' -- the number he wore in prison.

Brown called the statue ''a beacon of hope.''

''It sends around the world the most powerful of messages -- that no injustice can last forever, that suffering in the cause of freedom will never be in vain, that no matter how long the night of oppression, the morning of liberty will break through, and there is nothing that we the peoples of the world, working together, cannot achieve.''

Mayor Ken Livingstone, anti-apartheid campaigners and community leaders also attended the ceremony outside Parliament, close to Westminster Abbey. There was a gospel choir and 40 dancers in carnival costumes.

Mandela came to personify the black majority's struggle to end apartheid, spending 27 years in jail before being released in 1990. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with then-President F.W. de Klerk for negotiating the transition to democratic rule, and the following year Mandela was elected president of South Africa.

He left office in 1999, but` a continued to lead in the fight against poverty, illiteracy and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The campaign to erect a statue of Mandela in London was started seven years ago by the late Donald Woods, a South African journalist who was driven into exile because of his anti-apartheid activities.

It was an honor that the young Mandela dared to dream of.

In his autobiography, Mandela said that during a visit to London in 1962 with his law partner and fellow anti-apartheid leader, the late Oliver Tambo, they walked together through Parliament Square, and joked that perhaps someday, their statues would stand there.

------

On the Web:

www.46664.com

(This version CORRECTS year of Mandela visit

cited in autobiography to 1962, not 1972.)

    Mandela Statue Unveiled in London, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Mandela.html

A stony reminder

of how Churchill

betrayed black Africa

Two incongruous neighbours
for the new Mandela statue

August 29, 2007
From The Times
Richard Dowden

Nelson Mandela talks to everybody. He has famously gone out of his way to confront his persecutors by greeting them with respect and a warm smile. The former President of South Africa is also very polite. If he attends today’s ceremony to unveil his statue in Parliament Square I would be surprised if he makes any reference to other figures represented there. But I wonder what the statues will say to each other when the crowds have gone and the square is deserted.

Take Palmerston, for example, who was Prime Minister in the 1850s when some 50,000 of Mandela’s own Xhosa people died in a famine triggered by Britain’s seizure of their lands. Or Disraeli, who helped to carve up Africa with other European powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1885. Both argued that British imperialism brought nothing but benefits to people who came under its rule. Mr Mandela could offer evidence to the contrary from the subsequent history of South Africa.

But Mr Mandela’s most interesting conversations would be with Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts, who stand close together near the northeast end of the square. Churchill, massive, glowering like a bull, Smuts striding out with pious purpose. We remember these two men, contemporaries and friends, for other reasons. Smuts, although an Afrikaner, was the only signatory to the peace treaties that ended both the First and Second World Wars. And he was instrumental in setting up both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Smuts was the favoured replacement as prime minister if anything should happen to Churchill during the war. But in South Africa Smuts and Churchill laid the foundations of what was to become the apartheid state, the state Mandela dedicated his life to destroying.

Churchill had been a journalist during the Boer War. He was captured, then escaped from the Afrikaners. But he became convinced of the justice of their cause and after the war, argued ferociously in favour of self-rule for South Africa. A Boer general during the war, Smuts negotiated the surrender of the Afrikaner army in 1902 and was a key player in the creation of the Union of South Africa.

During the war Britain had encouraged and armed blacks in the Boer republics to rise up against their Afrikaner masters. That had given many blacks the belief that they might enjoy more rights in the British-ruled Transvaal and the Orange Free State – just as they did in British Cape Province where non-whites had voting rights based on property. Westminster always insisted on a nonracial franchise and it was assumed that this would be extended to the whole of the new South Africa. But the interests of blacks came a long way behind the British greed for South African gold and the Afrikaners’ belief in racial purity and their demands for land and self-rule.

The man who should have spoken up for the non-racial franchise was Churchill. After the war, he had become an MP and in 1905 was made Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Instead Churchill supported the aspirations of the Afrikaners. He described South Africa as a “war-torn country, still red-hot from race hatred”. But he was not referring to race as we would understand it. He meant the mutual hatred of Britons and Afrikaners. Churchill’s solution was a British-ruled South Africa with virtual autonomy for the Afrikaners.

