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?

Ask someone from the US and they'll tell you they went on vacation to Europe.

That picture may be of Lagos but it also has areas of extreme deprivation where pictures look nothing like that too.

Woke isn't used to mean people who are aware of issues though. One could argue that band aid was the great awakening. It's used towrads people who are being insulted by the assumption that only the woke understand The issues. It can just be they see the issue differently.

It's people who preach a good line, often only seeing a small part of the picture. Rant about statues and buy clothes from boho. Rant about the past, ignore the now and the modern sex slave trade. They often appear to have an imbalance between words and deeds. They tend to see things very black and white. They tend to be very supportive of treating each person as an individual ( good ) without seeing that sometimes you need to look at class behaviours to spot and understand problems, because you know, stereotypes.

It not good to toss words like that about, but that's what is meant when they are used. Not that they are aware but that they are often anything but. I guess when you set yourself as a paragon of virtue people will throw rocks.

Do people from African countries find it offensive?

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

It's not ignorant . It's based on years of listening to people who criticise those who put themselves out to try and help. Most of them sit in their armchairs and do very little themselves . Obviously if you have raised millions of pounds yourself whilst not doing anything that could cause criticism in 40 years time , I am wrong. I'm sure that you would like to enlighten me and will no doubt be about to tell me what you are done.

Do all people from all African countries find the song offensive? Even the ones the song was trying to help? Or is that a stereotype again?

Find this quite bizarre as I never liked the song as a child, but now love what it symbolises.. people realising that people are just like them and that we should help one another

"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."

You don't have to be right wing or British to use it as an insult or simply as a descriptive term for those who leftist politics are ideologically identitarian/intersectional.

It's not as if spite is limited to one group after all.

@Babdoc

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?

Sometimes it does seem that twittering and instagramming are the Millennial version of my parents’ generations ‘Thoughtsnprayersprayersnthoughts’ Talking doesn’t get shit done unless it’s followed by action. Yes, the single was naive, had stereotypical imagery and strong overtones of White Saviour. The alternative was to do nothing and say (As my Edwardian grandfather did) ‘Feed 6 million starving Africans and what’ll happen? Give it a generation and you’ve got 18 million starving Africans’

The priority was to feed the starving, not squabble about lyrics. Now Ethiopia is at war, Yemen is still at war and more civilians are sick, starving and asking for aid. What to do?

@Alexafrost

"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.

So really you just want to shut any discussion down then and refuse to consider any other opinions other than yourself.

Righto.

[quote Quaagars]@paganbilly
OP why haven't you returned to your miserable, mean spirited, spiteful thread? You put the question out there - have the courage to come and defend your views.

The OP has - if you read it there's a lot of posts from her.[/quote]
That wasn't me who posted that.

@Belladonna12

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

It's not ignorant . It's based on years of listening to people who criticise those who put themselves out to try and help. Most of them sit in their armchairs and do very little themselves . Obviously if you have raised millions of pounds yourself whilst not doing anything that could cause criticism in 40 years time , I am wrong. I'm sure that you would like to enlighten me and will no doubt be about to tell me what you are done.

Oh do fuck off with this shit that anyone who dares to not consider Geldolf as the savour of Africa is obviously a heartless bastard who sits at home counting their money.

It's possible to view things in terms other than black and white, you realise.

Band aid came from a good place but was problematic then in terms of where the money actually went and is problematic now in terms of lumping an incredibly diverse collection of countries together as one pity case. I'm sorry if such subtlety is beyond you.

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

It can be both as Mao and Stalin proved.

Why do those who demand that people to educate themselves so often show great need of it themselves?

"So really you just want to shut any discussion down then and refuse to consider any other opinions other than yourself."

No, I am simply pointing out that it is easy to criticise and very hard to do something, especially something on the scale of what that song achieved.

The song isn't beyond criticism nor is the charity itself. However, the criticisms seem remarkably petty and with some posters, fairly racist.

@Alexafrost

"So really you just want to shut any discussion down then and refuse to consider any other opinions other than yourself."

No, I am simply pointing out that it is easy to criticise and very hard to do something, especially something on the scale of what that song achieved.

The song isn't beyond criticism nor is the charity itself. However, the criticisms seem remarkably petty and with some posters, fairly racist.

That's the issue though.

