[Malcolm Armsteen]

Is it?

Pray tell, wise one.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Do you know what Malcolm you just cannot see what Rupa Huq said was wrong you see it as wrong because of the timing I see it as wrong becasue it was racist. That Peep Show clip I posted whilst a parody is very revealing of your attitude.

You are so very, very off-base with this. I was the one doing the mentoring and the community work...

I expect that you won't understand that because, well, you know, it's easier to believe a cliche from a rubbish tv show that actually read and think about what someone who may actually have been there has written.

And if your argument is based on simplistic peep show clips rather than 40 years of serious work I have no words for you. Once again your snippiness is out of control, kid.

[The Weeping Angel]

You want to have a go at Kwasi Kwarteng have a go at hm for his politics, his support for Brexit, his mini-budget don't have a go at him fo r being superfically black. Would you say that Boris Johnson was superfically white? Of course not. Do you know what I've learnt is that Black people are just as capable of being right-wing as white people.

[The Weeping Angel]

Oh and here's some reading I've been doing

https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/ ... 1664364475

Keir Starmer wants to show that Labour is ready for power. The days of irresponsible policies and crank MPs are over. They are the adults in the room after successive waves of Tory crises. Only a few hours before his speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday this pristine image was dented.

At a conference fringe event Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton, said of the Chancellor of Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, that “he superficially is a black man”. She added, by way of absurd evidence: “He went to Eton, he went to a very expensive prep school… if you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn’t know he’s black.” Huq had the whip suspended for these comments.

Huq’s viewpoint is offensive, but what is immediately striking is just how bizarre it is. Why should being privately educated and well spoken disqualify someone from being black? Are the only authentically black people the ones who grew up in council estates and sound like rappers? Huq is hostile to Kwarteng’s politics. This is fair enough; disputation is fundamental to politics. But embedded in her mind, apparently, is a view of black people that ought to be unthinkable for someone who represents a party that prides itself on progressive values on race.

More than a decade ago, in a Newsnight debate on the 2011 London riots, the Tudor historian David Starkey made this comment about the Tottenham MP David Lammy: “Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.” This was part of a wider tirade about the influence of black culture on British society: white people in cities up and down the country now sound black. But thankfully, you’ve got people like Lammy on the other side of this, showing that black people can escape their blackness.

Huq seems to think the same. Her comments suggest that to be black is to occupy the lowest rungs of society, and only the Labour Party can save black people. Rich black Tories like Kwarteng betray their identity. They lose their black card because they undermine Huq’s picture of race. Black people can be rich or poor, left-wing or right-wing. They can sound like Kwasi Kwarteng or Dizzee Rascal.

I find it astonishing I even have to write that there is more than one way to be a black person. But the Labour Party is full of surprises. In his speech Starmer, echoing Tony Blair, described Labour as “the party of the centre ground”. “Once again,” he said, “we are the political wing of the British people.” Against the current Tory government, and according to the recent polls, this may be so. But there are still, as the Huq example demonstrates, attitudes about race within the party that run contrary to the centre ground. Starmer still has a lot of work to do.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

You're being even sillier than usual now...

[The Weeping Angel]

Well you're being even more arrogant than usual.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Maybe. But I'm the one who put in the work...

[The Weeping Angel]

Oh I see because I haven't your experience I can't express an opinion on this.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

You can express an opinion.

I can describe an experience.

[Crabcakes]

Thing is, the people Malc has worked with are entirely entitled to their opinion from their life experience, and he can share that opinion based on his life experience in working with them, AND it can still be true other people of colour (in fact, even the same people) think it was racist. It is not an either/or scenario.

What we can all agree on, and I expect (giving the benefit of the doubt) what Huq was trying to say is that minority representation is a wasted opportunity if that person seemingly brings nothing of themselves and *their* life experience to the table. And I would be amazed to find that a black man who went to Eton whose parents had emigrated from Ghana had the same experience as, say, Boris Johnson. Simply because there were and are people at that school like Boris Johnson. It’s not about him ‘escaping his blackness’, it’s about him seemingly being unable to relate to others whose blackness most certainly has been used to hold them back.