In 1906 Smuts came to London and proposed self-rule based on a white population. As the negotiations progressed it became clear that the nonracial franchise was not going to be introduced in the new South Africa. Although they retained their property voting rights in the Cape, non-white South Africans were to have no say in the new parliament.

Churchill accepted this. In a House of Commons speech in 1906 he said: “We must be bound by the interpretation which the other party [the Afrikaners] places on it and it is undoubted that the Boers would regard it as a breach of that treaty if the franchise were . . . extended to any persons who are not white”.

A multiracial deputation travelled to London to protest. It included the premier of the Cape and several black members of a movement that was to become the African National Congress. They failed to get a hearing from the Commons and only saw a minister after the Act giving a new constitution to South Africa had been passed.

Only the Indians in South Africa managed to keep some of their rights. But not thanks to Churchill or Smuts. Proposed restrictions on Indian immigrants in South Africa were only blocked when Gandhi – then a young lawyer there – launched a mass protest movement.

Although not the Prime Minister, Smuts was the most influential man in the new Union of South Africa. Under his direction South Africa became a race-based state. All the laws that were later refined and clarified by Apartheid were passed while Smuts was in government. Blacks were only allowed in urban areas if they were there to serve whites. In 1911 skilled jobs were reserved for whites and black contract labourers were forbidden to strike.

Two years later the Native Land Act sent blacks to the reserves and forbade them to own land in white areas. Thousands of blacks were uprooted or thrown off their land. Their only political representation were five “leaders”, nominated by the Government, who held an annual meeting with the Native Affairs Commission, white “experts” appointed by the Government. In a second political incarnation in the 1930s Smuts was part of a coalition government that strengthened these laws, though Smuts himself argued against stringent segregation.

So perhaps in the long empty nights, when even Brian Haw and the Iraq war protesters are asleep, Mr Mandela might ask why so many of his fellow statues who did so much for human freedom in other contexts seemed to have been on the wrong side over Africa. It is a question we might ask ourselves today.

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society

    A stony reminder of how Churchill betrayed black Africa, Ts, 29.8.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2343767.ece

Role models

are hard to come by

in Peckham

Published: 29 August 2007
The Independent
By Jonathan Brown

A group of youngsters take turns to ride the motorbike up and down Sceaux Gardens, one of the last of Peckham's post-war housing estates to survive the post-Damilola Taylor regeneration of this part of South London.

Dressed in the typical uniform of the street, baseball caps, trainers, long trailing jewellery, every few minutes they break out inexaggerated bouts of pushing and shouted threats.

One peels notes from a suspiciously large roll of cash. Asked what their opinion of Nelson Mandela, there was a mixed response. "He's just an old man," says one before disappearing into a car. Others are not so sure, "He was a freedom fighter, he's got total credibility says 17-year-old Onyeka Obiodu. "I haven't got any role models. You have to struggle to get where you want. That's just how it is," he adds.

Like many of his friends, the young Nigerian-born Londoner was brought up by his mother. "She is a brilliant woman. My old man doesn't care," he says.

Onyeka admits he has been in trouble with the police in the past, after getting involved in a fight, but he still wants to make his mark on the world. Next year he plans to study performing arts and wants to make it as an actor. His big screen heroes are Will Smith and Eddie Murphy. The reasons for admiring them are straightforward. "I like them because they are black," he says.

According to local youth worker and musician Jason Castro, for most young people in Peckham, the biggest hero is without doubt 50 Cent. "They say 'he's got bare money' - they like the fact he is rich and that he can get the girls," he says.

Mr Castro believes that society has until the age of eight, nine at the latest, to influence children into making the right choices. After that, the laws of the street take over and promising youngsters are lost to the battles of Peckham's notorious frontline - the streets around the bustling shopping area and its cornucopia of world foods - where local gangs do battle with rivals from nearby New Cross.

"Everybody is busy just trying to live, trying to put food on the table for their children. The things outside of that, such as teaching and inspiring - they haven't got time for that. U ltimately, the cause of the problems here is family breakdown," he says.

