The BBC needs to stop being squeamish about race
By Pete North - April 20, 2021
Race quango commissioners have said it. Prime ministers have said it. Many black people have said as much. White people think it. Within some black Caribbean communities in London, family ties are weak. Too many women sleep around and many men don’t take any responsibility for their offspring, or play any part in their upbringing. The result is feral, criminalised youths who then grow up to be criminal adults and perpetuate the problem. There is no “liberal” solution.
We can rename every street in London, pull down every statue and have a diversity officer in every public sector department, but it’s not going to change that essential dynamic. This is often shut down as a racist point of view, but then we have to ask why is it that blacks who come from Africa manage to get on in life, and still the children of Windrush don’t.
And maybe it’s time we demanded better. Maybe it is time to hold up a mirror. We are told that blacks continue to struggle with social mobility because of “systemic racism” but to my mind that’s wholly unsatisfactory. We have spent years in self-reflection seeking to eradicate racism, and though we can say it still exists, Britain has a lot to be proud of. If there are still problems within the Caribbean “community”, Britain copping to systemic racism will not help them because it absolves them of all blame.
Similarly, we are told that ethnic minorities suffer from higher rates of infant mortality. Again it is suggested systemic racism is at the root. Nothing at all to do with marriage between first cousins causing serious birth defects!
As a country we have been cowed into treading on eggshells with matters such as this, resulting in an outright failure to confront them. Much can be said of the misogynist exploitation of women by Pakistani men.
And since we’re being honest, let’s not let the whites off the hook either. We talk about the “left behind” but they are essentially the consequences of our entrenched welfarism, creating an underclass of subliterate scroungers all because the parents have a fundamental allergy to taking a job.
But there is one crucial difference. As a society we feel entirely free to satirise the white British. The BBC has a long line of of middle class sneers at the working and welfare classes. Though this has been derided as middle class snobbery, the town of Royston Vasey is not far off the real thing, Vicky Pollards do exist, and our comedies do make us look at ourselves in a critical light.
The question is whether the BBC would ever dare to throw in a few black and South Asian stereotypes without incurring the wrath of the race relations industry. They should because they have nothing to fear – but they won’t. That’s why BBC comedy is dying. It lacks courage.
Similarly Channel 4 used to be quite edgy but now conforms absolutely to the woke doctrines, when in order to reclaim that edge, it would have to challenge it now that wokeism is pretty much the media orthodoxy.
If the BBC is to live up to its public service remit then it has to play a role in the social and political life of the country, and to do so it needs to be unflinching. But these days, it cowers before the race relations industry and dare not rock the boat.
If, though, we are ever to solve our problems then we need an open and frank debate, and one of the best mediums for doing so is comedy, not least because it enjoys a certain political immunity if it’s any good. That is not to say that the BBC should become overtly abusive of stereotypes, but it can certainly hold up a mirror.
The BBC used to do this. It once ran a sketch show mocking British Indian culture, playing heavily on widely recognisable stereotypes. It was wildly popular with just about everyone. But would that get made today and would it dare go further?
One suspects a sitcom about a Muslim family in Bradford or greater Manchester, touching on issues of grooming and birth defects would not only go a long way to rebuilding trust with British audiences, it could actually be wildly popular with Muslims. But not if it was a cloying conformist Nish Kumar sort of affair. Similarly, it could mock black London boys who think they’re LA gangsters. There are rich comedy seams to mine if only the BBC had the balls.
And why shouldn’t it? Four Lions was a runaway success, and did more to build bridges than any mithering lefty diversity agenda. Ultimately ethnic minorities do have a case to answer for their own predicaments, and a gentle ribbing from Auntie, might go a long way to bringing about that cultural realisation.
But for as long as the BBC is run by bureaucrats and scared of its own shadow, compelled to meet screen time diversity quotas, and imbued with the notion it must guide and correct the thinking of its viewers, it can only result in dull bureaucratic wokey programming that nobody wants to watch. If it can come to the realisation that commentary on stereotypes is the essence of social satire, and not the racism they think it is, they might actually start a race dialogue worth listening to.