Friday, August 24, 2007

The Coconuts Of London





Derek Laud( does not fit the stereotype)



Talking about race shouldn’t be off limits for whites says Andrew Anthony
…This was quite an interesting a piece trailing a forthcoming book from the Guardian Comment is free. I have tried to grab the bones of it doing a sort of new mania digest …

"Race is a is a no-go area for whites and perhaps we should do more . We have allowed race to become a self-perpetuating problem. ‘Black’ means more than skin colour. We can see this from the pejorative slang term “coconut”, meaning someone who is black on the outside but white on the inside .Liberal anti-racists carry around a set idea of what being “black” entails: physically strong, non-academic, in some way anti-authority and of course promiscuously heterosexual. Anyone who does not fit expectations is less ‘black‘. I have thought about this imprisoning idea of blackness .Society has become less racist in the past forty years, employment opportunities have increased, but Afro-Caribbean boys do even worse at school than before .
Liberals blame a new subtle racism. Paradoxically they are right . The racism that I witnessed came mostly from within black communities ,where low expectations and cultural stereotypes were often aggressively enforced. Then there was the kind of “well-meaning” racism, no less restricting, in which I had been complicit.
I recall an interview I did with a political aspirant called Derek Laud (later to achieve a greater profile as a contestant on Big Brother). In 1997 Laud was the prospective Tory candidate for Bernie Grant’s Labour stronghold of Tottenham. He dressed like an Edwardian gentleman, spoke in a camply posh voice, was a member of the Monday Club, and an enthusiastic fox-hunter. I said that it must have taken a great deal of willpower to ignore his own racial identity in the homogeneous environment of the Reform Club, where we met.
“This is your problem,” replied Laud. “You clearly think of me as being black.”
At the time, I thought this was a tragicomic case of self-denial. And I quickly pointed out that he was indeed black. To which he said: “I never wake up in the morning and look at my face and think: ‘Gosh, I’m black.’ ” This confused me .It was agreed by every approved authority on the matter that the way to liberation from racial prejudice was to “get in touch” with your racial identity. But what has that turned out to mean?
Urban black youths are sold a ubiquitous imagery with the crude repetition of a 50 Cent album. This self-dramatising idea of blackness has helped to create a debilitating mental ghetto and limiting as the real ghettos taking shape in our cities.
One way of correcting this situation, which almost everyone in theory agrees upon, is to challenge racial stereotypes. In which case there can be few greater challenges to the Afro-Caribbean stereotype than Laud: gay, camp, sardonic and Tory. The British African pressure group Ligali dismissed the “gay pseudo intellectual”, after his Big Brother appearance, as a “prime example of cultural disinheritance”. . The truth is, however, that until people with black skin can reject and select their own culture they will never truly be free. The Fallout: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence is published by Jonathan Cape on September 6"

I have cut this by about a half without losing any sense so the book promises to be the bore of the new Millennium . I have been saying for ages that Black people are not a group any more than white people are . They rarely agree and they are increasingly not defined in this country by Colour .Mrs . N and I socialise a fair bit with black chums and most of then could be called coconuts if you wanted to be irritating about it . It is typical of Liberal to announce as a magical discovery something that ordinary Londoners have known for a very long time and typical of the estrangement between do-gooders and the object of their intellectual charity.


Nonetheless now we are finally starting to hear some sense from the bleeding hearts what implications does this have for race policy in view of the eruption of gang violence reported in the Standard this evening. The answer is clear stop pandering to this silly image black youth like to wear. No special treatment , no “ understanding" special problems . No dealing with self appointed community leaders who have a vested interest in separation. Same as everyone else is the key including the even worse performing white working class boys .

I would suggest a sort of three month boot camp for all English youths as a little National Service . The immense good it would do deprived blacks can only be matched by the immense good it would do for Etonians . I doubt we will hear any politicians telling us the truth though …oh sorry we did . Patrick Mercer !

21 comments:

Scipio said...

What would you know geezer - you iz white, male and middle class. Three very good reasons why you cannot have anything relevant to say about race issues - innit!

You iz also banned from talking about abortion too!

Know your place - just stick to paying the taxes, and let the 'professionals' deal with the ills of society which you, and the rest of your evil greedy kind create!

Newmania said...

well I do have a slight insight in that Marian ..Mrs. N is black as is Master N but coconuts all.

Electro-Kevin said...

Here I am, possibly for the first time, about to sound like a racialist. Perhaps I am a racialist - I'll leave you to decide, but there are frequently times when I can honestly say that I don't see colour and I have never satisfied the dictionary definition as I have never treated a black person badly, in fact often the reverse - I lost the best job I ever had drunkenly (and wrongly) defending a black man against the actions of a colleague.