It seems to a great many people think that it is beyond criticism, it was well intentioned so any issues with it are considered null and void and "woke". That anyone who dares to point out the issues is obviously an uncaring cunt who steals sweets from babies.

That's at best naive and at worst willfully ignorant.

@VinylDetective
Do people from African countries find it offensive?

There's been several voices on this thread that are and have said yes

Oh do fuck off with this shit that anyone who dares to not consider Geldolf as the savour of Africa is obviously a heartless bastard who sits at home counting their money.

I didn't suggest that he was the saviour of Africa. He did however do a lot to try and save lives. I bet you haven't.

@Belladonna12

Oh do fuck off with this shit that anyone who dares to not consider Geldolf as the savour of Africa is obviously a heartless bastard who sits at home counting their money.

I didn't suggest that he was the saviour of Africa. He did however do a lot to try and save lives. I bet you haven't.

I've already stated my credentials in terms of charitable giving. What are yours?

Regardless, the idea that you have to be a Bob equivalent to dare criticise him is fucking bullshit. I bet you are the type of person who says "oh, you don't like that film? Well, how many films have you directed?"

@Calmandmeasured1 yes of course, Lagos has areas that are very very different from the OP's picture, as is the case for Cape Town, the pic of which I posted.

The point is that the OP was saying that most people would not recognise that picture as being a representation of "Africa" , which is potentially rather patronising. A vast majority of people would in fact now recognise the picture as being of an African scene, despite it depicting a scene of wealth and privilege. The old stereotypes of "Africa" from the 1980s are not really widespread any more.

OP why haven't you returned to your miserable, mean spirited, spiteful thread? You put the question out there - have the courage to come and defend your views
Probably because it's a zombie thread from June

@paganbilly sorry, you're right it wasn't you - it tagged you as you were the one replying to the poster who did ask

[quote Quaagars]@VinylDetective
Do people from African countries find it offensive?

There's been several voices on this thread that are and have said yes[/quote]
Indeed there have. I wonder how representative they are of the millions of indigenous Africans.

I've already stated my credentials in terms of charitable giving. What are yours?

I volunteer two days a week for a charity. It's get some criticism, and it's always from people who do FA themselves.

Regardless, the idea that you have to be a Bob equivalent to dare criticise him is fucking bullshit. I bet you are the type of person who says "oh, you don't like that film? Well, how many films have you directed?"

I bet you actually do very little for anyone and just criticise those that do.

I wonder how representative they are of the millions of indigenous Africans

Why do they have to be representative of everything or everyone?!
They don't have to speak for everyone else!
You asked have there been any African voices on the thread saying it was offensive.
Which they have.

there has that should read

@Belladonna12

I've already stated my credentials in terms of charitable giving. What are yours?

I volunteer two days a week for a charity. It's get some criticism, and it's always from people who do FA themselves.

Regardless, the idea that you have to be a Bob equivalent to dare criticise him is fucking bullshit. I bet you are the type of person who says "oh, you don't like that film? Well, how many films have you directed?"

I bet you actually do very little for anyone and just criticise those that do.

You'd lose that bet, sorry to say.

If you bothered to read things properly, I've stated that I think band aid came from a good place but 35 years later we can see that it did both harm and good and therefore maybe it's time to address problems in different ways. Thankfully, it's not up to you and so we are actually doing this, but you carry on thinking life is as simple as spending a couple of quid on a song and that makes everything better.

@Quaagars

I wonder how representative they are of the millions of indigenous Africans

Why do they have to be representative of everything or everyone?!
They don't have to speak for everyone else!
You asked have there been any African voices on the thread saying it was offensive.
Which they have.

Actually I didn’t - I asked if people from African countries find it offensive, which is an entirely different thing. My meaning was far wider than a miniscule number of people posting on MN.

If you bothered to read things properly, I've stated that I think band aid came from a good place but 35 years later we can see that it did both harm and good and therefore maybe it's time to address problems in different ways. Thankfully, it's not up to you and so we are actually doing this, but you carry on thinking life is as simple as spending a couple of quid on a song and that makes everything better.

I don't think the fact you have donated money to animal charities means I lose the bet . It is clear from your attitude that you don't do a lot for other people. If you had bothered to read things properly you would notice that I have never said that everything that came from Live Aid was good. However , that couldn't be predicted at the time and it was the first of huge money raising events. We had never had that before . Do you think that they should have raised money at the time despite the fact that people are starving?