Dr David Starkey is one of Britain’s leading Historians and for good reason. His books, his television series, what he has done for British History, all of it is fantastic. For all Dr Starkey’s criticisms, and there are a few considering his own history of controversy, he is not a ‘racist’, he is a Historian dealing with fact.
Unfortunately, there are some of us who are not mature enough to deal with fact. Dr Starkey’s appearance on Newsnight last Friday in which he spoke of a particular type of Black culture has had the self righteous, mainly Left, clambering for their 15 minutes to shout “RACIST” from the moral high horse. When the creator of Midsummer Murder stated the programme would not work with racial diversity, Kelvin MacKenzie branded this a ‘race storm’ on Question Time, Dr Starkey’s comments on Newsnight a few days ago have gone further and created a ‘race hurricane’.
The sad fact is that nowadays, racism, which let us be quite clear is abhorrent, has been inflated to mean any discussion of race, and in the process we have completely forgotten what it is to be racist. Instead people jump at the chance to shout down anyone who mentions the word ‘race’ as a racist, as if they need to prove they themselves are not. Why can we not presume, as is the case, that 99.9% of people like myself cannot stand racism. Why does the mention of race mean one is guilty of racism until proven innocent?
Racism is the belief in inferior races, the belief that the race you are is better then that of another, or all other races. This view has been used to justify numerous atrocities, notably Adolf Hitler’s belief in the superiority of the Aryan race which led to the horrors of his Final Solution.
Toby Young in his latest Telegraph Blog quotes the dictionary definition of racism from the Oxford English Dictionary as:
“the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race , especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races”.
With this in mind, below is what Dr Starkey said on Newsnight.
“What’s happened is that a substantial section of the Chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that’s been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.”
Nowhere in this does Dr Starkey portray any superiority, nowhere does he say as a white man he is superior to his inferior black counterparts. He plainly did not say this, and the reason he did not say this is because he does no think it.
Every culture has positive parts, but every culture also has negative parts, simply what Dr Starkey did was to identify a negative part of black culture. ‘Chav’ culture, of which Owen Jones writes about in his book, Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, could be identified as a negative part of white culture, this is not racist, I am not claiming white people are inferior, I am simply stating an observation.
The irony of this is it is acceptable to identify positive aspects in a certain culture, but as soon as someone like Dr Starkey attributes something negative to a culture, the process becomes racist.
Dr Starkey went on to say that some rap music, and notice the word ‘some’ rap music, not all, glorifies a certain behaviour. Rap music has origins in black culture, this is a fact, so much so it is often called black music, a fact which is proudly celebrated. It was pretty pathetic of Owen Jones the other guest, to try and win the argument by asking Dr Starkey to name some rap songs he thought glorified the behaviour he previously described. The hope being that Dr Starkey would name one and Owen Jones could then name a whole host that did not fit that category, and somehow that proves Dr Starkey wrong. It was quite frankly childish. Tony Sewell in his article on Dr Starkey’s comments in the Daily Mail, says this on the subject of rap music.
“What motivated the troublemakers was not genuine poverty but rather a raw acquisitiveness that is fuelled by so much in this black-led youth culture, from the imagery in rap videos to the lyrics of hip-hop music. The twin central themes of this world are sex and material possessions.”
Owen Jones then claimed after Dr Starkey had said the MP David Lammy sounded white that.
“You said David Lammy when you heard him sounded white and what you meant by that is that white people equals respectable.”
Where did Dr Starkey say this in the sentence?
“Listen to David Lammy, an archetypical successful black man. If you turned the screen off so you were listening to him on radio you’d think he was white.”
If anyone is having racist thoughts I would actually question Owen Jones on this matter. It was after all he who came out with equating white with respectable and as he later goes on to say, black with bad, not Dr Starkey.
James Delingpole in his Blog in The Telegraph rightly says this was a set up by the BBC. The facts which Dr Starkey spoke of, were there for three nights for us all to see. The BBC knew this, and that is why they invited a Historian who is noted for speaking his mind, to come on the show and say what many had been thinking. The reason was not however for a mature debate on the topic, it was to give the impression the BBC was serving the public interest by weeding out racists. This is despicable behaviour by the BBC and it deeply saddens me that an institution which I hold in such high regard would stoop this low.
It is deeply unsettling that people such as Owen Jones denounce and stifle much needed discussion by claiming it is racist, when it is clearly not. I would seriously urge Owen Jones to consult a historian such as Dr Starkey, who could show him plenty of horrific examples of racism, as he has obviously not grasped the seriousness of the term. Maybe then he would give Dr Starkey the respect he deserves and stop reverting to such juvenile name calling.
The Blogs I refer to are listed below:
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