But, he warns, young people can see through superficial help from outsiders. "When they see people come here they know they have got money and, at the end of the day, they will go back to where there they came from."

Peckham is home to a dozens of nationalities. Some 23 languages are spoken at local schools, more than 60 per cent are black and most are poor. The area has reaped £300m in regeneration money in the past decade, a new library, a Damilola Taylor community centre and a glittering new school.

Yet while only 30 per cent of pupils at the £28m Peckham Academy pass five GCSEs at grade C and above, that figure has nearly tripled in the past three years. Crime, while still high by national standards, is also on the decline in the borough.

Jamaine Facey, 30, operations manager at the Fusion gym, worked hard to achieve his success. He says there are plenty of role models in sport and entertainment but in other areas of life, there is little for young black people to aspire to. "When it comes to the big money jobs, barristers, lawyers and chief executives, they all seem to be doing their own thing. They could do more to help black men and women here to get the opportunities they need."

    Role models are hard to come by in Peckham, I, 29.8.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2903561.ece

Leading British institutions

gripped by racism rows

Three British institutions are engulfed by race rows
- but the protagonists all deny any charges of bigotry

Published: 09 March 2007
The Independent
By Robert Verkaik

Britain's institutions stand accused of fostering a climate of casual racism after a series of race rows yesterday provoked clashes between MPs, academics and leaders of the black and Asian communities.

In the most high-profile case, David Cameron, the Tory party leader, was forced to sack his frontbench spokesman on homeland security, Patrick Mercer, because he suggested that being called a "black bastard" was part and parcel of life in the Army for ethnic minority soldiers.

Shortly afterwards the Independent Police Complaints Commission announced that it was to investigate the brutal assault of a black teenager by a white police officer outside a Sheffield nightclub.

In Manchester, a magistrate who was overheard talking to a colleague about "bloody foreigners" in private after a hearing was reprimanded by the Judicial Appointments Commission but allowed to return to work.

In Oxford, a university professor was forced to defend himself after students protested at his outspoken comments on immigration.

Last night MPs and leaders of Britain's ethnic minority communities said the incidents, although all unconnected, painted a picture of resurgent racism at the heart of British society which needed to be tackled.

Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: "Racism is sneaking back in to mainstream respectability and this is very dangerous. It is not isolated incidents ... it's been happening for some time. In some aspects, it's coming through on the back of Islamophobia and in other ways, it is mainstream, old-fashioned racism."

Michelynn Lafleche, director of the Runnymede Trust, a think-tank on ethnicity and cultural diversity, said that while significant steps had been made in the fight against racism much of the legislation had failed to make a mark on British life. She added: "The fight against terrorism ... gives people the excuse to step back 40 years in time and say it is OK to say these things when it is not only morally reprehensible but often illegal. We may have the legislation in place, but it is of great concern because too often we are not seeing that permeate into our everyday lives."

Many institutions have tried to implement the recommendations of Sir William Macpherson of Cluny who published a landmark report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. But almost 14 years after the black teenager's murder and eight years after Sir William's report Britain is still trying to combat racism in society.

Critics seized on Mr Mercer's comments as evidence that the Tory party is one of many institutions still plagued by such problems.

The Labour MP Shahid Malik said they showed the Tories remained the "nasty party" and had not changed under Mr Cameron's leadership. "It doesn't matter what they tell you, they still are the nasty, racist, sexist, homophobic party they have been for many, many, many years," he said. "It is going to take a long time to weed out the inherent racism that actually exists in that particular party."

However, the Tories are not the only political party facing accusations of fuelling racial tensions. Earlier this week the Home Secretary John Reid faced criticism after promising to make life difficult for illegal immigrants in Britain. He came under fire after pledging a crackdown on foreigners who "steal our benefits".

Darcus Howe, the prominent journalist and broadcaster, believes there is a new-found confidence among the right when discussing racial issues in Britain. He described the latest race rows as "very disturbing" saying there was no one to speak up for black and working-class people.

"This is not the same country I came to 50 years ago. I have great sympathy for the whites because everything has been swept away by Mrs Thatcher and now Tony Blair but there is nothing to take its place."

