The AV campaign and racism

Several media sources are reporting on the "Yes To Fairer Votes" campaign publicity, where different campaign leaflets were sent to different parts of the country. Each leaflet included six celebrity endorsements of the campaign. New Statesman has scans of both leaflets.

In London, the campaign endorsements were (left to right, top to bottom) from Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Honor Blackman, Stephen Fry, and Benjamin Zephaniah. (Three white men, two white women, and one black man)

Outside London, Benjamin Zephaniah is absent, and Tony Robinson is included in fifth (with Fry moved to sixth). (Four white men and two white women)

Not surprisingly this got picked up on quite quickly.

So, YTFV's response to the accusations of racism, when asked why they swapped Zephaniah for Robinson outside London (or perhaps Robinson for Zephaniah in London, depending on which leaflet design came first):

We have a number of endorsers and we vary the endorsers we use on our leaflets.

If they'd had an entirely (or mostly) different set of endorsers on the two posters, or if they'd had numerous different selections from those seven sent to different regions, or different households within regions, then this would make some sense.

Additionally - and this statement is quoted slightly differently by the Guardian and the Telegraph - they say:

If the No campaign want to accuse us of racism on the day that Kriss Akabusi launches our campaign, that is up to them. Who are Operation Black Vote and the Muslim Council of Britain backing? The Yes campaign.

and

Let's put it this way: Operation Black Vote, the Muslim Council of Britain and a host of similar groups are backing the 'Yes' campaign. The BNP are backing the 'No' campaign. People can draw their own conclusions.

Which is, of course, a textbook "I can't be racist, I have black friends" argument. Actually, it's perhaps more an "I can't be racist, my favourite voting system has black friends" argumentm which is even more nonsensical.

We're all perfectly aware that the proposed Alternative Vote is not an inherently racist voting system. Putting numbers rather than a cross on your ballot paper will not reinforce white privilege. OBV and the MCB are presumably supporting AV because they believe it to be a better voting system, not because they believe the members of the Yes campaign to personally be less racist than the members of the No campaign.

It's an extremely bad response, which suggests that they don't have a better honest response, and one of two things happened:

• As suggested by the No campaign: Zephaniah was removed in favour of Robinson for leaflets outside London, to avoid having black people on a leaflet going to the mostly-white counties.
• Alternatively, and marginally better: the counties leaflets were printed and sent first, but Robinson was removed in favour of Zephaniah after someone looking at the London leaflets pointed out that having all the endorsers be white was hardly representative of the UK.
  (There are a few other variations on this possibility that give YTFV even less benefit of the doubt on their ability to acknowledge white-as-default thinking)

I think the second case is marginally more likely, since other non-London areas with a high BAME population have also received the all-white version. On the other hand, their apparent lack of understanding of what the problem is in their responses means that I'd be utterly unsurprised by the first alternative being true. Either way, they have an unacknowledged problem.

The alternative theory does add an interesting point about media coverage of racism, too.

Thought experiment: Let's say the alternative theory is correct - the original leaflet was the Robinson version. What would have happened had they sent this leaflet out to everyone, and never made a Zephaniah version?

Most likely, there would have been no mainstream accusations of racism whatsoever. Anyone suggesting that it was a bit unusual that the Yes leaflets had an all-white cast of endorsers would have been very quickly called oversensitive or over-reacting.

In that situation, by taking (too late) action to correct the effects of white-as-default in the original design, they actually made things worse for themselves¹ in terms of press attention.

¹ And yes, swapping out another couple of endorsers at the same time would have effectively stopped that. No-one ever accused YTFV of being competent.

Footnote

It's extremely fortunate that, unlike a Parliamentary election, the merits of the options cannot be deduced from the quality of their campaigners. One can vote 'Yes' or 'No' without that being a reflection on the quality (or lack of quality) of the respective official campaigns, and there is basically nothing that either campaign could ever do right or wrong to change my vote.

I'd thoroughly recommend that anyone else thinking about their vote starts by assuming that both campaigns are - intentionally or otherwise - talking rubbish, and investigates the relative merits of AV and FPTP for themselves.

What happened next.

A few notes on what's happening now:

[trigger warnings]

• I got a reply to the letter I sent about the National Child Measurement Programme letters. No surprises: the government will keep doing what it has been doing, whether it makes sense or not. I've followed up to ask for more details of the research they're using to justify their decisions.
• A YouGov poll asks about opinions on rape defendant anonymity. A majority are in favour (considerably fewer women than men are in favour) but without a second question about how they feel for anonymity for non-rape defendants it's hard to tell why this is. The question wording really doesn't make clear the limited extent of anonymity (that it's only limited reporting restrictions, not that it wouldn't actually make any difference), which also makes things hard to tell.
• From PinkNews, the BBC trust thinks that a non-apology is sufficient for its posting of the question "Should homosexuals face execution?".
• When looking at the mass of exceptions to the Equality Act, I somehow forgot to look through the Schedules (many of which are titled "Exceptions", which should have been a big hint). There are a whole mass of further unhelpful exceptions here, and Zoe Brain and Helen G have highlighted several relating to gender reassignment.

Meanwhile, Jake Berry MP (Conservative, Rossendale & Darwen) asks if Parliament can get a cat. It will be investigated, apparently.

Can the BBC be trusted with a web page?

No.

[trigger warning]

(via Liberal Conspiracy) The BBC Have Your Say forums currently have as a question:

Should Uganda debate gay execution?

Should homosexuals face execution? Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death.

