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Yes, sorrry if I sounded short, Tsuga - I was racing. You did indeed qualify that.
However, I think you are missing the point, rather. I sort of am saying it's a weak excuse for people to say that this guy making racist jokes was okay because he was just being honest to the working class. However, I think we mean two different things by that. You seem to mean that the fact that the working class are racist does not excuse the racism of a member of the working class, although it may help to explain it. I mean that there is no reason why one should just think "well, that's the working class for you: racist". I don't think it's true that the Northern British working class are racist in a way or to an extent that other people in Britain are not. I do think that the way that racism manifests itself is different, is often more visible and is the subject of more attention, precisely because the attention is conferred by people outside the working classes. See for comparison the comparative example you used - how much more other can you get than fundamentalist Islamic theocracies? See also also the way that these impulses are used - for example, how white dockers often found themselves being told that equal pay would take the bread from their table, when in fact it meant that the people who owned the docks would possibly have to have a bit less caviar on theirs - the net requirement for labour would be the same. Turn it around, and you can have foreign workers who will do the same job for less money taking jobs away from "our" workforce - again, race is being used here as a way to prevent workers from aligning their goals.
As such, the Labour movement, which has strong foundations in the North of England and Wales, has often worked to educate and mobilise labour - the working class - to identify where the real blocks to their interest are. Likewise, the BNP recently has sought to spread the idea that it makes good economic sense for the working classes to hold and act on racist views.
So, point one, there is nothing intrinsically or necessarily racist abour working-class culture in the North of England. Point two, the way racism happens in the North of England is not the only way racism can happen, or its most extreme or effectual manifestation. Point three, I think, is that it seems clear that Manning was _not_ just behaving in line with his (racist, Northern English, working class) culture - not least because that culture doesn't generally get on stage with a microphone, or want to have its own television programme, and because a lot of other people from his age and his culture managed to get through the day without using hate speech on stage. |
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