Our biggest mistake was to seek equivalence between British culture and black culture to the extent that our own 'culture' is now almost totally denied - this grave mistake now pervades our education and our behaviour and well meaning white people have dragged our nation towards the primitive levels of black nations. And the primitiveness of these black nations is an obvious and provable fact by any measure - so no appologies, the onus is on others to prove me wrong.

Second to the great wars this cultural denial was the greatest sacrifice that the British people have been called upon to make - except nobody 'called' upon us as we were about to embark upon such a destructive voyage, it just slipped under the radar during a period material wealth and hedonism, when government and industrialists decided to undercut indiginous workers from a fair day's pay by importing competition (they're at it again. I know for a fact that this hurt (and still hurts) people who fought those wars for the sake of our culture and it has hurt them greviously.

I posit that Britishness no longer exists - to quote Tuscan Tony it now forms an amorphous diaspora in more deserving countries where it is better appreciated.

Newmania said...

Well EK Tuscan Tony wiould say bthat wouldn`t he . I `m afraid i am one of those people who think everything is going to the dogs but cannot accept that anywhere else is better.
There really wasn`t what you might call a black culture that was allthat distinct , the people that came 50nyears ago form Jamaica and Trinidad( especiall the latter) came froma very disci0plined and religious patriachal society

In The US they thrived but here the second generation failed . I think this was die to the corrsoive effects of a cuiulture of welfare dependency that they were not used to.

Onef the points i wastryingmto make though is that the majority of blacks and halfs like my lot , are not defined by colour but work and live like anyone else.

I think there is much top be hopefiul about . There are a small numvber of criminals but this class is not the norm , nor is the ghetto life . This asprct howver is the only one presented on the TV and by the victim seeking Liberals.


Having said that the conmclusion you reach is much the same as mine and would be appreciatedf by most blacks who would ratyher have a job and a life than be good at sport of dancing or drugs obviously .

there are forced actively trying to keep them back and white people have got to say ..I think ... with the coconuts . Just because you are black doesn`t mean you have to be BLACK


Great to se you EK I `m sorry i have only just founf you ...ciouldn`t link before ...sad isn`t it

Tuscan Tony said...

Newms, read between the lines on Ian Fleming's writings on Jsmaica - a more law-abiding bunch in the 1950s it would be hard to have found. Wot did 'em in, IMHO, was the Bwitish Wewfare State. Did in the brit working class, too. Why bothey to push about a sackbarrow when giros and daytime TV beckons?

I know I'm right about my point that EK quotes - if hindus are allowed their culture, and afro-caribbeans theirs, why shouldn't it be admitted/accepted that I have my culture too? Its certainly easier to be English here in Tuscany, we rub along very well with teh Italians, no cercing them to swallow handfuls of our festivals but they come along and enjoy them for what they are. Plus, and this is a huge bonus, brew pubs are springing p everywheer as the locals are starting to get a taste for England's greatest contrib to the world - real ale, served at cellar temperature!

Anonymous said...

You are so right,n.

Newmania quoted A Anthony:

Liberal anti-racists carry around a set idea of what being “black” entails: physically strong, non-academic, in some way anti-authority and of course promiscuously heterosexual. Anyone who does not fit expectations is less ‘black‘.


This is so true of so many of the 'professional' liberal anti-racists who constantly shout 'racist' at the rest of us if we as much as mention immigration.

This is the mob who parade their, loudly and frequently protested, claim to anti-racist purity as a badge of social superiority which the rest of us can never aspire to.

This is the mob too who look down on the majority of us and stereotype us as a moronic idiotocracy.

Yet beneath their whitewash and elitism, these fervent anti-racists are more than a tiny bit racist.

Or perhaps that's a distortion of the truth, because this mob, and I include among them the Blairs and B ruin - who so often have beggar all real experience of the real world that the rest of us live in -
appear to me to be such conviction elitists that, irrespective of what creed, colour or class we are, in truth they vehemently detest the whole bloody lot of us outside their spinning political bubble.

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Yet,dig beneath the masqerade of superiority and social purity that these professional anti-racists garb themselves in and what do we find?

Ice cold fear.

That's where this obsessive need to control the rest of us comes from, that's why they shut themselves away in detached, steroid, mega-protected bubbles, and why they've made us the most surveillanced society in the western world.

Because real life and real people scare the sh*ts out of them.

Auntie Flo'

Old BE said...

It is typical of Liberal to announce as a magical discovery something that ordinary Londoners have known for a very long time

Never a truer word said! All the patronising "initiatives" that the left throw at the "BAME" community just goes to reinforce the sense of their own supposed uselessness. I mean are black boys only ever likely to be successful by learning to rap? Can they do no better.

