To think Lord Sugar should be sacked from the BBC for his tweet?

[BlondeSea]

Earlier today Lord Sugar tweeted a photo of the Senegal football team with a caption along the lines of "I recognise these from the beaches in Marbella selling sunglasses!"

He doctored the image to add pictures of sunglasses. People challenged him online and he insisted it was funny and refused to apologise however since then he has apologised - he's obviously been forced to.

I won't add the image here, it's now been taken down but you can see it if you google it. AIBU to think this is disgusting, not funny, and he should be fired from the BBC?

@TanteRose

I did. I think you think you're clever by asking for an explanation of humor. You aren't.

@Battleax

"Laughing at black people is just funny "

That depends on the joke. Are you saying that only inanimate objects or straight, wealthy, white, able-bodied men can be the subject of a joke.

Just because a joke's subject is a black person doesn't mean it is racist. Do you get it yet?

Did you not manage to read the whole post trip?

If it’s a struggle you could follow the text with your finger and takes sips of water between sentences.

Here. Have another try;

Laughing at black people is just funny Tante, apparently. Especially (successful) Africans. Because Africans are all poor migrants and an African doing well is cognitive dissonance. Or something confusedhmm

So jokes with black men in are racist but jokes about illiteracy are fine?

That is cognitive dissonance.

What you're actually saying is that you are so self-important you can decide which jokes are appropriate and which aren't.

Besides which, your unusual grammar and punctuation require careful reading. Those in glass houses and all that.

dammit, really don't want to engage but...

trip you said "Saying that something looks like something else (which it isn't) is commonly used in humour; "

fair enough.

but you didn't explain why this particular joke is funny? Could you do that for me?

and I asked if Sugar had tweeted a photo the Japanese team, with photoshopped woks and chopsticks, chortling that he'd just seen them down the Chinese takeaway...would that also be hilarious in your view?

genuine inquiry

What you're actually saying is that you are so self-important you can decide which jokes are appropriate and which aren't.

Sigh.

It’s predicated on a racist stereotype. (Not just a joke that happens to feature characters who are black.) That’s prima facie dodgy from first glance.

But if you believe that it’s both funny and unbigoted you’ll be able to explain it to us, right?

Trip, can you explain what is so hilarious about saying that one set of black men look like a completely different set of black men of a different nationality who make their living by selling cheap tat on beaches?

If I were a rich person and posted a picture of the England team saying I recognised them from zero hours workers in my local Poundland, it would imply that they are a load of amateurs who had been picked off the streets to go into the team. It wouldn't be funny, not least because everyone would know it was rubbish and would show me to be a bigoted snob. Yet somehow it's OK to say that about members of another race? Why?

What fascinates me is why trip and their ilk feel that it's acceptable to defend racist tweets. How and why they feel that their right to supposed free speech means they can trample over others and their lived experience and why it's alright to promulgate the view that a racist joke is essentially harmless.

Has anyone seen the captioned photo of the Nigerian football team saying something along the lines of very sorry they let the fans down, are willing to refund ticket prices, for a refund please send your bank details, ect and something about a western union transfer or Paypal.
Can people see that as a joke and know what it refers to?

Not seen it, but can see why that'd be funny.

And I wouldn't class that as racist either - the "Nigerian Scam" is well known....

That's the equivalent to showing the British team with pints of lager doing drunken things surely.
In either case, the joke doesn't depend on skin colour

It's definitely racist in my view. he is picking one occupation of people of that race (sunglasses on the beach) and tarring them all with the same brush. It would be like my saying working class men made good like Sugar all go on holiday to Marbella or all of them are racist or all jews are rich businessmen which could be anti semitic even if said in "fun".

I've found this thread really unnerving, because when I started it I didn't even contemplate anyone arguing that the tweet was not racist.

This.

