Can we now finally get rid of 'Do they know it's Christmas'?

[Tokenminority]

This song drives me absolutely up the wall. It's patronising, reductive, and it completely harms efforts towards equality.

I understand the focus on equal opportunities and stopping police brutality, but other narratives, such as the pictures painted in the 'Do they know it's Christmas' song, can be just as harmful.

'Africa' is not a country. You did not go on holiday to 'Africa', similarly to how you wouldn't have sent that you went on holiday to 'Europe' when you in fact went to France.

Of course there are major problems surrounding poverty on the African continent, just as there are in other places, but African countries are not only filled with begging, malnourished children who have never seen a Christmas present.

The picture attached is a photograph of Lagos. If I went on the street and asked random people on which continent that photo was taken, would anyone even consider the possibility that it may have been Africa?

It will never be right to elevate trendy talking points over real people's real suffering. Let's never do anything to help anyone today, in case in 30 years people have the found the One True And Correct Way to alleviate all human suffering. In the meantime, however...

Trendy talking points?
People on the thread have spoken about how it affected them, growing up in Africa, or how it made people perceive them as being poor etc.
How is it a trendy talking point to be able to look outside your own bubble and listen to others?
I think it's great they raised money, but that doesn't mean we can't look at the bigger picture or discuss it.

Perhaps we should redo it about food banks in Britain? They are looking at a 61% increase this year, thanks to the knock-on effects of the pandemic.

I am thankful that I belong to the generation that raised money for starving Eritreans during their famine and war, and not to the current woke generation that prefers useless virtue signalling and arguing about lyrics.
That record raised millions for charity, and the royalties still do.
How much have you raised, OP?

You can't separate the past from the present. It's how you got where you are today. If it hadn't of happened , more people would have died, large charity events like comic relief may not be what they are , it's also quite possible that the visibility of this cause made people more aware of how aid can be abused as well as encouraging people to look beyond their lives.

Most of the critisisms seem to come from people willfully misinterpreting and inferring a meaning that was not intended or subconsciously believed at the time

the song was explicitly trying to overcome historic racism, where people were happy to ignore Africa as retarded, with the negative stereotype that the problems were of their own making , by pointing out that these were h7man beings, ordinary people who had no control over what life threw at them

Can people stop wrongly crowbarring 'woke' into everything like some tacky tabloid, please?

It was originally an AAVE term for civil rights politics and has been taken over by middle class british right wing dicks who want to be spiteful and hand out a bit of covert prejudice.

@TriflePudding

Some of you really need to pull your heads out of your arses and step away from political theories.

Throwing around buzzwords doesn’t make you clever or superior to anyone else, 20 years ago it was trendy to be a ‘white saviour’ these days it’s trendy to be ‘woke’ , it’s all the bloody same - well off people trying to assuage their guilt from living a comfortable life when they realise that not everyone has it as easy as them.

Sometimes the world is an utterly shitty place and if people want to help their fellow humans let’s just encourage them to do that without the god awful lectures about the right way in which people must be helped that currently aligns with the latest right on theory.

This100%....the sentiment behind this song was to help ...! What is wrong with people? Constantly bloody arguing just for the sake of it ...it is so tiring and makes a rubbish world even worse !

This thread typifies how polarised debate seems to be these days. If you think A then you must be attacking B, and vice versa. Personally, I am able to both

A- recognise that in the context of 1984 in the West, this song raised huge awareness of an issue that people may not have known about and raise large amounts of money to help address the famine in Ethiopia

AND

B - acknowledge that it is no longer 1984. We can raise awareness of issue and fundraise in different ways now without relying on a charity song that promotes a homogenous and incorrect stereotype of a continent and which people from African countries find offensive.

We move on as a society all the time and we should be able to look back at the past and question whether we should still do things certain ways/whether cultural elements are still relevant or acceptable. It doesn't have to mean that we are denigrating the best efforts that we made in the past, we can still acknowledge and applaud those (while getting rid of the scrappy Christmas song in this case).

@JayAlfredPrufrock

I’m old enough to remember the Biafran famine.

