Kemi Badenoch: racism with a Black face?

Kemi Badenoch

One of the dreary developments of recent decades has been the development of and nurturing of Black faces to mouth statements that conservative whites are  too frightened to say anymore. Like Anthony Appiah defending claims that African women like gorillas as lovers, or that young black Americans prefer to spend their days in endless drug induced sex orgies (Malcolm Gladwell). These Black faces say the otherwise  unsayable. They are like the Conversos in Spain who made very lucrative careers viciously attacking and libelling their Jewish ancestry, believing they had thus integrated themselves into Spanish society. Little did they know they were bringing about their own destruction under the Inquisition. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Kemi wrote:

‘‘I was unlucky enough to grow up under a military dictatorship which had very Left-wing, socialist policies. It’s not something I would wish on anyone.’ (Note 1)

To suggest that Babangida was a socialist and that the military government imposed socialist policies is beyond laughable. But her audience probably could not find Nigeria on a map if they tried. Babangida was  far from being a socialist, he  imposed IMF promoted economic  liberalization and privatization of state owned enterprises.  The impoverishment  Badenoch witnessed was a Western policy induced structural adjustment program (SAP) where public provision of services was severely curtailed. SAP was subsequently heavily criticised and the IMF later admitted it did not work. Shall we be charitable and  accept that on this issue Badenoch was just plain ignorant rather than  a naked Trumpian liar. This may be a touch over generous as she did work in a major bank and presumably they taught her something there about the financial world.

She  is quoted later as saying:

‘ how she ‘fetched water a mile away in heavy, rusty buckets because the nationalised water could not get water to flow from the tap’.

This is the daughter of a professor of physiology and a GP? Rusty bucket? She should be dead by now given the likelihood of rusty buckets acting as petri dishes (Note 2). And what is she saying about her parents’ care for her? They could afford to fly to the UK for private maternity care to ensure her safe delivery but then allowed her to drink out of a rusty bucket? 

She also made anti Black Lives Matter comments :

‘She added that schools have a statutory duty to remain politically impartial and should not openly support “the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group”. (Note 3)

Black Lives Matter is now recast as ‘anticapitalist’? This is just Trumpian disinformation with a Black face.

To see how extremely biased this lady is one should consider the following. According to Badenoch’s principles  schools should not treat Nazism as bad but should present a ‘balanced’ point of view, and all this one sided presentation of the Holocaust should immediately stop.  Schools should give equal prominence to the Nazi point of view.  The Holocaust should not be taught as ‘uncontested fact’. Then for goodness sake all this talk about the abolitionists and slavery! There should be equal time given to the pro-slavery arguments of Southerners. Also there must have been some positive side to slavery that should be mentioned, not so?

I particularly like her comment: ‘“I’m a black conservative. I don’t think every offensive comment is racism,’..  So let us apply this to anti-semitism. ‘I don’t think every offensive comment about Jews is anti-semitic’?

Ms Badenoch is also reported as saying at a dinner at Houses of Parliament for Nigerian conservatives that life at Queens College, Lagos, a premier Nigerian girl’s school, is worse than a UK prison. Really? Objective or self-hating?

If a white Minister were to say any of the above they would be pilloried as racist. This would not be a dog whistle .. it is trumpet.

Having a Black skin should not be a shield for racism.

references:

  1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7756705/Never-mind-kissing-babies-campaign-trail-Ive-just-one.html
  2. https://connect2local.com/l/451324/c/570126/what-happens-when-you-drink-rusty-water
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/20/teaching-white-privilege-is-a-fact-breaks-the-law-minister-says