There are many legitimate questions to ask about the current situation in Uganda. This is not, no matter how many disclaimers are added, one of them.

You can complain to the BBC about this. My complaint letter is:

I can not understand how you can think this is a legitimate question to be asking. There are plenty of reasonable questions that could be asked about the proposed legislation in Uganda, but "should homosexuals face execution?" is not one of them.

There is no way to ask that question that does not imply that "yes" is a legitimate answer. Your "house rules" for Have Your Say contain "Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive." - when the question itself meets several of those, it sets an unacceptable example.

I expect a full and sincere apology from the BBC for this, and details of what steps are being taken to ensure that similar questions are not asked in future.

Update, 18 December

The BBC claims it has done nothing wrong, and then after that fails to stop complaints, issues a non-apology. I'm aware that the BBC considers non-apologies completely adequate. The National Union of Journalists has also come in on the "mass murder is unacceptable" side of the debate.

I got a reply to my complaint pointing me to those posts, claiming to "understand the concerns I have raised". My reply to that was:

[Neither post] acknowledges at all that:

• it was not an appropriate question to ask
• the problem was not merely with the original headline but with the entire concept for the question

Nor does it provide an apology beyond the "we're sorry if anyone might possibly have been offended, but we're still right", or describe what steps will be taken to prevent a recurrence of this sort of question.

I find it an utterly unsatisfactory response to the complaint that does not make me believe that you "understand the concerns [I] have raised".

The press, and the accountability of the press

So, large parts of the UK internet have been rightly angry at Jan Moir's Daily Mail article. The Press Complaints Commission received over 21,000 complaints about the article, which apparently is more than they normally get in several years - the objections to the article have been widespread enough to get their own stories.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express publishes an attack on people with mental ill-health, and the Daily Mail and the BBC publish some more transphobic reports. Neither appears to have been noticed, much. Nor do many of the other pieces of bigoted reporting - whether transphobic, sexist, ablist, racist, homophobic, fat-hating, or otherwise - that can be found published by most news organisations on most days of the week.

Moir - horrific though their opinions and subsequent attempted defence were - seems to have become the target of so many complaints by attacking a recently deceased popular celebrity (and their family), rather than because of their bigotry. What gets noticed on the internet is often largely a matter of luck - good or bad - which of course means that the majority of these attitudes never receive much mainstream challenge.

Back in the 70s, racism was funny, right?

Bruce Forsyth, white celebrity, decides to make some silly statements about his colleague Du Beke's statements. The BBC says.

Speaking on Wednesday, Forsyth told Talksport that, in the past, the "slip up" would have been treated in a more light-hearted way.

"You go back 25, 30, 40 years and there has always been a bit of humour about the whole thing."

You go back 25, 30 years and there were riots in Brixton over racism. You go back 40ish years and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were being assassinated in the US for trying to prevent racism.

Racism would have been funny for (some) white people back then, of course, and being white, Forsyth may not have noticed any of this.

Of course, nowadays, racism isn't funny at all. That's why no-one performs in blackface anymore and racist jokes aren't told today. Likewise, the racist killing of black people has stopped. There'd never be a need to arrest suspected white supremacists on terrorism charges, or interracial couples being shot in the streets today. All from the last month, those, and mostly from the last week. If I listed all the similar stories from the last month, this would be a very long post indeed.

Forsyth, after numerous phone calls to the radio show to complain about his statement, and journalists asking what he actually meant, "clarified".

"Nor do I in any way excuse or condone the use of such language. To be absolutely clear, the use of racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable."

Where "clarified" means "said something entirely different". The rest of this "clarification" makes this clearer.

"However, there is a major difference between this and racist comments which are malicious in intent and whilst I accept that we live in a world of extraordinary political correctness, we should keep things in perspective."

Translated: "Malicious racism isn't funny, but political correctness means that we can't find non-malicious racism funny either". The fact that intent only matters if you're giving out racists statements, not if you're receiving them, doesn't seem to have crossed his mind either.

Another non-apology for racism, another host extremely unlikely to lose their BBC job. (Forsyth is male, so this doesn't really give us any more information on "A Second Thought"'s hypothesis, though)

An apology is all you need

The BBC is "standing by" Anton Du Beke after calls for him to be sacked.

Like Carol Thatcher, Du Beke used an obvious racist term. Unlike Thatcher, Du Beke apologised. Sort of.

I must say immediately and categorically that I am not a racist and that I do not use racist language.

[attempted explanation of context]

There was no racist intent whatsoever but I accept that it is a term which causes offence and I regret my use of it, which was done without thought or consideration of how others would react.

I apologise unreservedly for any offence my actions might have caused.

Well, the first sentence gets off to a bad start. We can probably assume that the BBC wouldn't misquote its own staff, so it seems that he doesn't consider "Paki" to be racist language. That makes the rest of the apology seem rather insincere, and it ends with the typical apologies for offence that "might have" been caused, which doesn't help.

If you're getting in an apology in advance for something that hasn't yet received complaint, but for which you realise you probably shouldn't have said, then such hypothetical language is perhaps okay. If the complaints are already in, and they are, it smells of minimisation.

I said earlier that the I found the BBC didn't make me annoyed so much by its reporting as other media organisations when the facts themselves were bad enough. Between this, and the other recent mentions ... well, it's still true ... but it's more an indictment of the media in general than a compliment to the BBC.

"A Second Thought" thinks there may be some sexism involved in the different treatments of Thatcher and Du Beke, too. It's unlikely to be the last time that a BBC staff member can't keep away from the racist insults, so this should sadly be reasonably quick to test.