You mean the Nigerian civil war? The one where the Igbos of Biafra wanted to reclaim their land from from the Nigerian government. The one where the British government intentionally colluded with the Nigerian government to starve out the people of Biafra to ensure that their oil rich lands didn’t split from Nigeria which at the time was still very much entangled financially with Britain? You mean the genocide manufactured by the British and Nigerian government resulting in the death by starvation of 2 million Biafran civilians?

Please go educate yourself before you start calling genocide a famine.

People on the thread have spoken about how it affected them, growing up in Africa, or how it made people perceive them as being poor etc.
How is it a trendy talking point to be able to look outside your own bubble and listen to others?

Perhaps you should look outside your own bubble . Anyone who thinks that live aid/band aid is the events that made people perceive African countries as poor they are very much mistaken. Africa was called the Third World and people considered it poor long before live aid.

It is trendy talking points Quaagers.
I don't particularly care who is saying it.
Actual alleviation of human suffering and death will always take precedence over other people's anger or irritation or even slighted dignity. And no one really cares what colour their saviour is, when they are actually up against unimaginable horror and death.
That is just reality. There's no planet on which they're equivalent.

That said, there's no excuse for any of us any more to remain ignorant of Africa's diversity, if we wish. Theres plenty of it, with good and bad elements.
We can help, if we want, in the best way we know how at the time.

On a wider issue: There are great many songs/books/films/TV programmes that have dated terribly badly. They cannot be airbrushed out of history, and many of them are positive nostalgic memories for those of us growing up at the time ("Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, anyone?). I still have fond memories if I encounter or remember them (not that I know all the words of "Young Girl", oh no...), while recognising that they are entirely unacceptable and in fact always were, although this was not recognised at the time. I don't think they should be generally played any more (on the radio, TV, in cinemas whatever) but should be available as cultural artifacts and references for those who wish to access them, in the context of looking at the norms of a bygone age.

And as PP noted, I am sure than in decades to come things we are saying and doing and consuiming culturally right now will be viewed entirely differently....

I think it was thrown together quickly,with good intentions.It is from a different era.

@Dannydevitoiloveyourart I so much agree that the context you give should be far far more widely known. People saw the poor starving childen and wanted to help, which was of course admirable, but there was little to no understanding or dissemination of infomation about the real reasons why those children were starving. (The same goes of course for the woeful inadequacy of public education/understanding about the legacy and long reach of colonialism in general of course, and please don't anyone accuse me of being "woke").

My daughter is 6 and is already fed up of it. I've had 36 years of it

The same goes of course for the woeful inadequacy of public education/understanding about the legacy and long reach of colonialism in general of course, and please don't anyone accuse me of being "woke")

I never get why being "woke" is chucked about as an insult anyway - surely it's the opposite of being asleep eg ignorant to issues and surely that's a good thing lol

@7Days

Whenever this comes up I'm shocked again at people's ego and self centredness

Actually comparing their own woke credentials against a humane, generous and widespread urge to put food in starving bellies.

That overwhelming desire to help, the pragmatic and co operative urge to do something measurably real is actually the best of us.

And then for well fed future people tweeting their oh so correct views about how 'problematic' it is from their iPhones - while doing nothing about the starvation that still goes on. There's something so utterly bankrupt about it.

Absolutely. The news coverage was horrific and it spurred some very wealthy and privileged people to get off their arses and do something about it.

How easy for the woke who weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes in 1984 to criticise. I wonder what they’re doing to make the world a better place?

@Belladonna12

How much it helped back in 1985 is very much debatable, given how how much of the food and money that was delivered to Ethiopia was seized, sold to buy arms and used to feed Mengistu's army. But let's not let inconvient facts like that get in the way.

They couldn't have predicted that in advance though could they? Do you think they should have done and therefore not done anything to try and help?

It's too easy just to blindly chuck money at a problem and assume that is going to help. It's easy to write lyrics implying that there is no rain, that nothing grows and that nobody knows about christmas, and for people to go "oh, but it's all a metaphor". Life isn't that simple, and that's all people need to understand and maybe accept that band aid belongs in the past.

