What We’ve Been Up To
DDU hosted a screening of Martin Durkin’s The Great American Race Game at the Screen on the Green cinema in London. Bold and brave, the fascinating film was followed by a lively Q&A with the director and with the charismatic, no-holds-barred Beveline Beatty, one of the main interviewees in the film. You can buy or rent the film.
News Nuggets
The struggle for common sense and reality is facing an uphill task on American campuses. After a recent visit, Zoe Strimpel wrote in the Telegraph:
“There is something so totalitarian about what is going on that it is hard to believe it at all. Yet around the country, professors are tying themselves in knots to avoid describing reality so that students will be politically pacified, and not offended.”
Some idea of the unnecessary mess that culture warriors create can be seen in this article from the Daily Mail. It reports on a leaked recording of Elaine Welteroth, co-host of US TV show Talk, talking ‘off air’ to her former co-host Sharon Osbourne. Osbourne had been pushed off the show after co-star Sheryl Underwood challenged Osbourne’s ‘validation’ of Piers Morgan’s supposedly ‘racist’ remarks on Meghan Markle after the Oprah Winfrey interview. The conversation makes clear that all the people involved were manufacturing controversy and racial tension to feed into the expectations of those who are pushing critical race theory and racial divisions.
Just arrived on these shores from California, meanwhile, is a claim from food-blogger Chaheti Bansal that curry is a racist term because it reflects British colonial attitudes to South Asian cultures, the Daily Mail reports. There is a more nuanced view from the British-based chef, Asma Khan, that it is not racist, but lazy. Whether all South Asians are experts on European cuisine and never use the wrong term is not revealed. Fortunately, the British really love South Asian cookery and consume it by the barrow load.
In Pakistan this week an 8-year-old child has been charged with blasphemy, reports the Guardian. Those who virtue-signal, who complain endlessly about ‘micro-aggressions’ and who claim to be keen on social justice, remain resolutely silent on issues like this.
The GB News broadcaster, Merci Muroki, has pointed out that those who deny that knife crime in Britain is disproportionately a black issue might think that only some black lives matter.
The urge to avoid any accusation of racism, however unrealistic, is gripping so many of our institutions, such as the Met Police, and is leading to miscarriages of justice where racial or gender attitudes are an issue. While sermonising in Finsbury Park, Christian preacher, Hazel Lewis, was falsely accused by an accuser of race hatred and homophobia, reports the Telegraph. She has been cleared of the offence, for which there was no evidence whatsoever, the Met having acknowledged that her accuser goaded her, unsuccessfully. She will now sue the Met.
The same police force claimed that the stabbing of a Christian preacher by a Muslim was not connected to race or ethnicity. Read the account from the preacher, Hatun Tash, interviewed in the Spectator, and you might arrive at a different conclusion. The British police service is supposed to be neutral; clearly, it needs to work on this.
Dummy of the Week goes to Indie band, British Sea Power, who are dropping the word “British” from their name because of any unfortunate nationalist connotations, reports the Telegraph. Not having the courage of their convictions, however, they will continue to live in the UK, use their British passports and think Britain is a good place to be. Hello? Is there a point to this? Anyone for virtue-signalling and some free advertising?
DDU Updates
We shall not be meeting every week in August, and the next Monday meeting will be on August 23rd. The Parents’ Group will meet on Wednesday 18th August at 10am. The Education Group will meet on Tuesday August 31st. Drop us a line if you would like to take part.