Should we be scared of black culture's influence on white kids?

What I want I take/What I don't I break/And I don't want you/With a flick of my knife/I can change your life/There's nothin' you can do
...

What I want I stash/What I don't I smash/And you're on my list/Dead or alive/I got a .45/And I never miss - The music destroying our youth

Alongside trying desperately to make David Starkey's remarks on last Friday's Newsnight appear innocuous and not racist, his apologists seem to be telling us that he raised a serious issue that must be addressed: there is a criminal sub-culture that originated in the black community, and white kids are now involved in it.  Oh noes!  We must address this now that white kids are joining in!

David Starkey's not being racist, but...oh, wait a minute.

It always goes the same way.  Someone high profile says something racist, they get called out on it, and then people swarm to defend them because whatever they said wasn't racist after all.  Or at least, that's what they claim.

Full of crap and racist. Who knew?

Just in case you missed it.

I've said it before, but being able to tell what the tabloids are going to do is a rubbish super power. It's like having a power that lets you eat your dinner.

Earlier this week, some stats were released that were guaranteed to get the tabloids in a lather, and I went out on a limb and said they would get the tabloids in a lather. Ooh, those lathered up tabloids.  Always with the foreign workers and the too many ethnics.

Racism by proxy

What do you do if you want to say something that might be you know, a bit racist, but are a bit nervous that you might get called out on it? It's a tricky one.

Tried and tested solutions include the old dog whistle, where you say something that can clearly be interpreted in more than one way. "It's not racist to talk about immigration - are you thinking what we're thinking?" - that sort of thing. Of course, it is racist to talk about immigration if what you say is 'there's too many blacks', which is probably what a lot of the people looking at those infamous tory party posters were thinking.

Daily Star - absolute filth

Except, you know, it isn't

When I started this blog, nearly five years ago now, I was very angry with the way papers like the Mail, Express (and surprisingly less often) the Sun dealt with immigration and race. I hardly ever looked at the Star, since it exists primarily as a vehicle for selling pictures of tits to stupid people. Or at least it did at the time.

Watching the papers dog-whistle with stories about 'migrants' illustrated with the burkha-clad woman flipping the Vs or swarthy men standing about on street corners was a pretty hideous step towards something ominous.

You've had the 'but', here's the bit that should come before

A new 'Special Investigation' appeared in the Mail at the beginning of this week, headlined 'Special Investigation: English Defence League and the hooligans spreading hate on the High Street'.  It's actually a pretty good article, laying out the EDL's football hooligan background and barely disguised racism.  It might be something you'd be surprised to see in the paper.

Daily Mail. So totally not racist.

We're like, so not racist.

Hot on the heels of the weekend's latest call to keep the numbers of the non-whites down, the Mail has a story at the top of the website homepage to show it's totally not racist or anything.

'Race row at Pizza Hut after six black footballers are told: 'Pay for your meal BEFORE you eat... because of the way you look''.  See?  Can't be racist.  The paper wants smartly dressed black men to be treated nicely in restaurants.

It's just, you know, got to keep their numbers down, eh?  Don't want too many running around.  'People' might not like it. 

What?  The headline looks like it's been changed to remove the word 'racism'?  Umm...move along.

Update:  Less than half an hour after I posted this, the story slipped from the top slot.  How long was it there?  A few hours?  That'll take care of it.

Special report: are there too many blacks? What, how is that racist? Can't say anything now.

Via here

Late on Friday, the Daily Mail published a special report headlined: 'Special report: Will the white British population be in a minority in 2066?'

It's a curious question for the paper to ask, since just under three weeks ago it told us that indeed 'By 2066, white Britons 'will be outnumbered' if immigration continues at current rates'.

Why does the author, James Slack, feel the need to ask the question now then?  Is this 'special report' an in depth examination of the evidence behind the last article?

The dark heart of the Mail's immigration coverage

Today's post is going to open with a 'no shit, Sherlock' moment. Ready?

You know when the Mail scaremongers about 'migrants'? Usually, that's just a dog-whistle. What the paper often really means is - come closer and I'll whisper it - brown and black people. Shocking, huh?

Sanctimonious accusation of racism against the Daily Mail

I want you to imagine something for me. Ready?

You're out at a bar having a good time with your friends. It's one of those nights where everyone is loosening up, riffing off one anothers' gags and getting laughs and it's looking likely to be one of those surprise nights where you end up staying out and having an absolute blast, cabbing it home at four in the morning, listening to the birds tweeting above the ringing in your ears as you try to go to sleep. We've all had nights like that, right?

