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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To Think This Is A Racist Comment, even for the DM?

167 replies

RubyFakeNails · 28/07/2012 21:52

A friend alerted me to this article in the DM.

This section I think is particularly crass, with one sentence being racist.

"The highlight was undoubtedly an hilarious sketch featuring the Queen and James Bond which saw her Majesty ?parachute? into the stadium.

But it was the absurdly unrealistic scene ? and indeed one that would spring from the kind of nonsensical targets and equality quotas we see in the NHS - showing a mixed-race middle-class family in a detached new-build suburban home, which was most symptomatic of the politically correct agenda in modern Britain.

This was supposed to be a representation of modern life in England but it is likely to be a challenge for the organisers to find an educated white middle-aged mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set-up.
Almost, if not every, shot in the next sequence included an ethnic minority performer. The BBC presenter Hazel Irvine gushed about the importance of grime music (a form of awful electronic music popular among black youths) to east London.

This multicultural equality agenda was so staged it was painful to watch.
And Conservative MP Aidan Burley was right to point out on Twitter that it was a load of 'leftie multicultural c**p'. Yet predictably he has been castigated by Twitter's Guadianista brigade.

Unfortunately the kind of politically driven multiculturalism we saw last night is the kind of social engineering we have come to expect."

I'm really offended by this as I can't see what evidence they have to make that comment, and as a white educated middle-aged woman living with an equally educated black man in a happy family set-up, maybe I am biased. Would like some opinions.

AIBU to make a complaint about this?

OP posts:
JumpingThroughHoops · 28/07/2012 22:27

If people stop buying it or reading it online it might get shut down (fingers crossed)

Unlikely - it has the 2nd largest online readership, behind the NY Times.

It's also easy to read, best layout - above all it's free.

LittlePicnic · 28/07/2012 22:30

Caramel waffle- what is a banana republic? Forgive my ignorance.

SmellsLikeTeenStrop · 28/07/2012 22:31

On the bright side, this is one of those very rare occasions then the most highly rated comments are the most sane and reasonable ones.

Catkinsthecatinthehat · 28/07/2012 22:32

Nancy, if you put his name into the Mail site, he's got over 250 articles on there, from news to features. He's a staffer not a random blogger who hacked into the site.

FFS, you would have hoped that the 'white chav sluts chasing feckless big black cock' slur would have disappeared from polite company sometime in the late 1970s, not be making a reappearance in a national newspaper in 2012.

Yes, Rick Dewsbury is a nasty bigoted little man who really should be free to spew this hate on his own little blog. But surely absolutely open, blatant, racism isn't acceptable under the PCC code when it comes to a national newspaper?

Oh, and he's previously written in praise of street harassment
Just because a few sensitive little sweeties have taken offence they want to ban everybody from enjoying themselves...With police numbers already stretched to the limit, we don't need them bogged down even more with pathetic complaints from pushy women.^

JumpingThroughHoops · 28/07/2012 22:33

also I'm sure I saw on something recently that 4 in 10 births in the UK are now mixed race children

92% of the population are white.

That would be a lot of gadding about by the males in the other 8% of the population to be responsible for 40% of the 723,913 births in 2011!

WorraLiberty · 28/07/2012 22:34

Ruby good on you for doing something

I think your MP and the press complaints commission are your best bet

All too often we just moan about something but don't actually do anything about it.

Even if it gets you nowhere, at least you're giving it a shot.

Catkinsthecatinthehat · 28/07/2012 22:36

jumping I can't see any other interpretation when he sarcastically states it must have been an, ahem, "challenge" to find an "educated" white woman with a black partner in a stable relationship.

RubyFakeNails · 28/07/2012 22:37

Thanks Worra I guess my only other option is to send him a bag of my own shit.

OP posts:
justaboutiswarm · 28/07/2012 22:37

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

kingbeat23 · 28/07/2012 22:40

Ruby, I must live in the same constiuency (sp?) as you as she's my councillor too. Utter bullshit if you ask me and the hash tags of the tweets from the conservative councillor was awful as well.

JumpingThroughHoops · 28/07/2012 22:40

cats I think it was the middle aged thing that threw me.

I would find it less usual for a middle aged mixed couple rather than a young mixed couple IFYSWIM? And that is because sterotypes and bigotry have broken down. Fifty years ago = unusual, today = norm.

It's just a poorly written article. And I have yet to work out why all DM articles read like they are written by the same person.

MaryMotherOfCheeses · 28/07/2012 22:40

Yanbu to make a complaint. Please do.

WorraLiberty · 28/07/2012 22:41

Send him a bag of yours and your DH's...thus proving you're still together Grin

Add a little note saying 'Fuck that shit'

gallicgirl · 28/07/2012 22:42

I thought the racial mix looked totally normal.

I live in Essex so my only gripe would be not enough orange people Wink

seriously though, that's just a nasty piece of provocative rubbish trying to find an ignorant audience,

bruces · 28/07/2012 22:44

It was nice to see a multi cultural family as i do being one just normal!!!!

Nancy66 · 28/07/2012 22:44

to repeat - it's just a blog article - if people hadn't tweeted about it it would have been read by about 25 people.

it's also personal opinion - so nothing PCC can do

RubyFakeNails · 28/07/2012 22:46

Hi neighbour Kingbeat Wink Stoke Newington & Hackney North?

at handling DH's shit, although i don't know why I'm all of a sudden so eager to handle my own, must be the rage.

Am certainly thinking of having something of a mixed colour dumped at DM HQ.

OP posts:
RubyFakeNails · 28/07/2012 22:57

I was looking around online and its already received attention on twitter and various blog posts so seems I'm not the only one outraged.

OP posts:
Latara · 28/07/2012 22:59

It's an offensively crap article by a racist, miserable, bitter & nasty hate-filled idiot posing as a 'journalist'.

I was glad to see that for once the vast majority of highly rated DM reader comments were saying more or less the same - that the DM was very wrong to publish such an article that a) showed breathtakingly awful racist attitudes & b) was so biased against the NHS when, despite it's faults, it saves countless lives as most ordinary people would never be able to afford private healthcare.

WorraLiberty · 28/07/2012 22:59

Has MN taught you nothing Ruby? Hmm

Your DH should be sorting his own shit and packing it Grin

RubyFakeNails · 28/07/2012 23:03
Grin

I really should leave the bastard, but as our family is so rare and challenging to find I wouldn't want to make it even more difficult for the darling Rick Dewsbury.

Btw if anyone wants to complain, this guy has written a wonderful complaint he has offered to be shared.

OP posts:
Puremince · 28/07/2012 23:04

I live in the back of beyond and know mixed race couples who met at University and married. I can think of one mixed race couple, happily married, whose eldest two children are at University studying medicine.

DH and I wouldn't still be married if it weren't for the NHS - we'd have reached the "till death us do part" bit 14 years ago.

Greythorne · 28/07/2012 23:08

Nancy66

Why are you defending the DM?

If he was only a blgger, he would have a blog on wordpress frequented by three of bis mates and his mum. He does not. He has a column in the "Right Minds" section of the DM. That is not a blog.

Mrbojangles1 · 28/07/2012 23:10

JumpingThroughHoops its ONE IN TEN IN THE UK AND ONE IN FOUR IN LONDON

Sadly their are many who still hold these views hence why edl and bmp have no died a death and why i am frigthned to go out side london with my mixed raced family (who are very happy and not on welfare btw)

festiemum · 28/07/2012 23:11

This is outrageous bigoted bullshit. I have complained to the PCC too. They can act on opinion if it's part of a newspaper's website, even readers' letters - it says so on their website, so it's definitely worth complaining!

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