Mansfield MP, Ben Bradley, has come out as a racist. Obviously, that never happened but what he has done is stated that he will not attend unconscious bias training. Why? Because it is utter rubbish. In fact, far from trying to rid you of your ‘unhelpful’ attitudes it is more likely to instil either a deep self-loathing or a fully unconscious prejudice against the people who ordered and delivered the training and all that they represent.
Actually, on reflection, maybe we should all attend such training so that we can better know the enemy. In a world where your children are exposed from an early age to rewritten history and led to despise their own grandparents as ignorant old racists it would be wise to examine and deconstruct the sinister lexicon of twisted race rhetoric and confected grievance, the better to counter it.
Everywhere you look it seems that somebody is changing this country. The way we look, how we speak, even what we think. Sadiq Khan is intent on accelerating the process by changing the appearance of London itself. Street names and statues will just be the vanguard of wholesale cultural vandalism. If you let the facts talk, statistically the correct number of minority ethnic contributors to this nation’s history can be counted on the fingers of a single hand.
That amounts to a correctly proportionate representation of exactly zero BAME statues, and a matching number of BAME streets. If anything, non-British ethnicity is not only over-represented as it is, it is grotesquely paraded everywhere you look. It is on the streets, on the screens and in your face, every minute of every day. Cowering footballers ‘taking the knee’, broadcasters giving over every discussion show to the subject, comedians (of a sort) basing their entire acts on the theme.
A historian of the future, indeed historians of today, for the medium is now mature, would do well to study not just the facts but the portrayal of the facts in movies, broadcasts, books, theatre and social media. Many people are already poring over social media and writing about the influences on people right now, but it will only be in hindsight that the full picture will be revealed, and it is no oil painting. (How long before portraits are removed from National Trust properties throughout the land?)
The movies of old praised valour and achievement and the baddies usually lost. While never an accurate portrayal of real life they nevertheless reflected the aspirations and ambitions of we mere mortals and inspired us to be better. Much, if not most of today’s Hollywood output explores the darker recesses of the human condition, focussing on failure, frailty and succumbing to temptation. Once, you knew the bad guy because he would be played by a British actor. In the future will the proxy for evil just be anybody white?
Welcome back Batsby it's been a while. The bias training is probably a good excuse for a little junket at the tax payers expense and no doubt the food is good. When you can't go abroad for all inclusive fact finding trips etc you have to take what you can get after all.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back indeed, Batters! You've been sorely missed.
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