Big Brother racism debate

[JPreston]

Racism is people been abused BECAUSE they are from another race....there was no intent for raciest abuse. In the heat of the moment you often pick up on peoples most obvious differences.....

'Do you live in a house or a shack?'
'They eat with their hands, don't they?'
'She should ******* go home'
'She doesn't even speak proper English'

Seems pretty blatant to me.

Say I single out East Europeans and bully them without explicitly referencing their ethnicity; eg I just attack them whenever I see them, or shout they are thieves and benefit-spongers, is that not racism then? I'm not saying anything I couldn't say to anyone....but it's who I choose to say it to that shows my intent.

I'm also surprised at the amount of flack channel 4 are getting. It's provoked more national debate on race than all those laboured Eastenders storylines over the last 20 years, noone has been beaten into a coma, and everyone is condemning the comments. OK so they get a sharp spike in ratings but the adverts were sold months ago so they won't see any extra cash from it, and its not like they could do anything like this again.

[Steven W]

'Do you live in a house or a shack?'
'They eat with their hands, don't they?'
'She should ******* go home'
'She doesn't even speak proper English'

Seems pretty blatant to me.

Say I single out East Europeans and bully them without explicitly referencing their ethnicity; eg I just attack them whenever I see them, or shout they are thieves and benefit-spongers, is that not racism then? I'm not saying anything I couldn't say to anyone....but it's who I choose to say it to that shows my intent.

No, the comments you've described there are not racist at all.

'She should go home' could have been directed at any of the housemates and meant the same thing. If she would have said ' (F**k off ***, go back home to India, then yes it would have been)

'She doesn't even speak proper English' - she doesn't in her opinion. And in my opinion neither does Jade. Opinion - not racism.

'They eat with their hands don't they?' - We're not educated enough about other countries. There's many school children you could ask who would probably say exactly the same thing. It's the same as people thinking UK residents drink tea all day and eat muffins - big deal.

Don't the French call us Rost- beouf because we - stererotypically eat Roast Beef, haven't our own newspapers who are calling Jade 'racist' called the French 'frogs'.

Come on, it's ridiculous. The media and journalists have really portrayed this in such a bad light for the sake of stirring the nation into a frenzy. It's the media and that stupid politician who have incited racial hatred from this, not Jade or anyone in the house.

I've been watching the way it's been reported on TV and I'm disgusted that all sides of the story weren't investigated properly - she was hung, drawn and quartered immediately.

I don't like Jade at all, but I don't think for one second that she is racist. She doesn't like Shilpa and picks out her faults during arguments - like millions of other people do - she is thick and ignorant, but certainly not racist.

The world is mad.

[Knoxville]

Despite having posted my view on whats gone on the thread I've just read through the thread again and feel I need to make the the following slightly hypocritical comment......

Why are we even discussing this?

Stupid people have said some stupid things about another stupid person on a ridiculous television cash cow thats only there to fill a chasm in the ratings...

Maybe if we all just ignored big brother it would go away and channel four would strive to make some quality programming about dark matter.

[Agent]

You just summed what I said to another member on MSN Knox

They are giving BB the attention they want

[Knoxville]

You just summed what I said to another member on MSN Knox

I knew I was ont something

But what of the dark matter?

Dammit I've gotta stop smokin weed and waffling incoherently about dark matter, chaos theory and time travel.....

But its so interesting!!

[charleski]

No, the comments you've described there are not racist at all.
...
The world is mad.

Well, I would hope that one thing that might have come out of this thread is that the notion of racism is actually quite complex. I would think a bit more about the context before dismissing it all as madness, which doesn't really help in working out how to prevent this happening in the future .

Why are we even discussing this?

Because it's fun! Pfft, killjoy! Seeing Endemol being discomfitted is greatly amusing . I must admit I recorded tonight's show to see what happened , a mistake I won't make again as it was hugely boring, apart from seeing that Goody has already started the recovery process rolling. We've had the tears, as predicted, and she's well into the old routine of confessing the minor faults while spinning like mad to evade the real one. The charity work can't be far behind!

BTW, here's a picture of dark matter (the blue bits) to keep you happy:

Enjoy!

[JPreston]

No, the comments you've described there are not racist at all.

...

All lot of people say they are, given the context. Individually you could say a lot of those things to people of your own race, but in the actual context they were said they were racist.

For example, it is a point of fact that the (white english) lead singer from Supergrass - Gaz Coombes - looks exactly like a monkey. A white englishman could watch a celebrity charidee footbal match and make monkey noises every time he got the the ball and in this instance that would not be racist. But by your logic, you are trying to say that because we can conceive of a situation where that is not a racist gesture, it can never be a racist gesture, which of course it would be in 99.9999999% percent of cases. In fact every case where it was not directed at Gaz Coombes, hence the 1991 Football (Offences) Act.

It's still racism to beat up someone because they a member of a different race, even though you could say 'well , I could have beaten up a member of my own race for a different reason, so it's not a racist act'. A racist statement doesn't have to be explicitly directed at every member of a racial or ethnic group in an abstract sense (eg "All east europeans in the UK are benefit scroungers who should go home now" - BTW I'm allowed to type that because I am in that group myself ) - it's still racism to yell "You're a benefit scrounger, go home now!" at an east european in the street, and it's not a defence to say that you feel the same way about scousers who happen share your own race.

As charleski says it's very complicated, and I would add basically illogical - which is why all the legislation is vague and leaves the issue open to interpretation.

People with long memories will remember that Jade was hated by the tabloid press the first time she was in big brother, and a lot of commentator attributed this to the fact that she is herself mixed race as well as for reasons of class/education/etc....there was sometimes something a bit off about how her physical features were charactured and criticised. I wonder how much of the hysterical pasting she gets this time round, is in truth due to the same reasons? She performed some racist bullying on TV but nothing anywhere near what Jim Davidson was paid licence-payers money to say for years.