It's easy to criticise when you haven't done anything to help yourself. They didn't just write lyrics. They did a lot to raise money to try and help. No one had done anything like that before. Incredibly mean spirited and ignorant to slag them off for it.

How do you know people critical of Band aid haven't done anything themselves? That's pretty ignorant in of itself.

Band aid belongs in the past. It was well meaning, probably did as much harm as good in terms of where the money went and certainly didn't harm the careers of Geldof et al if you want to be really cynical about it, but it's not "Woke" to be sensitive to the fact that it is slightly problematic viewed through a modern lens.

@Quaagars

The same goes of course for the woeful inadequacy of public education/understanding about the legacy and long reach of colonialism in general of course, and please don't anyone accuse me of being "woke")

I never get why being "woke" is chucked about as an insult anyway - surely it's the opposite of being asleep eg ignorant to issues and surely that's a good thing lol

It's a lazy insult used by people who can only view things in terms of black and white.

"Charity is good and if you don't like band aid you are obviously evil!".

Such is the the internet.

"It's too easy just to blindly chuck money at a problem and assume that is going to help. It's easy to write lyrics implying that there is no rain, that nothing grows and that nobody knows about christmas, and for people to go "oh, but it's all a metaphor". Life isn't that simple, and that's all people need to understand and maybe accept that band aid belongs in the past."

Once again, what have you done to make a difference?

It's very easy to criticise from an armchair but much harder to go out and actually do something to try to help.

Or is it better to do nothing at all just in case someone makes a faux pas which future generations will frown upon while still doing nothing themselves?

@Alexafrost

"It's too easy just to blindly chuck money at a problem and assume that is going to help. It's easy to write lyrics implying that there is no rain, that nothing grows and that nobody knows about christmas, and for people to go "oh, but it's all a metaphor". Life isn't that simple, and that's all people need to understand and maybe accept that band aid belongs in the past."

Once again, what have you done to make a difference?

It's very easy to criticise from an armchair but much harder to go out and actually do something to try to help.

Or is it better to do nothing at all just in case someone makes a faux pas which future generations will frown upon while still doing nothing themselves?

Do you think people need to itemise what they do for charity or whatever before being critical of something.

I can't speak for the poster you are having a go at, but I have issues with band aid and I volunteer for a food bank as well as donating a significant percentage of my salary to animal charities. What are your credentials?

It is stupid to look through a modern lens without taking into account the context. It is stupid to look narrowly. It is stupid to go around assuming offence and taking offence wherever possible. What you end up doing is classing historical actions as stupid. And by implication older people are stereotyped as stupid.

In your efforts to avoid negative stereotypes, you create new ones.

"I never get why being "woke" is chucked about as an insult anyway - surely it's the opposite of being asleep eg ignorant to issues and surely that's a good thing lol"

It's hard to find a word to describe self righteous leftist people who preach much and do little. Woke was co-opted by many of them from black activists and in time became an insult on account of how insufferable most people find them.

Word use is strange like that. Insults become adopted by those insulted and terms adopted by groups can in time become insults.

Absolutely. The news coverage was horrific and it spurred some very wealthy and privileged people to get off their arses and do something about it.

How easy for the woke who weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes in 1984 to criticise. I wonder what they’re doing to make the world a better place?

But acknowledging that there are problems with the song and suggesting we don't need to have it played all the time now does not have to mean criticising people for what they did in 1984/5. It is saying that the song served a purpose and had good results but we can try and make the world a better place in different ways in 2020 - because the world is a different place now! And one of the ways that could make the world a better place is to stop playing a song that is inaccurate and which people from African countries find offensive.

"Do you think people need to itemise what they do for charity or whatever before being critical of something."

No, but being overly critical of something which did do a lot of good for what are very minor infractions does lead me to wonder if the critic has achieved anything comparable. There's a pettiness about it.

Oddly enough I also donate to animal charities and help rescue animals. However, I manage to do the little I do (and it's never enough) without slagging off other people's amazing achievements because their lyrics were less than perfect and they were too white while trying to save people from starvation.