Stark staring … madness

David Starkey hasn’t had a good year so far – first the TV historian gets monstered for calling a pupil ‘fat’ on Jamie Oliver’s Dream School experiment Channel 4 and then he’s called a racist for observing that ‘gangsta’ culture is having a pernicious effect on Britain’s youngsters, youtube.com

Let’s look at the facts.  First the pupil was fat (sorry) and, secondly, you’d have to have been living on the moon if you thought that a ‘culture’ that glorified guns, drugs, misogyny, in-your-face wealth, a perverted view of ‘respect’ and easy money was anything but pernicious.

Apologies about the fat pupil comment by the way – but was it really worth such a fuss as self-styled down-with-the-kids head John ‘Chirpy Cockney Dabbs’ d'Abbro made it out to be?  ‘Dabbs’ lost a lot of his cred (in my view) when he said that Starkey’s comment ‘summed up everything he went into teaching to fight’ … or some similar right-on comment.

Anyway, was Starkey being racist with his comment about gangsta culture on BBC Newsnight?  He was certainly guilty of attention-seeking with his bizarre and unrelated reference to Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, but how can anyone reject his analysis (though not necessarily his headline-seeking ‘whites have become black comment) that 'gangsta' culture was pernicious and being embraced by youngsters, white and black?

Public figures anxious to burnish their anti-racist credentials, led by Piers Morgan (I kid you not) queued up to condemn Starkey for his allegedly racist comments.  Outraged commentators included Leader of the Opposition David Miliband and professional seeker-of racism-in-white-men Yasmin Alibhai Brown.  You can guess what they all said, but David Miliband’s comments are worth rehearsing.

He said, these were "racist comments, frankly, and there is no place for them in our society".  It was "absolutely outrageous that someone in the 21st Century could be making that sort of comment".  "There should be condemnation from every politician, from every political party of those sorts of comments."

Let’s remind ourselves what Starkey actually said.  He blamed the riots on a ‘violent, destructive and nihilistic’ gang culture, which he said was being embraced by many white and black people.  ‘A substantial section of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.'

‘Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is a Jamaican patois, that’s been intruded in England and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.’

Here’s Starkey’s own analysis of the fuss, in the Daily Telegraph - telegraph.co.uk

But the big question is, was Starkey right to lay blame for the riots on ‘gangsta culture’?  Well, clearly it’s a bit simplistic and naive isn’t it?  Things are MUCH more complicated than that.  But were his comments RELEVANT?  I'd say, of course.

This whole issue, of course, begs the question – can a white man ever speak out on race without being accused of being a racist?  Of course Ms Alibhai Brown would say not, but for all our sakes we should say ‘yes’ – and keep defending free speech.

And no, I won’t be signing any of the online petitions calling for David Starkey to be excommunicated.

PS: To read a large portion of humble pie from David Starkey on his admitted ‘crash and burn’ session on Jamie Oliver’s Dream School, read on, David-Starkey-Jamies-Dream-School-was-a-lesson-Ill-never-forget.html