" working class men made good like Sugar all go on holiday to Marbella"
Or they all drive Robin reliants and have plans to be millionaires this time next year :o

Mumsnet is NOT what it used to be.
It is not 'pearl clutchy' to find racism disgusting.
His post was abhorrent.

These people that want to claim that tweets are not racist, even when they are the very definition of racism, must be going through a hard time at the moment.

Right now in the U.K., from above, through legislation, we are told that racism is bad. It’s not allowed in the workplace, it’s not allowed at school etc. So, they don’t want to be told that they’re a racist.

At the same time, with the current sway in social media, some parts of Brexit, Tommy Robinson - it’s more acceptable to actually BE racist. People are fine with sharing racist posts.

They want to be racist but claim that they’re not. It’s fascinating and scary, as some PP have mentioned.

Mumsnet is NOT what it used to be.

Yes, I thought this reading this thread. There is no way some of the utter shite on this thread would have been here a few years ago. It makes me feel quite sad really.

It's also important to remember that it is possible for a joke to be both racist and funny (although this one isn't). However, funniness does not excuse racism.

Yes, it's surprising anyone thinks it's not racist and also that Sugar thought it was a good idea to post it. He needs someont to check his tweets in advance if his judgment is so bad.

There is no way some of the utter shite on this thread would have been here a few years ago

How far back are we talking? This is from 7 years ago!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1372929-to-think-that-this-is-brilliant-trolling?pg=6

t's definitely racist in my view. he is picking one occupation of people of that race (sunglasses on the beach) and tarring them all with the same brush

Unfortunate terminology.

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/touch_of_the_tar_brush

touch of the tar brush

Noun
touch of the tar brush

(idiomatic) Pertaining to somebody of mixed racial heritage; to signify someone is commonly (though not exclusively) of Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent South Asian in their background and/or in their appearance.

Usage notes

Not generally used for people that are unambiguously and distinguishably of mixed race. More often used for those whose ethnicity is more questionable.

Dawn Butler was brilliant about this on This Morning, knocking Liz Cundy's ill-founded defence out of the park. Her defence of him was purely anecdotal, based on who she knows who happened to have worked for him, who may have been black I'm guessing.

It's also important to remember that it is possible for a joke to be both racist and funny

And to be fair, most humour is at the expense of someone else.

People tend to share jokes with people they know will appreciate them, blasting them out in the public domain is just daft....

And to be fair, most humour is at the expense of someone else.

People tend to share jokes with people they know will appreciate them, blasting them out in the public domain is just daft....

A lot of jokes are but there's lots of other ways to do humour and jokes. Maybe times should change - I don't know.

I suppose the one positive is that it makes everything so transparent. The public can exercise their rights to agree or disagree with him. Any businesses he is linked with can decide if they want to continue working with him. People will wonder if he will judge them in a biased manner, if they will be treated fairly by him. He has now given insight into how he thinks, and people will be questioning that.

(rupertina, there is that which I would not use and my phrase which I thought was about British seamen being tarred and feathered in the navy, but I might be wrong - tarred with the same brush v. touch of the tar brush which latter I thought could be offensive but may be all reference to tar must go other than when you spread it on roads. People used to take small children outside to breath it in in the old days).

Noel Gallagher once derided the England team by saying they looked like trainee police officers, if I recall. It was in the era of Michael Owen, where they all seemed a bit smart and officious, coming out with lines about how every goal was 'part of the team', a bit careful. Now, he meant their manner implicitly, but also how they looked and came across. That wasn't racist, of course.

Never seen these kind of beach sellers, maybe Sugar has on his expensive jaunts. I don't think he'd have said it about any black players, certainly not England players, so in that sense it's not racist. But it might be a bit. But maybe the beach sellers really did look exactly like that. I mean, on the other hand, we can imagine the long-haired whey faced pot bellied layabout flogging deck chairs on Brighton beach and say the England team look like that, (supposing they did) would that be racist?

Sugar's joke was not funny however. Hardly worth the effort, in which case.