BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day Accused of Racism Over African ‘Moral Deficit’ Claim
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Nicole Martin, London Telegraph, July 10, 2008
Clifford Longley, the author and writer, said on the corporation’s early morning religious slot that a Nigerian theologian had suggested African culture had always lacked “a developed sense of common humanity”, which explained “Africa’s propensity to turn to massacre and genocide”.
He said in the broadcast that the Nigerian theologian had suggested to him that Africans suffered from the deficit.
His comments, which were made last month, prompted the BBC Black and Asian Forum to complain to the corporation’s head of news and to the editor of the Today programme.
Winston Phillips, the forum’s chairman, said he found the remarks “offensive”, adding that many listeners believed the remarks were “racist”.
“While sensitive to the need for an exchange of wide-ranging views on important topics, the BBAF also feels the BBC should ensure it does not present racist or xenophobic views in an unqualified way,” he said in a letter published in Ariel, the BBC’s in-house magazine.
“The fact that the broadcast went out unchallenged points to a wider problem in the BBC, and the media generally—the failure to advance [black and Asian] people to senior positions.
His remarks comes only weeks after a senior BBC executive attacked the corporation and other broadcasters for failing to employ black and Asian people in senior roles.
Samir Shah, a non-executive director at the BBC, said that ethnic minorities as well as people from working class backgrounds were still being excluded from the industry’s so-called “power elite”, despite equal opportunity policies stretching back 30 years.
A BBC spokesman said: “We have received a complaint from the BBAF and are looking into it and we will be responding in due course.”
(Posted on July 10, 2008)
Comments
“Clifford Longley, the author and writer, said on the corporation’s early morning religious slot that a Nigerian theologian had suggested African culture had always lacked “a developed sense of common humanity”, which explained “Africa’s propensity to turn to massacre and genocide”.”
More P.C. madness:
So a white person repeating a comment by a black African on black Africans is “racist”?
Then again, as things deteriorate race-wise in the United Kingdom accusations of racism against the most ardent-Leftist/Liberal personalities, organisations, news networks will increase - this was the same B.B.C who’s “White Week” involved little more than:
* Bashing the British white working class.
* Claiming that the “only immigration problems Britain has are with Eastern Europeans”.
* Attempting to paint Islam as something other than a barbaric religion.
I guess there’s some dark humour in the fact that such white “anti-racists” will still be called “racists”
Posted by Obscuratus at 6:34 PM on July 10
Speak the truth or a well-considered opinion and the thought police will catch you. Dr John Watson has suffered as have many more and more will in the future until the sick and brainless are sent to the corner they so richly deserve to spend their wasted time in. But this will only happen when the masses object as one everywhere these people infest society.
Dr John Watson is/was the American geneticist who gave his considered opinion just before he was due to give a lecture at the British Museum in London, England that the intelligence levels of the African blacks did not bode well for their future advancement and well-being. The PC brigade jumped on the statement and the rent-a-thugs chased him out of Britain.
Burt see what a Nigerian journalist wrote about the statement when his published column in a Nigerian news-paper agreed with Dr Watson’s opinion.
http://www.spainvia.com/nigeriantruth.htm
Posted by B J Deller at 6:36 PM on July 10
When all that matters is what people ‘claim’ I think we can expect to hear a lot more of them. More claims of evil, racism, and bias. Except from whites because they aren’t allowed to say much of anything except for how much they admire it all, especially those fill-in-the-blank non-whites.
Posted by at 7:18 PM on July 10
“BBC can make up for it by promoting nonwhites to senior positions.”
Yes, and after they’re awarded their positions to shut them up, they’ll pretend that they earned them, do substandard work, and in many cases will cause serious problems, and when they’re fired for the good of the company they’ll scream discrimination.
This is the black experience in EVERY Western country.
Look at the Bell Curve graphs and note the tiny, wee number of blacks with I.Q.’s over the 120 area, and note to that the graph flat lines out not far after that.
A group average I.Q. of 85 (That’s inflated) and just an insignificant portion in the higher range doesn’t indicate a people who score so abysmally low can produce doctors, scientists, or even CEO’s. (As long as the LSAT tests are based on repetitious, rote, memorization and learning a few will continue to pass that, especially since they are passed to fill quotas.))
Posted by Q at 9:59 AM on July 11
It’s long past time that the BBC was disbanded. It’s funded by a poll tax (the Licence Fee) levied at the same rate on rich and poor alike and, in these days of multiple commercial channels, increasingly indefencible. Moreover,and worse, its enormous unearned income - far in excess of the funds available to its rivals - have led it to develop a corporate culture compounded of arrogant self-regard (it really does think it’s the best in the world) and political correctness so overweening that it is barely aware that different perspectives exist or, if they do that they might be worthy of consideration.
So it is extraordinary that anything even as faintly un-pc as this could have got past the censors. That it did may be an indication that the BBC is scrabbling to reposition itself in a, surely futile, attempt to ward off the gathering forces of reform.
Posted by jrb at 5:12 PM on July 11
BJ Deller, Thanks for that link, such a pity that that kind of article doesn’t get more publicity. South Africa is the tragedy which so aptly highlights the hypocrisy of the Left - now fallen into silence while their pet project rots, and their indifference towards their fellow man once they have served their purpose; Blacks are no longer any use now that White Capitalists have been ousted. They same story repeats itself in nation after nation and it makes me sick to see their hatefilled faces mouthing of platitudes about caring and injustice.
My sister and her family have recently left Jo’burg (again) after 30 years of trying to make a go of it there. She’s suffering from severe depression brought on by the realisation that all their efforts and entire lives have been wasted in a once promising country. At one time they lived in Hillbrow, now a nightmarish suburb which is featured in the ‘tour of Jo’burg’ link we see here from time to time.
Arc.
Posted by arcadian at 12:21 PM on July 13
I don’t get it; is the charge directed at Longley, or is it directed at the Nigerian “theologian”? Didn’t Longley say that he was quoting the “theologian”? If that’s the case, the charge should be directed at the theologian - but won’t be, because Bantus cannot be racists, no matter what they say!
Note to some posters:
The Dr. Watson who said those things regarding the paucity of African Bantu intelligence, is Dr. JAMES Watson, not Dr. John Watson.
Dr. John Watson was Sherlock Holmes’ friend and sidekick.
Posted by Sopranoo Fan at 3:08 PM on July 13
Try this excerpt of a story. The ONLY FACT missing is that the problems Britain faces are largely due to its folly in allowing so much third-world immigration. It’s almost as if the British Government is doing its utmost to destroy England forever!
>>>Britain is creating youths who have nothing to lose by crime
Minette Marrin
Personal responsibility was the political buzzword of last week. The prime minister urged us to take personal responsibility for global waste, poverty and pollution by eating up our greens –- I hope he himself left a clean plate after consuming his 57 varieties of high-status food at the G8.
Less absurdly, David Cameron spoke of personal responsibility at a by-election launch in the miserable depths of Glasgow’s Gallowgate about “broken” Britain. It is a society, he said, that is “in danger of losing its sense of personal responsibility, social responsibility, common decency and yes, even public morality”.
It is remarkable that a Conservative politician can now talk like this without being ridiculed. No one disagrees any longer that Britain is in parts and in places broken; Gallowgate is a horrifying microcosm of broken families, broken spirits, broken health and broken schools; it is a dark place of chronic unemployment, violence and crime, of disorder and fear –- a disgrace to the supposedly developed world.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4322604.ece
Posted by Fed Up at 1:09 PM on July 14