A chimpanzee in a suit. It’s a racist caricature associated with times gone by – ones we’d like to imagine we had left behind in the 20th century, a period characterised by segregation, dehumanisation and, well, comparing black people to animals. So understandably, all hell broke loose on Wednesday when the BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Danny Baker tweeted a picture of a couple with an ape descending a flight of steps, captioned: “Royal baby leaves hospital.”
Baker was sacked faster than you can say “racism”, but nonetheless claimed the tweet was misinterpreted. “Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased,” was his initial response. He later clarified that he intended it to be a gag comparing the royal family to circus animals “in posh clothes”. This defence seems like a reach to me. But even if we give Baker the benefit of the doubt, the incident shows that a subset of the population seems to be on a different planet when it comes to conversations around race.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vOm1s0
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