The Wardman Wire

[Update 10/6/2008 She's done it again. Apparently Asian and Black people who support the Tories are "Uncle Toms":

"Almost more depressing is the sight of black and Asian Britons following the wind blowing the Tories to victory. Boris has recruited Afro Caribbean "leaders" who believe in physical chastisement and smart young Asians who deny the existence of racism and want an end to political correctness. The more old-fashioned Uncle Toms and their female equivalents are now expediently making themselves known to the Tories and right-wing think tanks."

More from James Cleverly, Freeborn John, Poor Bastard Marvin]

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s column from Monday’s Independent expresses stereotypes that I can only call racist. Ostensibly it is a column about the “eat local food” movement, but Yasmin draws conclusions that she applies to all “indigenous Britons”.

One example of a Yasmin statement: The country can’t stomach any more foreignness and wants old simplicities back again. Applying that sentiment to the whole population is no more acceptable than “all black people are stupid” or “the Irish are a race of bogtrotting terrorists”.

Time to stop, Yasmin.

“A proxy for anti-Immigration sentiments”

You can read the full column “Eat only local produce? I don’t like the smell of that” on the Independent Website. I have archived a local copy.

The subheading was:

The language in this debate is a proxy for anti-immigration sentiments

In a column about the current drive to recommend local food above imported food, Yasmin wrote:

Gordon Ramsay, he might come over and shout obscenities, maybe throw foodstuff out in a testosterone surge. He has just called for the banning of imported, “unseasonal” produce from restaurants. Some diners at his fancy restaurants say that this would make him a hypocrite; it would also make him one of those crusader environmentalists whose organic piety promotes unwholesome nativism and conservatism.

Gordon Ramsay is not the point; I think he is just a personality who has tripped up on his own publicity. But Yasmin broadens her attack to the all “indigenous Britons”:

Indigenous Britons are in a mighty sulk over strangers on their shores, our weird languages, strong colours and tastes, and “unBritish” ways. Keeping out Kenyan beans and Caribbean pineapples is a sop to cultural paranoia, rising nausea. The country can’t stomach any more foreignness and wants old simplicities back again. The rightful inhabitants think they want nothing but turnips and potatoes through our long winters, and in the summer, asparagus of genetically proven Englishness.

I don’t think we are, and I think that is a fundamental misrepresentation of the facts, in addition to being a highly prejudiced statement. One more example:

Should good people be party to a vociferous movement which wants to refuse entry to “alien” foods?

Look at the language used and you realise it is a proxy for anti-immigration sentiments: these foods from elsewhere come and take over our diets, reduce national dishes to third-class status, compete unfairly with Scotch broth and haggis, both dying out, excite our senses beyond decorum, contaminate the identity of the country irreversibly.

I have no idea what buying local broccoli has to do with being - apparently - fellow travellers with the BNP, but accusations that “natives” are in a “mighty sulk over strangers on their shores” motivated by “foreign contamination of our national identity”, and stereotyping all of them as “wanting old simplicities back again” is pretty close to the bone in anybody’s language.

I think these statements - as applied to the whole “indigenous” population - are absurd. More seriously, I think that Yasmin is being inflammatory - and will stoke up the emotions of both extremes: those who trade on being “anti-foreigner” and those who justify themselves using the myth of irredeemable and uncurable racism against foreigners.

Time to stop, Yasmin.

Has Yasmin A-B crossed the line to make racist statements?

I said above that I don’t see how these statements are any better than calling all Aboriginals “primitive savages”, all of the Irish “bog-trotting terrorists”, or - for that matter - the epithets Idi Amin used of Indian businessmen in Uganda in 1972 (”only traders”, “inbred to their profession”, “greedy, conniving”, “always cheating, conspiring and plotting” to subvert Uganda).

It seems to have feathers, and be quacking - but is it a duck?

From the Crown Prosecution Service website:

Incitement to racial hatred

This offence is committed when the accused person says or does something which is threatening, abusive or insulting and, by doing so, either intends to stir up racial hatred, or makes it likely that racial hatred will be stirred up. This can include such things as making a speech, displaying a racist poster, publishing written material, performing a play or broadcasting something in the media.

How do the statements above measure up?

Not threatening, but certainly abusive. Not specific incitement, but certainly deeply insulting to a broad group of people defined by nationality and ancestry. Publishing written material - check. Broadcasting something in the media - check.

Yep. It’s a duck, and it has gone too far this time - at least in my opinion.

You can’t even say that Yasmin is making “statements of her time”, as you can with Tintin, since they were written in a national British newspaper on May 12 2008.

And what is the motivation for making these statements?

I can’t judge that, and I’m not going to try.

If I was being charitable I would say that she went off on a riff and got carried away with her own eloquence, and that the paper’s editing process failed.

Wrapping Up

I’ll be putting out a line-by-line detailed dissection this evening, after the Wardman Wire “Parliament Reports” slot.

But how on earth does this sort of stuff guff make it into a “liberal-left” newspaper?

And I wonder what Sunny thinks?