This was the title of a poll run by the BBC Newsnight programme recently. This is part of a series of programmes called The White Season on BBC2.
The FT leads with “Richard Klein, the initiator and commissioning editor for the series, says: “I feel the white working class has been ignored by the political classes. They feel the pressure of ‘political correctness’ – and the BBC has been one of these pressures. The way in which they see the world may come across as extremist but that’s not how they see it. This season was in part an attempt to revolt, to say, ‘Why don’t we discuss this?’ I think there has been a loss of nerve in the past to grapple with challenging issues”
I actually agree. I live within sounding distance of an area where BNP politics are not something swept under the carpet. I want to hear the argument. Whether extreme or balanced. There is space for all. There are a number of voices being raised about the lack of representation for white working class people in regards to immigration, housing, political correctness, political voices, crime and other issues. I want to hear them. As a black so called middle class male, I love for people to hear my concerns as a black man so I commend the BBC for this series. Admittedly I dont watch much TV but the BBC online player will be a source for great viewing over the next week or so.
After the dust has settled and the knee jerk reactions have subsided it will be good to sift through all the comments to the heart of the concerns of what some say is 70% of the British population getting their voices heard. You know m. Always looking for a healthy debate on issues of race and culture.
Filed under: Uncategorized , TV
As a young black woman in the home counties, i simply must disagree. the White working class are never going to be ignored they are the majority of the electorate. dispite what they presume black or ethnic people as a whole only account for 8-15% of the population . It’s amazing how just being alive i can threaten a whole section of the poulation.
they need a serious reality check.
The BNP posse tell them that immigrants walk in and get a free home, how do the council know i am not a 1st generatioon immigrant (i am not) if they are giving away homes where? I can’t get on the property ladder either don’t see me grabbing a pitchfork and intimdating anyone.
seriously if i had the cash i’d pick up and leave because these “ignored” people get on my nerves.
it would appear that most of the voices that have been aired on these shows tend to come from places where their is a higher mix of non white working class people.
Surely if they feel ignored they should have a right to express this no?
I don’t really see what the difference is between white working class and any other working class group… Don’t they all face the same struggles? Do government policies affect white working class people more than black or Asian working class people? Is the white working class really worse off than any other working class group? I really don’t think so.
To be honest, I think this series is really about race, about being white, but the BBC have put it under the guise of being about ‘white and working class’ and disingenously tried to suggest that their series is more to do with politics rather than race. For example, what has political correctness got to do with class? Isn’t it an issue of race when white people believe that political correctness has meant that minority interests are put ahead of theirs?
If white people feel ignored they have a right to express it, but feeling something and the reality of situation are 2 different things. I might feel fat on a particular day – that does not mean that I am. To my mind it seems that many white people have always felt under threat in some way or another from minorities, going back a number of centuries and it hasn’t really necessarily been borne out by any reality or hard evidence.
Reading between the lines I get a sense that people feel hard done by because they feel that they are white and should be better off in their “own” country than more newly arrived people. I get the sense they feel that it doesn’t really matter if people of colour are poor or on the lower rungs of society because they are not natives. The attitude seems to be ‘i’m white and my interests should come first’… There is an attitude of ‘how come that black person or indian person is doing better than me? i’m white, i’m from here!’. That to me seems to be the basis for the complaining and the feeling ignored.
Interesting link and ensuing comments here
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/joseph_harker/2008/03/white_wash.html
This is going to be hard for me to say but I have to agree with you David. Without discounting what black people have to go through, as a white person, sometimes they must feel that they cannot say ANYTHING without it being deemed racist. To be honest, some of it is just that they dont know and they say things out of ignorance. They just dont know. You may have remember I mentioned Gracism on UB1 (http://realchristianity.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/just-came-back-from-small-group-gracism) and it definitely has helped me see things from both sides of the fence. especially when we discuss this in my small group which has a good blend of black and white people
Alan Higgins may have a point but the question I have to ask is what does that have to do with being white and working class? Do white middle or upper class people have an easier time discussing race? And to be honest, the discussion of race would seem to me to be the very least of any working class person’s problems.
If the BBC wants to discuss the fact that white people feel unable to discuss issues of race, then they should quite openly say that is what they are focussing on. From what I can tell, the entire white season on the BBC focusses pretty much on race, immigration and multi culturalism. Are those the real issues affecting white working class people? Really?!! Not taxation, not education, not housing, not lack of access or opportunity? Or maybe in everyone’s minds, the problems facing white people are just so linked to immigration and race that those other – to me much more important and relevant – issues are just overlooked???
Also, this whole thing about ‘white people can’t talk about race’ is starting to annoy me. Quite frankly, I’ve rarely heard white people discuss race in any kind of sensible way that is not racist or carry prejudice within it. It seems people are upset that they can’t discuss their prejudices anymore, rather than they can’t discuss race. Or maybe the real problem is that for so many the two are one and the same and race=prejudice.
hiya dave i was at ur talk at south themes colege befor i start i do appolagise for my spelling im dyslexic.
i’m white but im only second generation english my family is irish and they are hard done by and im not bias. they have been under the control of england for over 800 years petato famin and all that. Anyway stertistics show that the white working class boys are doing worse in education than any other ethnicity and also have the higest suicide rate, i’m not saying that they are more hard done by becouse i believe you make your own future, but i do believe also that that those statistics say somthing. white people also have racist comments said to them i myself have done so myself, for exsample i was told that i was the one who was involved in the slave trade i am less british than the person who said it to me and incase they havnt noticed they origanl brits are no longer here hello invation rome, normandie, norway the list goes on. i’m not defending what happened i think its discusting but i think that everything is exsactly the same on both sides, people are fed up and its down to the govenment and media s**t stiring all of the time. for exsample in the meadia (as in the news ) films black people are shown as the bad people like mugging and stuff when in actual fact every race is like that , but i think this puts fear into people espeshally white people i think that it is not a matter of not making them selves heard it is a matter that they are to scared to becouse of this.