Some commentators believe the 9/11 attacks led to a dramatic change in race relations in Britain. Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, said: "Respectable figures in British society have begun to speak in a way they never would have spoken in before 11 September. I believe the rise in much of the right-wing discourse we hear from these prominent people, was triggered by the events of 11 September, and fuelled by fear and ignorance. It is becoming much more normal to use racist, Islamophobic discourse."

Lee Jasper, Secretary of the National Assembly Against Racism, said Mr Mercer's comments followed David Cameron's own reference to multiculturalism as a "barrier to cohesion" which he said was designed to make headlines. "It is this approach that results in a full-scale Tory attack on the principle of black self-organisation," said Mr Jasper.

He added: "While we welcome the resignation of Patrick Mercer, we remain deeply sceptical about the Tory party's commitment to root out racism within the party itself."

The politician

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative homeland security spokesman, was sacked by his party leader, David Cameron, yesterday after claiming it was acceptable to use the phrase "black bastard" in the Army. He later said: "I very much regret the interpretation that has been put on my comments."

The policeman

PC Anthony Mulhall has been removed from frontline duties after allegedly beating up a black woman outside a nightclub in Sheffield. A South Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "The force is outraged at... the possible suggestion that this may be linked to any kind of racist incident."

The professor

David Coleman of Oxford University has provoked student anger after it emerged that he was a co-founder of the anti-immigration pressure group Migrationwatch. He has said that immigrants contribute the equivalent of "a Mars bar a month" to Britain. Yesterday he defended his views.

The colour divide

* African Caribbean pupils are up to six times more likely to be excluded from school than white pupils, but no more likely to truant

* 70 per cent of all ethnic minorities live in the 88 most deprived areas, compared to 40 per cent of the general population

* Prisoners from ethnic minorities accounted for a fifth of the male prison population, 12 per cent of whom were Black British

* The number of arrests for black people is three times higher

* 87,000 members of ethnic minorities say they have been a victim of racially motivated crime, the latest figures show

* 49,000 of those say they have been a victim of violent crime

* The average wage for ethnic minorities is £7.50 per hour, compared to £8.00 for whites

* Just over a fifth of people in England and Wales live in poverty, compared to 40 per cent of African Caribbeans and 8 per cent of whites in 1997

Figures from 2004

    Leading British institutions gripped by racism rows, I, 9.3.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2341371.ece

Howard Jacobson:

'Big Brother' encourages us

to embrace a condition

far more worrying than racism

The debate as to whether Jade
and her super-dumb cohorts are racist
is not worth having

Published: 20 January 2007
The Independent

After the Revolution, the Terror. This - the invariable consequence of filling the heads of the uneducated with grandiosity - is what we are seeing on Celebrity Big Brother. In the days when she sweetly knew herself to be pig ignorant, Jade Goody had neither the reason nor the confidence to launch the sort of terrifying tirades to which poor little rich girl Shilpa Shetty has been subjected - never mind with what provocation - this last week.

But then television made Jade a star. Television rewarded her with renown for all the things she didn't know. Television set her up as a sort of Ugly Betty of the reason and the intellect, an example and a promise to everyone who had hitherto felt damned in their own fatuity. You, too, said television, can be rich and famous for being an airhead. Indeed, if we have our way, you won't be rich and famous for being anything else. And now the airhead is a swollen head, and won't be spoken down to by a mistress of Indian subcontinent hauteur. Jade has rights now, whether or not she can spell them, and will shake the planet to its foundations before she forgoes a single one.

Well, and why should she be spoken down to? No reason. Hence the brute little corner of us that cheers her on, at once exhilarated and appalled by the tenacity of her sense of wrong. "Your mother would be proud of you," one of her chums in girly vacuity told her, without a trace of irony, after she had sworn the house down. No doubt about it. Pride has probably been beating in sullen hearts all over the country. The Terror, too, as the aristocrats went helter-skelter to the guillotine, made the children of the Revolution proud.