The Daily Express: overtly racist for some time

Today's Express front page is shocking in it's overt racism. The use of the term 'ethnic', the open scaremongering about the ethnicity of people that hasn't been hidden behind nail-chewing about strain on public services that a total increase in poulation will spark, the absence of focusing on what immigrants allegedly do and the lack of the 'culture' figleaf to hide real concerns about brown people behind are all surprising on a front page. But overt racism is nothing new in the Express, and started to appear at least as far back as 2007.

Racism in the Daily Express and the uselessness of the PCC

As the Express continues to cement its reputation as the most overtly racist tabloid in the country (it's been working on that since at least 2007, with it's story 'Ethnic baby boom 'crisis'), I'm reminded of the paper's disgraceful behaviour in the past by 'Council doesn't 'force' schools to do anything about Ramadan' at TabloidWatch and 'It's tabloid correctness gone mad!' at Liberal Conspiracy. The stories are about how schools are being forced to rearrange exams and cancel things to avoid offending Muslims. They're quick to strike at any vaguely perceived slight, those Muslims. Like cobras.

Last post on Liddle (I hope)

In my last post, I promised to publish some stats I had from the Met police about whether Rod Liddle's claims about young black men being responsible for the 'overwhelming majority' of certain types of crime was true.  I wish I hadn't now.  Not because they prove Liddle's argument (they don't) but because in the fuss that's resulted from his dashed off 91 word blog post, we all seem to have zeroed in on the figures rather than the actual argument they were being used to support.

Mail in 'defends Liddle' shock!

Via The Enemies of Reason, I've noticed that the Daily Mail has, unsurprisingly, published an article from a columnist defending Rod Liddle's racist couple of paragraphs I looked at yesterday.

Of course, Kwasi Kwarteng has defended Liddle's right to say what he wants without actually demonstrating that what he said was true.  Instead, he's moved the goalposts to talk about how black people are disproportionately involved in crime, which is not the same as showing that young black men commit most of certain types of crime in London.  For the best rebuttal of that idea, see this comment at Liberal Conspiracy (based on this document).

Rod Liddle - more racist than the BNP?

Lots of people have written about Rod Liddle's descent into overt racism, and Charlotte Gore especially points out how far of the mark Liddle's central argument is.  He says:

The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.

When is an immigrant not an immigrant?

Yesterday, Anton Vowl linked to a columnists take on the 'immigrant baby boom' figures in the Telegraph's 'Britain needs a middle-class baby boom'. The veil over the racism was so tattered and threadbare as to be completely transparent.

How racist will the Mail be this time?

Hello everybody!

It seems as though I spend as much time here posting about how I'm not posting as I do actually posting - but I'm doing it again.

Real life's still a bit - challenging - right now (trust me, you don't want to know) and this place has to take second place for a while but I promise I'll be back soon with a different look and everything. You might even get a profile picture. Here, I'll do you a deal:

I'm going away for a while

Hello people.

With a large number of people (over 100 of them) forced out of their homes by racist thugs in Belfast and some stuff going on in Iran that seems like it might be a little bit important, the Mail is using its front page to maximum effect by, er, crusading for the banning of wheelie bins, and the Sun - the world's biggest selling Enslish language daily newspaper - is doing similar hard-hitting stuff by including a traditional 'OMG! TITS! ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS! TOILET PUN!' front page.

It's not a baying mob - it's democratic

More fisking of BNP policy. If you want to find this one, Google for 'Reason to vote BNP number 9: The BNP Is Britain's Most Democratic Party'. I don't link to the BNP. See 'Fisking the BNP's public policies' for the rest

Looking through the list of BNP policies that need fisking, I saw this one, which almost made me fall out of my chair in a Chuckle Brothers moment of unintentional slapstick hilarity:

Reason to vote BNP number 9: The BNP Is Britain's Most Democratic Party.

Are they joking?

BNP Immigration policy - something tells me it's not just about immigrants

I have a policy of not linking to the BNP's website. If you want to see the BNP documents I'm referencing here, google 'Preserving British Identity: The British National Party’s Immigration Policy' and 'Countering the smears'.

You know, it's weird taking apart a BNP document about their immigration policy. Normally, trying to make head or tail of a political party's policy statements is an exercise in stripping out the jargon and meaningless glittering generalities to try to arrive at the core of what the party will actually do. How will they 'get tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime'? What does 'vote for change' mean? What changes? That sort of thing.