[Abernathy]

Yet again, Mr Cakes hits the nail on the head (see above).

The political importance of Starmer having to act and be seen to act swiftly and decisively on Huq’s remarks is very apparent (witness the alacrity with which senior Tories sought to pounce on Huq’s remarks with pearl-clutching outrage), but Huq’s basic point is clear, if still not properly understood, thanks to being clumsily expressed. And it is emphatically not one with foundations in racism, which I think Keir Starmer understands, but (rather obviously) cannot say so for public consumption,

[Youngian]

Rupa’s had her own obstacles to navigate as an Asian woman aspiring to be an MP that a white male doesn’t face. She should be more attuned in judging the compromises that African and Caribbean MPs have had to make even with a private education spring board.
I assumed Rupa was taking the mick and suggesting Kwasi’s unlikely to do the splits on stage while singing ‘People get up and drive your funky soul.’
Either way, the party doesn’t have time to explain distractions so its naughty step for Ms Huq.

[Oboogie]

Rupa Huq grew up in Ealing, attended the independent girls' school Notting Hill and Ealing High School and went to Cambridge. Whilst not from the same kind of wealth as Kwasi Kwarteng, her young life was far more privileged than most Bengali immigrants but, like Kwarteng, she will still have experienced racial discrimination, as all people of colour do, and been disadvantaged compared to her white contemporaries. I wonder if she regards herself as "superficially Asian"?

[Arrowhead]

Either way it, the party doesn’t have time to explain distractions so its naughty step for Ms Huq.

I think it'll amount to a lot more than merely time sat on the naughty step for Ms Huq. By the sounds of it, there seems a very real chance that she will step down as an MP imminently, or at the very least be required not to stand again at the next GE.

[Oboogie]

Either way it, the party doesn’t have time to explain distractions so its naughty step for Ms Huq.

I think it'll amount to a lot more than merely time sat on the naughty step for Ms Huq. By the sounds of it, there seems a very real chance that she will step down as an MP imminently, or at the very least be required not to stand again at the next GE.

Labour will be open to charges of hypocrisy if her case is treated any less seriously than the anti-Semites, it will do enormous damage if she's let off.

[The Weeping Angel]

Thing is, the people Malc has worked with are entirely entitled to their opinion from their life experience, and he can share that opinion based on his life experience in working with them, AND it can still be true other people of colour (in fact, even the same people) think it was racist. It is not an either/or scenario.

What we can all agree on, and I expect (giving the benefit of the doubt) what Huq was trying to say is that minority representation is a wasted opportunity if that person seemingly brings nothing of themselves and *their* life experience to the table. And I would be amazed to find that a black man who went to Eton whose parents had emigrated from Ghana had the same experience as, say, Boris Johnson. Simply because there were and are people at that school like Boris Johnson. It’s not about him ‘escaping his blackness’, it’s about him seemingly being unable to relate to others whose blackness most certainly has been used to hold them back.

What best sums up my view is from the New Statesman article I linked to

Huq seems to think the same. Her comments suggest that to be black is to occupy the lowest rungs of society, and only the Labour Party can save black people. Rich black Tories like Kwarteng betray their identity. They lose their black card because they undermine Huq’s picture of race. Black people can be rich or poor, left-wing or right-wing. They can sound like Kwasi Kwarteng or Dizzee Rascal.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Put it in your own words rather than cut and paste!

You have all sorts of issues when you do this, the writer you are promoting does not seem - to my eyes - to be some fount of wisdom. I don't see any reason to take his word as gospel.

It's what you do all the time, and it fails at the first test of reliability.

[The Weeping Angel]

The author of that article is Tomiwa Owolade I think he knows a lot more about this than you or me. Or is he superifically black as well?

https://twitter.com/tomowolade

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I know who the author is.

Being black doesn't make his views reliable. Or correct. They may be, but they may equally be not.
This is the problem with your constant 'proving' your points with some random Tweet or article you've dug up somewhere.

And yes, my experience is still valid...

[The Weeping Angel]

This is the problem with you Malcolm you dismiss any point or argument that runs contrary to your views and your experience.