Channel 4, which has a big stake in cultural mischief, has fomented this unrest. It has been fomenting it ever since Big Brother started, learning as it goes that no one ever made a buck overestimating the sense or sensibility of the British public. But in Jade Goody it has found its Héroïne de la Revolution. How long it has been sitting on the idea of returning Jade to Big Brother as a celebrity - a perfected monster of televisual incestuousness, on telly for having been on telly - is anyone's guess. But this time it made its intentions apparent immediately. Jade and her family were to be royalty - Queen Carnival and her entourage for a day - and the rest of the house were to wait on her hand and foot.

In fact, Shilpa was among those who found exemption from this indignity, which must have been a disappointment to the programme makers, since here was the dream reversal of roles, the very reason, presumably, she had been imported to play opposite Jade in the first place. But the tone had been set. This was to be an incendiary Big Brother, pitting culture against culture, class against class, and in the process flattering its viewers with the Channel 4 philosophy, that what is low is high.

The debate as to whether Jade and her super-dumb cohorts are racist is not worth having, whatever the expressions of sanctimonious outrage on all sides. (The Carphone Warehouse taking the high moral ground and pulling out of sponsoring the programme - there's a laugh after the thousands of hours of mindlessness and bilge it has lent its name to without a qualm.)

Racism - the fear and dislike of people alien to you - is slumberingly integral to all ignorance, so we shouldn't be in the slightest surprised to find it among people who are witless enough to go on such a programme in the first place. Not all racists are stupid, but all stupid people are at some level racists, cowed into resentment and mistrust by the enormity of their incomprehension. In proportion as the world and its ideas are a mystery to you, so the world and its peoples are a threat.

Jade is goaded into wild abuse by the unfamiliar appearance and manners of a woman who's name she cannot get her tongue round, whose value system she cannot comprehend, and who makes her feel cheap. The footballer's bit of fluff - the one who dresses like a toddler and eats with her mouth open - looks blankly into all she doesn't know about the dining customs of people not from Liverpool, and worries where their hands have been.

To confuse this vegetative state with full-blown racism is to dignify it. More than that, it is to confuse a lesser crime with a greater. There are worse things than racism. There is the unapologetic inanity from which the ordinary, daily, unremarkable bigotries and prejudices of the public draw their strength.

We are too soft on stupidity. I am not talking about general knowledge or vocabulary failure. Jade doesn't recognise wedlock - the word, that is, not the state. This is not a sin in itself; words can pass you by. I can never get a purchase on ontological and have to look it up whenever I encounter it. Nor do I mean not having heard of famous people or places. The footballer's fluff thinks Winston Churchill was the first black President of America, having seen a black statue of him near where she lies her empty head. And Jade suspects Rio de Janeiro might be a person. So what? For all I know to the contrary Rio Ferdinand is a region of Ecuador.

They add up, though - the words you can't pronounce, the events you haven't heard of, the ideas with which you are not and do not wish to be acquainted. At some point the accumulation of missing information and curiosity amounts to your not being in the world at all. And it is this condition - a condition that can with far more justice be described as alienation than the ennui of the intellectual - that Big Brother and its host of satellite celebrity magazines have for years been encouraging us to embrace.

There is a vindictiveness in dumbing down. It aims to dethrone not only intelligence but the means by which we rate one thing above another. Dumbing down is an assault upon the very concept of value. Thus Jade, though she wouldn't know what I am talking about, is the child of that nihilism which gave us postmodernism and the Turner prize. A celebrity for being nobody, a belcher and a farter with her own perfume, she is an ironic reference to the unmeaningness of meaning.

Racism? We have far more to worry about than that.

    Howard Jacobson: 'Big Brother' encourages us to embrace a condition far more worrying than racism, I, 20.1.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/howard_jacobson/article2169216.ece

Racism gets a reality check

The abuse of Shilpa Shetty on 'Celebrity Big Brother'
has prompted more than 21,000 protests.

Effigies of contestants are burnt in Patna
as India reacts angrily to her treatment.

Tony Blair's spokesman says any perception
Britain tolerates racism 'has to be regretted'.

The broadcaster defends programme
against criticism but enjoys boost in ratings.

