Bad Choice Of Words

We all have said or done things we wished we hadn’t but Shadow Health Minister, Diane Abbot’s bad choice of words yesterday took the biscuit.

On BBC London’s drive time show yesterday, Diane Abbot said that she had supported the Lawrences before it became fashionable. Does she really think that supporting a family’s justice when you learn about the gravitas of the tragedy is just about trend? It was a terribly egotistical comment that insulted the Lawrences campaign for justice.

Then she tweeted “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game” and excused herself by saying that she was referring to the nature of 19th century European colonialism. As a campaigner for racial equality, did she really not know that a loaded comment as that would not cause offence? Furthermore such generalisation is racist.

Well I guess the one good that can come of these bad choice of words is that racism is on the political and social agenda.

Bunty

Posted on January 5, 2012 at 9:56 pm in Daily Musings & Ponderings | RSS feed | Reply | Trackback URL

Tags: Diane Abbot, equality, Hackney, Labour, Lawrence, Minister, MP, News, Politics, racism

2 Comments to “Bad Choice Of Words”

Vakeel Bibi
January 9, 2012 at 7:55 pm

She was really stupid to tweet that but people do make mistakes and often on twitter unfortuanately – what about the next day when Milliband tweeted “blackbusters” instead of “blockbusters” ?

That comment does not make DA a racist but it does highlight what a nicompoop she is and why no-one voted for her to take leadership of the labour party.

A close friend of mine (who is involved in policy-making think tanks) considers that you literally cannot be “racist” if you are black/brown etc as if you belong to the minority in a country then you can’t be racist against the majority. What do you think? On that reckoning, DA can have prejudisms against white people (and whatever you think, her comments do highlight a level of ignorance) but she physically can’t be racist as she is black and this term can only be used agains the majority. I’m not sure. All I do know is that most “racist” people I know are Asian.

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Bunty
January 9, 2012 at 9:28 pm

Isn’t racism a dislike/ignorance of one race against another? Surely, you can be racist whatever your own race regardless of whether you are the majority or not. This is like saying Apartheid wasn’t a racist regime because there must have been more black people in South Africa than white…. Is your friend for real???
For me too, Vakeel Bibi, the most racist people I know are Asian. I don’t want to even get into the heirachy of racism amongst Asians.
Milliband’s was a typo not an intentional phrase. DA was trying to make a point very badly.

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