Apologists for Starkey should hang their heads in shame

There has been a lot of furore created by historian David Starkey's comments on Newsnight last week after he blamed the failings of society and the recent riots on the fact that "the Whites have become Black". Here, David Dalgleish, author of Where Does Racism Come From? writes about why those who defend Starkey's comments shouldn't believe it is free of racial prejudice.

IN an article for the Daily Mail, the educational academic and CEO of the charity Generating Genius – Tony Sewell, has called for critics not to “howl [the historian David] Starkey down”.

Starkey caused controversy on the Friday edition of Newsnight by claiming that the recent rioting and a general decline in society has been caused by the fact that "the Whites have become Black. A particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and Black and White boys and girls operate in this language together”.

Sewell and the Telegraph bloggers Toby Young and James Delingpole rushed to his defence. Sewell took the line that Starkey has a point about ‘gangsta’ culture; Young argued that Starkey was not racist according to the dictionary definition; and Delingpole stated that “the cultural point he was making is indisputable”.

The elephant in the room that Starkey and then Sewell, Young and Delingpole missed or ignored is the “destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion” that comes from mainstream ‘White culture’. This particular celebration of gangster (not ‘gangsta’) culture was absent from the debate.

That was not brought into focus, or even considered pervasive by Starkey and his apologists. In the race to defend him, and portray his critics as politically correct McCarthyites pulling the well worn race card, they – like Starkey – ignored the blatant evidence that these pervasive influences are much wider than rap or ‘Black culture’.

If any piece of media typifies the looting and the criminality witnessed last week the Grand Theft Auto video game series has to be a strong contender. Similar video game series include Saints Row, Hitman, Driver, and Scarface. These are just a few of the countless video games that are dripping in violence, nihilism, and gangster glorification. It is this clear evidence (before we even venture toward film) that the Starkeyites either pretend to be unaware of or seemingly believe not to have the psychological impact that rap does.

As part of his defence, Toby Young was eager to quote (one part of) the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition of racism: “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race”. He then quickly concluded that as Starkey’s ire was not towards all Black people, his comments cannot be defined as racism.

What Young did not disclose is that the same OED definition goes on to refer to ”prejudice and antagonism towards people of other races, esp. those felt to be a threat to one's cultural or racial integrity”. That is what Starkey did, so perhaps Young could look up the definition of ‘misrepresentation’ next time he has the OED to hand.

Alternatively someone needs to find out why rap is capable of the psychological impact that Delingpole argues is an indisputable cultural point, but the aforementioned video games do not. Similarly, is there nothing pervasive in the films that glorify the gangster life, or at best show it as cool? Films like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Layer Cake, Gangster #1,

Goodfellas, The Godfather, or Scarface, to name but a few.

In the face of clear negative influences across a wide array of culture and mainstream media, the question is why Starkey would single out one aspect of Black culture, and then (randomly) link it to another aspect of black culture (i.e. patois). Whilst I would agree that some rap music is indefensible, I know that to single it out for the cause of societal decline is either incompetent or duplicitous.

His inference is that rap has some kind of kryptonite like quality other forms of media simply do not have. If his apologists stopped to think about that, rather than trying to weave narratives about how critiquing Starkey is ‘howling him down’ they might realise that just because they can see Starkey’s point, it does not mean it is free of racial prejudice.

David Dalgleish