Of course there is no bar to black boys doing as well as any other boys at school, but it's a great excuse though isn't it - "black boys are thick so why should I try hard?"

There is an interesting article about Levi Roots on the BBC News site about how he wants to prove to kids in South London that there are opportunities for them.

Opportunities which the left would deny them so their block vote and race industry is kept intact.

Newmania said...

TT ...ho ho newms is what I am called at work. Well I agree entirely with your first point and I know from Mrs. N how true that is.
As to whether ex pats are more English , I `m not sure they can become something of a parody ( present company obviously excepted). I would not accept that Englishness is just another ethnicity in this coutry either but it is a changing and growing thing. People out of the flow can become a bit fossilised culturally perhaps.

Englishness must be the binding and over riding etthnicity and the public one in this country , this is more important the the shows of beer and so forth there is a substance of attitudes that reacges down itno the loam of the land .....(blah blah)

Cheers TT ...Can you tell me which is your main blog I want to link to it

Newmania said...

Flo and Ed...I have been discussing this with Mrs N this morning . She agrees with alot that is said but she did say if you are who are white you don`t know what its like to always wonder if there is going to be an unsaid suspicion of you.

With all the no nonsense a bit of empathy needs to be in the mix as well

Anonymous said...

newmania said:

if you are who are white you don`t know what its like to always wonder if there is going to be an unsaid suspicion of you.



If you're deaf white, or disabled white, or Irish or some other unEnglish white, you will know what it is to feel unsaid suspicion of you, n.

Speaking personally of deafness, deaf and very deaf people like me know all too well how it feels to have to fight stereotypes of ourselves every day. We know how it feels to have to prove to every other being, every hour of every day, that you are not subhuman, not brain damaged, not stupid, that you were not born to be a walking joke for the amusement or self aggrandisement of your fellows, not born to prop up other's failing egos, and are well capable of living a normal, productive and useful life.

We also know that there are a multitude of, self appointed, professional liberal carer/controllers who live parasitically off of us, by exploiting the above 'poor you' stereotypes which they have an instrumental role in perpetuating.


Auntie Flo'

Old BE said...

Actually "we" do know exactly how it feels - because that is exactly the "suspicion" one feels when one visits a foreign country. Admittedly it's terrible to feel under suspicion in one's own country, it must be a nasty feeling.

But that is what the traditional anti-racism message was about: normalising people who look different from the majority. That has now happened - I think you would be hard pushed to find many people in London who are what I call old-fashioned racist.

Newmania said...

I see your point Flo , Ed I agree with you . The broad point that the rcism faced by Mrs . N`s father was entirely of a different order to what there is left now is unarguable. There are far more opportunities , so why is the resuklt worse .

Thatys the question to which the anmswer may be the self perpetuating myths propogated by the Liberal caring and community leading groups

Electro-Kevin said...

Can't agree about Jamaica Nemania. I've been there and my holiday compound was gated and guarded by armed security. Our trips to the local mals were escorted by armed military. And the two hour trip from the airport to our resort was the most terrifying I've ever made.

Newmania said...

Really , I must say I only really know a bit about Trinidad Mrs N having roots there.

Electro-Kevin said...

Awake N ?

Trinidad is lovely (so I've heard).

It's not black people I take issue with here (read my first post carefully). It's white people of influence who suck up to black people by thinking it's a good idea to prostrate our culture before them.

Back to Jamaica. I followed intensely the fly-on-the-wall documentary Jamaica ER about European doctors seconded to Kingston hospitals. A total and utter war zone. My dear friend Cass Mason (guard at Silverlink) thought it a good idea to return to his 'homeland' - he was back with us within six months and grateful to be British, determined to uphold our values probably more so than any white man.

Newmania said...

I obviously just went at that point EK. Yes well I think your point is the point of the article and now you put it like that I see ... Its that genre I am getting used to where Liberals say sometthing others have said better and sooner and sell it to a new audience essentially

Electro-Kevin said...

I have many black friends - I am utterly convinced that any differences in behaviour, achievement etc is purely cultural and that caucasians are still reeling in many respects from the discovery that they are not particularly special.

Newmania said...

And there you have it in a nutshell EK...Bravo!

Mountjoy said...

Fascinating article, and it’s ironic in the extreme that Labour is excluding black and Asian men from the House of Commons by implementing all women shortlists in the parliamentary selection in a number of London seats with significant ethnic minority populations.

Newmania said...

Thats interesting and in fact there is along history of black progress and feminism being at odds . Especially in America

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