Thursday
Nov062008
Race and the US Elections: Thumbs-Down for the BBC?
Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 13:17
Dr Robert Beckford takes issue with the BBC's presentation of the issue of race in politics:
On the BBC Special Newsnight on Tuesday, Jeremy Paxman ended the show with a brief interview with Baroness Amos and the grime rap star Dizzy Rascal. If this was a very unfamiliar pairing in most cases, with a cabinet minister and a south London lyricist speaking on the subject, it was a very familiar BBC editorial on black British life.
The BBC's ideology asserts that there exists an 'authentic blackness' that come from 'da street.' So rather than have a politician and historian or a sociologist and politician, there needs to be someone from da street to 'keep it real'. Amos brilliantly projected the Obama victory into the UK, specifically focusing on the unresolved and generally ignored questions of the structural transformations necessary for inclusion in public and private sectors. After all, Obama and many of his generation were at the tail end of affirmative action and one of its main exports, the emergence and mainstreaming of African American intellectual life. But for all Amos' brilliance, any meaningful discussion was derailed by Rascal's lack of understanding. It was akin to pairing Andrew Young with the likes of (deceased) rapper 'Dirty Old Bastard.'
In contrast to the plethora of African American intellectuals, politicians and commentators rolled out on CNN over the past few days I think the BBC's offering reduced black British comment to the level of farce — rendering it at best irrelevant and at worst a bit of a joke.
On the BBC Special Newsnight on Tuesday, Jeremy Paxman ended the show with a brief interview with Baroness Amos and the grime rap star Dizzy Rascal. If this was a very unfamiliar pairing in most cases, with a cabinet minister and a south London lyricist speaking on the subject, it was a very familiar BBC editorial on black British life.
The BBC's ideology asserts that there exists an 'authentic blackness' that come from 'da street.' So rather than have a politician and historian or a sociologist and politician, there needs to be someone from da street to 'keep it real'. Amos brilliantly projected the Obama victory into the UK, specifically focusing on the unresolved and generally ignored questions of the structural transformations necessary for inclusion in public and private sectors. After all, Obama and many of his generation were at the tail end of affirmative action and one of its main exports, the emergence and mainstreaming of African American intellectual life. But for all Amos' brilliance, any meaningful discussion was derailed by Rascal's lack of understanding. It was akin to pairing Andrew Young with the likes of (deceased) rapper 'Dirty Old Bastard.'
In contrast to the plethora of African American intellectuals, politicians and commentators rolled out on CNN over the past few days I think the BBC's offering reduced black British comment to the level of farce — rendering it at best irrelevant and at worst a bit of a joke.