To ask if there's something I'm missing about the allegedly "controversial" Diversity performance

[GlummyMcGlummerson]

Diversity performed on Britain's Got Talent, a performance which incorporated a message about BLM. Their performance, as usual, was incredible and sent out some great messages. The video is below.

It's had 10,000 complaints. Why?! am I missing something? Did someone's nipple pop out or something? What is the basis of people's complaints? The only reason I can think is that some people (probably because they're part of the problem) don't like it when others point out that there's racism in the world? Boo hoo to them

Good to see on the news this morning Ashley Banjo sticking to his guns and Ofcom are backing him.

That should enrage the gammons even more 🙄

There was only about 4K complaints on the night it was screened so how is there 22k now? Are people now watching it in order to then get annoyed and complain? Did they watch it at the time, but only now realise that they want to complain? Or have they not even seen it and are just complaining because the DailyFail told them to 🤷‍♀️

There was some kind of Twitter (and I'm guessing Facebook as that's where these type of people tend to hang out) campaign. Campaigned to get the frothers frothing and to complain to Ofcom. Sad.

happinessischocolate
Careful using the word gammons.

One poster has repeatedly accused me of using a racial slur in a deleted post, mumsnet have reinstated the post as it was deleted by mistake. Unsurprisingly there's no racial slur in the post, unless you're a poster trying to claim that gammon is racist.

Which is exactly what that poster was trying to say, Lola

Strawberryraspberryjam
It was all bizarre really.

It's been reinstated, which makes the whole thing quite a funny read: claiming an informal term mocking a someone getting all flushed whilst expressing hardline right wing views is a racial slur whilst minimising systemic racism and spending hours arguing against a BAME group raising awareness of racism.

pandabearbear OMG! I can relate on so many levels.

It is fucking exhausting

I thought it was great. People don't like being made to feel uncomfortable or guilty or like they're being told off especially when they feel its for something that is nothing to do with them. However rqcism is systemic in the UK and its everyone's responsibility to be actively anti racist not just to disagree with racism. When its systemic, that is not enough

It was totally not the right place to perform their ridiculous routine, they were attention seeking, plain and simple.

onedayinthefuture
I take it you're also full of condemnation of all the other social issues that have been covered on the show too then?

Ofcom commented that a whole list of social and political issues have been covered on Britain's Got Talent, without mass complaining, which raises questions about why it's taken a BAME group raising the issue of racism to suddenly cause people to decide that evening telly isn't the time or place for politics or social issues.

Gammon is a bit of a lazy slur to be honest. Not exactly addressing issues, just the latest form of abuse.

@LolaSmiles I don't watch BGT so wouldn't know but this particular issue has made the press. I am so angry at the media and people in the public eye who are actively making issues worse and causing divide under the guise of being 'oh so woke'.

My DF is black, he experienced racism in the 70s. He knows what it's like to be the subject of racism but he's so angry and intolerant of anyone jumping on the BLM bandwagon right now. His words are that everything that BLM are trying to do, are doing the absolute opposite. It's like now all of a sudden people are aware that he is black again. I get where he is coming from.

Floweryusername
It's definitely a lazy slur, and not one I particularly got behind when it first came into circulation and I didn't like it being used to lazily tarnish anyone who voted Brexit, but in the last few months I've started to see that it's quite apt for a particular group of people who spend a lot of time clutching at straws trying to minimise racism / playing the victim if called out on their prejudices.

Eg.
People who spend a lot of time saying 'actually ALL lives matter' and 'but what about people who hate the police...but what about, but what about... I'm not racist but I really think they (BAME people) should protest peacefully... But not like that, and that's attention seeking, and that's the wrong time, but they shouldn't be famous and use their platform, but don't take the knee, but (insert any possible clutching at straws reason why any protest or raising awareness is the wrong way to do it here)' do fit the profile well. It's a lot of effort to genuinely be obsessed with telling BAME people how to talk about racism and it's an awful lot of effor tto get annoyed and talk in illogical arguments (eg It's nothing about my prejudice, just BGT isn't the time or place for political or social issues... But there's been silence when a range of other issues were raised on BGT).
Then if in doubt the inevitable 'eeeh well people are trying to silence me for having an opinion', which seems to be the new version of 'it's political correctness gone mad!'

