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

[KaptainKaveman]

At least I hope so.

Not just a screaming racist, but a rubbish historian, judging by his quote.

I mean, maybe there's some major missing context whereby he actually means something very different from the words he said.

But if not, well, whether it's slavery or Catholic emancipation, or independence of the America, or the Norman conquest come to that, history is not somehow "settled" when 200 years are past. It creates where we are today.

The irony of him positioning historical events as somehow finished with, while whining that statues to these events have been removed from where they were demanding the attention of the public in 2020...

NB I say this in case someone wants to argue that he should be free to express whatever political views he likes and still keep his job as a professional historian.

Like another David, Irving, he's shown he's actually pretty shit at doing history.

Yeah I think he’s finished. I used to like his shows and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt after his comments about the Tottenham riots, but now I realise he’s barking.

He's a prick and always has been. Never understood how he maintained his public career for this long tbh, so if this is what finally ends it, he won't be missed!

Yes, I do remember that show, Kaptain. I seem to remember he did eventually make an effort, but his contempt for them really showed at the beginning.

@NannyPhlegm

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.

He resigned.

Imagine having an inquiry every time an old white man said something racist.

It had something to do with Jamie Oliver didn’t it? He lied to cover his own back over an incident on that despite the fact the whole thing was on camera.

He always seems to come across as a deeply unpleasant person when you see him being ‘himself’ on something. I don’t know that he deserves the benefit of the doubt about the minuscule possibility that he meant ‘many’. Being racist seems to be exactly what I’d expect and not at all surprising.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

I think I'd rather go with the whole innocent until proven guilty concept myself.

This is the bit I'm talking about.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53262668

Starkey said: "As for the idea that slavery is this kind of terrible disease that dare not speak its name, it only dare not speak its name, Darren, because we settled it nearly 200 years ago."

"We don't normally go on about the fact that Roman Catholics once upon a time didn't have the vote and weren't allowed to have their own churches because we had Catholic emancipation."

Well now David, you may have forgotten about the time Catholics were oppressed, but it's featured in my life in many small practical ways, and is certainly something I've had occasion to "go on about".

Bloody hell Perking I hadn’t seen that bit.

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.

Because it's important for words to have meanings, especially words as important as genocide. The way we currently use it, there has to be the intent to partly/wholly destroy a particular group, because that's a particular type of crime. The deaths of enslaved people during transport and afterwards weren't the aim, though they were anticipated, and weren't part of a plan to destroy a group; the enslaved people died for the also horrific but different reason that they weren't considered as people with individual value as human beings or as being from a group/society/culture that particularly mattered.

We need conversations about whether to include this kind of atrocity within the label of genocide or whether to retain the word's current meaning, and we need conversations about whether to include cultural erasure within genocide without further qualification, so that we can talk about history and society with each other using defined terms.

A nasty, racist bigot. How could he not expect to lose his standing after a jaw-dropping comment like that? What a dickhead. Honestly he’s been airing his ignorance for too long. He may be educated, intelligent, but he’s a prize fool who needs to go away.

I think he’s ghastly and deserves to lose his job. But I don’t think we should be censoring what he says (as so many news outlets have). Let’s hear what he said that led to him being sacked. I don’t agree we should not even let the public know what he actually said.

@KaptainKaveman

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.

I remember that show, he was horrific, I can't believe that whole thing didn't finish this career in TV tbh. He must be a major arse licker.

@CayrolBaaaskin

(Sorry that I'm not going back to check on the full text of Starkey's comments. Partly it's that I don't want to reward Grimes with the hits. But also it's because I was having a nice evening and don't want to spend it reading a snivelling little berk.)

Good cross-post there!

The argument that it's not genocide because people survived, though, is clearly bullshit. And his argument also falls down because many of the black people in the UK and most in Africa are from completely different ethnic groups/nations/etc. to those who were enslaved anyway — but to Starkey they're all "blacks", of course.

@JoyFreeCake

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.

Because it's important for words to have meanings, especially words as important as genocide. The way we currently use it, there has to be the intent to partly/wholly destroy a particular group, because that's a particular type of crime. The deaths of enslaved people during transport and afterwards weren't the aim, though they were anticipated, and weren't part of a plan to destroy a group; the enslaved people died for the also horrific but different reason that they weren't considered as people with individual value as human beings or as being from a group/society/culture that particularly mattered.

We need conversations about whether to include this kind of atrocity within the label of genocide or whether to retain the word's current meaning, and we need conversations about whether to include cultural erasure within genocide without further qualification, so that we can talk about history and society with each other using defined terms.

I think you're right @JoyFreeCake , the current meaning of genocide includes intent which as you clearly explained, the slave trade did not intend to only kill.

But as a "renowned historian" you'd have thought Starkey would be able to express himself better and not come across as a raging racist - but I think these comments just shows his true colours. Thankfully he'll never be paid for his awful opinions again.

In order to be able to not come across as a raging racist, it would probably help if he weren't actually a raging racist.

Joy I agree the term is contested, and people's interpretations of it are evolving. Personally I regret the emphasis on 'intent' because while it may be necessary for legal instruments (like the Convention and the ICC Statute), in everyday usage it provides a way for people to minimise the scale and extent of atrocities.

By your explanation, for example, we should not consider Belgium's killing of up to 10 million people in the Congo Free State a genocide, but quite a number of people do -- including Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term.

It's not so much "my" explanation or definition that I'm trying to defend.

I'm trying to defend the concept of discussing what these words mean and agreeing that they should have defined limits, whatever we decide those limits should be. Otherwise they're less helpful as terms. Currently the official definition requires intent, but as you say it's often used for situations where that isn't strictly the case.

Often, words that describe extremes tend to be used more broadly over time. People say they're "devastated" about a ruined jumper, or that they're "starving" when they mean hungry (as you probably know, "starve" used to mean "die", not necessarily of hunger). There's a risk that if we don't keep discussing what and where the limits are — which may or may not include intent — the word "genocide" will lose its impact.

To clarify: I don't mean that those cases where there isn't intent are less "serious" than those where there is intent.

I'm trying to say that unless we define where the edges are, wherever we might choose to put them, there will be slippage where the word starts to be used even more broadly for things that none of us would currently consider to be genocide.

And that it helps for us to know what the words we use to talk about these things mean, both to us and to the person we're speaking to. The same problem occurs with the word "eugenics" — some people prefer to use it strictly to mean acts which are carried out with the intention of "improving" the human gene pool, usually by killing, sterilising, or preventing the conception/birth of people with heritable disorders, whereas some use it more broadly, and it leads to muddled conversations and confused arguments.

Another one here who thinks the “damn” may have been for emphasis. But anyway, he should have been more careful about what he said.