Published: 18 January 2007
The Independent
By Robert Verkaik, Ben Russell, and Justin Huggler

The alleged racist abuse directed at a Bollywood film star appearing on the Channel 4 reality show Celebrity Big Brother became an international issue yesterday.

In a day of extraordinary developments, Chancellor Gordon Brown was forced to defend Britain against allegations of racism on his first full day of a trip to India.

Mr Brown said he regarded the alleged racist comments made on the programme as "offensive". He added: "I want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness and tolerance. Anything detracting from this I condemn" .

And as the protests grew more vociferous, No 10 was put on the defensive. Tony Blair's spokesman said any perception abroad that Britain tolerated racism had to be "regretted and countered".

Yesterday, Indian TV news was dominated by images of Shilpa Shetty in tears after arguments with flatmates, during which she was allegedly called a " Paki" and a "cunt".

"Racist Big Brother leaves Shilpa shattered," read the headline in the Deccan Herald, one of several newspapers to carry the story on its front page.

And in the city of Patna, effigies of Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara were burnt. "The big question is: why does everyone hate Shilpa Shetty?" the Indian Express asked on its website.

In one recent argument on the show, Goody told Shetty: "Go back to the slums and find out what real life is like, lady. You are not some princess in fucking Neverland. You're not some princess here... you need a day in the slums... fucking go in your community."

And Danielle Lloyd was heard to mutter, out of Shetty's earshot: "I think she should fuck off home." Britain's media watchdog Ofcom reported a record 19,300 complaints against the programme, with a further 2,000 contacting Channel 4 directly.

Last night, it emerged Channel 4 and Endemol, makers of Big Brother, are facing a lawsuit from viewers who say they were distressed by what they saw. In what would be the first case of its kind, seven Asian viewers, all victims of racism, have instructed the civil rights law firm, Equal Justice, to institute proceedings in the "provision of services" under the Race Relations Act 1976.

Keith Vaz MP, former minister for Europe, used an early day motion in the House of Commons to call on Channel 4 bosses to take "effective action" against the "unacceptable" racist language allegedly used.

The London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, said: "The mocking of Shilpa Shetty's accent, her Indian cooking and other aspects of her culture, as well as such basic things as repeated failure to get her name right and referring to her in extreme derogatory terms are completely unacceptable ... All cultures are welcome in London and we do not ask anyone to give up their culture or background in order to be welcome and to contribute to the city and its great prosperity. The treatment meted out to Shilpa Shetty is totally opposite to such an approach."

But Channel 4 appears in no hurry to take action. Ratings for the highlights show on Tuesday evening hit 4.5 million viewers, up from 3.5 million on Monday.

The bookmaker William Hill said Shetty was now the new "hot favourite" to win. In a further twist, Goody and Shetty are to go head to head in the next round of evictions.

Last night, Channel 4 claimed there had been "no overt racial abuse or racist behaviour directed against Shilpa Shetty within the Big Brother house" . It said what had happened could be characterised as a "cultural and class clash between her and three of the British females in the house." It added: "Unambiguous racist behaviour and language is not tolerated under any circumstances in the house. Housemates are constantly monitored and Channel 4 would intervene if a clear instance of this arose." Channel 4 said it had spoken to Shetty, "who has not complained or raised the issue of racism".

Hours later, however, Shetty spoke for the first time of her fears that she is the victim of racism. Unaware that the race row has developed into an international incident, the housemates last night had an argument over Oxo cubes.

After the spat, fellow housemate Cleo Rocos told Shetty: "I don't think there's anything racist in it."

Shetty replied: "It is, I'm telling you."

One of the complainants bringing the claim against Channel 4 said the comments he heard triggered memories of racism he had experienced in the 1970s. Tallat Mukhtar,a former banker who now runs his own firm, said: " This series has taken me back to the 1970s when I was racially abused on the streets and encountered the Jade Goody mentality. I find it disgusting that Channel 4 and Endemol broadcast such material. Even if it boosts their profits, it is not a fit or ethical way to make money."

Racism gets a reality check, I, 18.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2162868.ece