[Slick]

I don't think it was racist I think it was a mix of ignorance and a class thing. The main reason Jade didn't get on with Shilpa was the class difference, and she thought Shilpa was looking down on her by saying she should get elocution lessons - if it was a british person saying the same thing Jade would have had the same reaction.

The whole popadom thing, well Jade was trying to search for an Indian name but the only thing she could think of which was Indian was popadom, it was pretty stupid but not racist. Someone on BB Big Mouth had a good point last night when a woman from Scotland said "it would be like someone calling me Mary Haggis" to which everyone laughed, why is this so different? Similarly, the imitating of the accents, they did this to all the housemates and if she had a strong geordie accent for example, they would have probably done it 10x more.

I think Big Brother is more to blame than Jade, and I felt really sorry for Jade last night when she was evicted. BB brought Jade in to improve ratings and cause contriversy but when it went too far, BB tried to distance themselves from it. They showed on camera last night BB having a word over the racism thing, this was about 3 days after it happened and after the sponsors pulling out, if BB actually thought that it was out of line, they would have said something at the time.

Similarly, when Jade was going out last night in the interview, Davina lashed into her calling her racist etc. This was because BB knew Jade was out the house and if they could pin it solely on her, it would hopefully reduce the controversy surrounding the show, and they could get their sponsors back. Other housemates said much worse things than Jade did (e.g. Jo saying about Indian people all being thin cos they cant cook). If you remember last year when Grace came out, Davina was laughing with her how Grace was a bitch in the house and encouraging it, this was the exact same scenario but they were of different race.

If Shilpa had been evicted last night, Jade still would have been part of BB so they couldn't have used her as a scapegoat. There would have been no way in which Davina would have argued with Shilpa when Shilpa said they were not racist remarks. BB would have addopted another strategy of defending Jade rather than condeming her. Now Jade has to be branded as a racist for the rest of her life which I really dont think is fair. Her Perfume company has dropped her and so has the charity she helps run, her life will be ruined by this however BB will continue to use people and ruin their lives for many years to come.

[iranu]

But what of the dark matter?

Dammit I've gotta stop smokin weed and waffling incoherently about dark matter, chaos theory and time travel.....

But its so interesting!!

You can't beat a stoned discussion about theoretical physics. I'm sure Hawking et al are all honorary tokers.

[charleski]

TBH, I think this whole thing is nothing more than a reflection of the society in which Jade grew up. The Guardian provides an excellent example of this here (bottom of the third paragraph), in which a Bermondsey minicab driver criticises her while using the most appallingly racist language. And BTW, Jade used much more offensive language about Shetty's name than 'Poppadom', though I don't know if it was broadcast. See here.

I think it's quite obvious that Endemol privately briefed Jade on this whole affair before the eviction. Jade Goody is their creation, and her stunts have kept the Big Brother brand in the public eye outside the actual shows. They have very good reasons to help her recover from this. Davina may have given the appearance of 'lashing into her' in the interview, but in reality she was providing her plenty of space to answer the accusations. Obviously there'd have been no point trying to hide from them.

[Kumagoro]

The clip below is of the 'do they eat with their hands in India?' comment and 'they are all thin because they get ill from eating undercooked chicken'.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zy_w-E7619g

The comment of 'they eat with their hands don't they', seeing as many Indians do actually use their hands to eat with, can hardly be called racist.

In a similar situation if someone stuck their fingers in my dinner after it has been cooked I would say something. I wouldn't let her do it just because its a part of her culture.

[Steven W]

The clip below is of the 'do they eat with their hands in India?' comment and 'they are all thin because they get ill from eating undercooked chicken'.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zy_w-E7619g

The comment of 'they eat with their hands don't they', seeing as many Indians do actually use their hands to eat with, can hardly be called racist.

Off-topic:
The landlord of my local pub puts ice into the glass with his hands. It's disgusting and as a result most of the regulars never have ice.

[SilentDeath]

this thread still going?

can somone lock (or preferably delete) it please

[Saracen]

this thread still going?

can somone lock (or preferably delete) it please

Why?

If you're not interested, just ignore it.

If nobody's interested, it'll drop off the front page, in a rapid descent into obscurity, on it's own.

If other people are still interested, and if it's still got halfway relevant comment (and it seems to me it has), why lock it? It still holds some interest for me. For instance, charleski's post a few back raised some interesting points, and had a reference to a Guardian article that I hadn't seen.

That suggests, that for some of us at least, this subject still hasn't run it's course yet. When it has, it'll sink anyway. So why lock it?

[SilentDeath]

Why?

If you're not interested, just ignore it.

If nobody's interested, it'll drop off the front page, in a rapid descent into obscurity, on it's own.

If other people are still interested, and if it's still got halfway relevant comment (and it seems to me it has), why lock it? It still holds some interest for me. For instance, charleski's post a few back raised some interesting points, and had a reference to a Guardian article that I hadn't seen.

That suggests, that for some of us at least, this subject still hasn't run it's course yet. When it has, it'll sink anyway. So why lock it?

becuase then somone will start a thread about eastenders or some other crap on tv, and then we are DOOOMED!!! DOOMED I TELL YE!!!!

(yes I am forced to watch both, and listen to conversations about both while at work (tv in breaks).

and these threads ever die, and were never any interest atall to start with.

You've tricked me into commenting on big brother, but the people claiming racism, don't actually watch big brother, they heard it from someone or the news, and since they hate it anyway, they thought it was a good idea to be really pissed off by it in an attempt to get it off the air. The end.


Dark matter FTW!

[charleski]

Dark energy beats dark matter's ass any day of the week.