Daily View: David Starkey's comments on race and riots
Historian David Starkey's views on the riots have provoked debate online. On Newsnight he said:
"The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion."
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit µþµþ°äÌý°Â±ð²ú·É¾±²õ±ð for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
The two other authors on the Newsnight panel have responded to his comments.
David Starkey's views random and confused but says "most people will realise this":
"It is, as anyone who's tried it will know, very difficult to argue with crass stupidity. What do you make of someone who thinks using 'Jamaican' slang encourages youth to torch buildings? You may as well argue that speaking with an upper-class accent encourages people to hunt foxes."
Also on the same Newsnight panel, that David Starkey's comments could provoke dangerous repercussions:
"My fear is that - with an understandable backlash underway - Starkey's comments could prove to be a disastrous turning point. He has put race at the top of the agenda when millions are scared and angry. As some took to the streets in support of Enoch Powell's 'river of blood', there will be whispers across the country 'that Starkey has a point'.
Ìý
"I did my best to challenge David Starkey in the studio - difficult though that was. At a time of backlash and economic insecurity, we all need to be taking these arguments on in our communities. If we fail, last week's riots could be a dark foreshadow of far worse to come."
that David Starkey's views are unhelpful:
"We can't afford to be so divided, mistrustful and prejudiced against this group or that. The millions who are revolted by what just happened had better understand that to bring greater national unity we need to hear less from the likes of Starkey and more from wise people like Tariq Jehan, father of one of the dead men in Birmingham who talked so movingly about our collective humanity. But, as they would say on Newsnight and other political programmes, where's the story in that?"
David Starkey also brought up in the interview that Labour MP for Tottenham David Lammy was "an archetypical, successful black man" and "if you turned the screen off, so that you were listening to him on radio, you'd think he was white".
Mr Lammy dismissed Mr Starkey's views on Twitter:
Yes, I have now seen what he said. His views are irrelevant - he's a tudor historian talking about contemporary urban unrest.
asks: "does Starkey really believe that the only white kids involved in the chaos were wanna-be blacks?":
"David Starkey is a historian after all. He must know of the many riots that have taken place in this country over the years. Northern Ireland has had several. There were the Gordon riots of 1780 in England when white people destroyed property and looted, long before the vast majority of blacks ever set foot on these isles! India was plundered by British soldiers who marched off after every battle with as much stuff as they could carry! 'Whites have become black'? It is simply absurd!"
In David Starkey's defence that David Starkey was not being racist:
"To begin with, Starkey wasn't talking about black culture in general, but, as he was anxious to point out, a 'particular form' of black culture, i.e. 'the violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture' associated with Jamaican gangs and American rap music. Had he been talking about these qualities as if they were synonymous with African-Caribbean culture per se, or condemning that culture in its totality, then he would have been guilty of racism. But he wasn't. He was quite specifically condemning a sub-culture associated with a small minority of people of African-Caribbean heritage. (Admittedly, he could have made this clearer.) Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots."
David Starkey's freedom of speech:
"As a black academic and head of an organisation that encourages young blacks to apply for university, I might be thought of as an obvious candidate to join this swelling chorus of disapproval...
Ìý
"Yet, for all my dislike of what he said, I feel uneasy about the howling, strident anger that has been unleashed against him. This is partly because I think that, in the current debate about our social malaise, it is wrong to silence any voice through a form of politically correct McCarthyism."