'One poster has repeatedly accused me of using a racial slur in a deleted post, mumsnet have reinstated the post as it was deleted by mistake.'

It was deleted because the racial slur gammon didn't and I quote 'sit well' with them. Clearly today's mod disagreed. So not so much deleted 'by mistake' but differnce in modding opinion.

Anywayyyy let's try not to use insults to mock and belittle people based on the colour of their skin, hmm?

@LolaSmiles I suppose that I immediately discount any post that references it, it doesn’t educate, befriend or interest most people. Done to death and I immediately judge the poster as being a bit thick.

Floweryusername
That's absolutely fine.
I disliked it's use in Brexit debates, but find it perfectly apt to describe that red in face frothy anger usually over particular social issues. Definitely lazy, but if it weren't that word then there'd just be another word that people would use to describe the same attitudes, just like woke and snowflakes evolved to refer to a particular type of behaviour and attitudes. That's language.

Each to their own though. That's the beauty of debate.

I am all for black lives matters and challenging the years of entrenched institutional racism I however object to a violent thug like George Floyd being poster boy for this

@theworldhasfallenoutmybottom

I am all for black lives matters and challenging the years of entrenched institutional racism I however object to a violent thug like George Floyd being poster boy for this

George Floyd is the perfect poster boy for this.

George didn't die because he had a criminal record, he died because he was black, the same as so many other victims of the police in USA

Agreed. Floyd is the perfect poster boy because his murder exposes the extreme racial divide and double standard in police treatment.

There are tons of threads on MN calling the BLM protestors “thugs”, accusing them of rioting, spreading Covid, being selfish arseholes who are just doing it to virtue signal. Pointing to the tiniest bit of less than genteel behaviour as justification for police brutality. (When black people have been murdered by police while sleeping peacefully in their beds, so clearly didn’t do anything to incite it.) The threads about that stupid statue were insane. People were acting like the protestors had personally slaughtered the Queen/the poster’s own granny then had sex with the corpse! Over a stupid statue getting a short bath!

Meanwhile there are plenty of videos online of white protestors (both Neo Nazi groups protesting against BLM, and non-race related protests like anti-maskers), literally going right up to police and screaming and swearing two inches from their faces. Hurling abuse and threats. And the police just stand there and take it and ignore it.

Why are white people allowed to SCREAM in a police officer’s face and act in a directly abusive and hostile and threatening way and the police do nothing, the media ignores it, people online ignore it. If a black person politely questions a police officer then they’re being “argumentative” and “hostile” and this is held as justification for illegal arrest or police brutality.

Hell, watch the footage of white mass shooters/white terrorists in America being arrested. If you’re white you can literally pick up a gun and open fire in public, kill a dozen people, and the police will calmly politely nicely walk you to a police car. Not get slammed on the ground. Not get kneeled on. Not get choked. Not get hit. Not get MURDERED in front of public and cameras by cops deciding to dispense with the entire criminal justice system.

Name one reason for the disparity other than outright racism.

As a half black person, I told you about my black father. Not one of you responded to my post. That view doesn't fit your narrative. I and many of my black friends are sick to the back teeth of racism never going away because people won't let it and I'm not talking about racist thickos. It's the privileged that have too much of a say and revel in a cause and debate and you couldn't possibly let us forget could you? Keep us in our boxes because how dare a black person speak up about bullshit when we see it. Not a victim.

@theworldhasfallenoutmybottom

I am all for black lives matters and challenging the years of entrenched institutional racism I however object to a violent thug like George Floyd being poster boy for this

A poster boy? He was murdered and you call him a poster boy?

I see you.

I’m not sure what you want people to say, onedayinthefuture. You have a black relative who thinks if we pretend racism doesn’t exist, people will forget/overlook that he’s black and stop being racist towards him?

It’s not black people fighting racism who are “refusing to let racism go away.”

Children have been shot by police in the US. Women who were in the wrong place at the wrong time - either shot by a skittish police officer or when he was aiming at a dog (in the news today).

This wasn’t on film though. These are US incidents and we aren’t in the US - we have our own here. Yes you can highlight one issue and support others.

I worry for child safety and a kit domestic violence and the lockdown has made these worse.

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong to highlight social issues on a tv entertainment show (I think it can do good to reach people) - or which ones?