David Starkey. He's finished isn't he?

[KaptainKaveman]

At least I hope so.

And "damn' could just mean plural... not necessarily meant as racist...

Wuh?

Honestly I'm a fairly right wing Tory voting Leave voter who believes transwomen are not women and even I think he should be sacked from every position ousted from public life and ignored from now on. That was the most overtly racist thing I've ever heard (disclaimer : if it's correct as reported I don't wish to hear it).

@chancechancechance

damn can be used as an adjective for emphasis...

@InfiniteSheldon

Well I have heard it and I'm not sure he meant it racistly...

If it was an intensifier he'd have said 'so damn many' instead. Still highly offensive though so doesn't excuse him in the slightest.

job hunter using the damn is what damned him, I think. Everything cam be seen as free speech and technically accurate. But he must know exactly the effect of that damn. I really think he wanted to get the sack.

@Duvetdoggy

people don't always think every word though before they speak and it was an interview not a speech... that we're now hearing small snippets of...

Of course, I agree but we are living in an age of new censorship, and knowing that.....

@candycane222

he could have just meant so many black people in africa

Dreadful, vile man.

David Starkey is unashamedly old school, and not in a nice way. He is misogynistic, for sure.

His point, if it had been made better, could have sparked a debate. Genocide is an attempt to wipe out a race, eg the Holocaust. Slavery wasn't an attempt to wipe out the race, it was a horrific attempt to subjugate it. That is something that could be discussed.
But Starkey followed it with the comment about "so many damn blacks". It was a genuinely jaw-dropping moment.

I dislike the cancel culture, so I can't support him being relieved of his various posts. But an inquiry certainly needed to be held over this!

Having said all that, I'm not going to miss his media presence terribly.

David Starkey (2011):
Black people: That's racist
Media, etc: It is actually a thoughtful and nuanced point and necessary part of public debate.

David Starkey (2020):
Black people: That's racist
Media, etc: OMG who could have foreseen this

However the point about slavery not being a genocide is correct if going by the true definition used in education and human rights groups.

There is no single or 'true' definition of genocide. It's evolved over time. The most recent authoritative legal definition is from the statute of the International Criminal Court, and this is what many people use today:

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Imagine saying there wasn't an Armenian genocide because there's so many damn Armenians around, or the Holocaust wasn't a genocide because, well you get the picture. It's ridiculous.

But slavery intends to keep people alive for economic reasons.

@jobhunter7

>However the point about slavery not being a genocide is correct if going by the true definition used in education and human rights groups.

David Starkey was correct.

And "damn' could just mean plural... not necessarily meant as racist...

Sorry what? Of course that isn't true. Bloody hell, another racist apologist on MN. Does it never stop?

NannyPhlegm I dislike the cancel culture, so I can't support him being relieved of his various posts. But an inquiry certainly needed to be held over this!

An inquiry that would either exonerate him for being massively racist in public, or would support relieving him of his various posts.

Not sure why you're so on the fence on this one, is it just because you like to be against cancel culture? Sometimes people properly deserve to be demoted out of the public presence.

This isn't "cancel culture". This is someone legitimately losing their jobs because they are racist. This isn't a clash of opinions, this is him (yet again) being a vile racist.

@Chienloup

Thing is we don't know if he meant as racist.

He could have just meant so many black people in Africa.

He’s always been a ghastly, self-important snob. I must admit I was rather shocked when I read what he’d said. Unusually in the current news cycle, it was much worse than I’d expected.

I do agree about cancel culture. It needs to get cancelled.

Not sure why you're so on the fence on this one

I'm not on the fence
His statement is vile. But you can't lose jobs in one jerk reactions. There has to be proper procedure, otherwise it's mob rule. Just because in this case, Starkey would have lost his positions at the end of the inquiry doesn't mean that it shouldn't have been held.

Slavery intends to keep some people alive for some time, the mortality rates among enslaved people was enormous. 15-30% did not survive the transatlantic voyage. In South America and the Caribbean, the death rate among slaves was so high that the population would have died out if they had not continued to import new captives.

There was certainly an attempt to erase the cultures of enslaved people -- to erase their identity as a group, which is a key part of genocide.

You can have a big debate about it if you want to, but I don't know why anyone would want to die on this hill.

[quote jobhunter7]@Chienloup

Thing is we don't know if he meant as racist.

He could have just meant so many black people in Africa.[/quote]
Whether he meant it or not he is a public figure and was overtly racist. It was a deliberate choice. Horrid little man. He needs to go.

Does anyone remember a tv show from a few years back ? They got subject experts in with a group of excluded teenagers with a view to generating interest/ sparking a flame etc. David Starkey was on it and was appalling. At one point he started insulting one of the boys, calling him overweight etc. He really was abysmal. He thought he was being daring and witty. Everyone else just thought he was being a c**t.