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Who do you think we are?
Desert Island Discs is a fantastically successful radio programme. Its secret is its distinguished guests whose history and philosophy is teased out of them by an experienced and well-briefed interviewer and their choice of music, of course.
It is no wonder that Britain's self acknowledged chief social commentator, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who clearly ought to take over the presenter's role as well as becoming chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, has provided useful criticism of its current presenter Sue Lawley.
She chose an edition of the programme for an article in the Independent to illustrate the difficulties facing black boys in our society as a result of negative stereotypes with a carefully composed analysis of the shortcomings of Ms Lawley.
Ms Lawley's interview with poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, she revealed, exposed her as just another liberal interviewer guilty of stereotyping black men. It is worthwhile examining how Mrs Alibhai Brown came to this conclusion and how she expressed this insight.
Mr Johnson was well into the programme and about to choose as his sole example of classical music a Vivaldi piece. This is the transcript.
Lawley: OK. Record number 5.
Kwesi Johnson: Record number 5 is Spring, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I'm not a great [interruption by Lawley]
Lawley: Doesn't quite fit in [chuckle] to this whole discussion, or these pieces of music. Where did this come from? [Kwesi Johnson: amused interruption: I know..I know..I know.]
Kwesi Johnson: It's the only piece of classical music that I can hum. I just think it's a fantastic piece of music and it's the kind of thing that one would like to have on a desert island because when you are feeling a bit down in the dumps a tune like this would make you realise how good it is to be alive.
Mrs Alibhai Brown's deconstruction of this conversation follows:
Sue Lawley was knocked off her chair this weekend when he chose Vivaldi to take to his Desert Island. What? You could hear her cultivated mind panicking, a black street man like you? Are you sure? What about something more suitable, you know, Rastaman stuff, or soul, sounds to remind you of what you really are? She was well placated when he did go on to choose Marley.
Mrs Alibhai Brown's ability to get inside the head of Ms Lawley is as impressive as her modified use of the ' black' slang 'well placated', soon no doubt to be familiar around inner city playgrounds.
Her readers can learn so much about Ms Lawley from Mrs Alibhai Brown's analysis of her character and perhaps even more about her own. 'Cultivated mind panicking' is brilliant. I need many more words to express what she packs into these three words. But let's try!
This posh white woman with her narrow middle class and racially exclusive background which sees black people as cleaners and attendants at the BBC or as smiling staff in West Indian hotel resorts is suddenly presented with the shocking realisation that a black man whom she cannot stop herself patronising shares her European high culture. No wonder she had to try to push him back inside her bigoted pigeonhole where he and she would be safe. She's essentially a good hearted woman trying as hard as she can but she will never have the necessary experience to understand and interpret the world that an upwardly mobile, reform Muslim, Ugandan Asian, Oxford educated, aware of her roots both shameful and heroic, campaigning journalist, successful wife, mother and daughter, victim of white, black and Asian racism can bring to bear on any cultural matter with her formidable intellect, instinct and establishment connections.
Less enlightened Radio 4 listeners would have missed all this. They would have heard an entertaining programme where a skilful, worldly journalist clearly engaging with her guest succeeded in presenting to a general audience a gifted and significant poet, enabled in a short programme to give a valuable insight into his life and work.
You need to read the Independent to know better.
Notes:
Yasmin Alibhai Brown is a prolific writer, broadcaster and author. Her book Who Do You Think We Are? is a description and prescription for a multicultural Britain. Her article "Who wrecks the hopes and dreams of black boys?" appeared in The Independent 9 December 2002. This article can still be found on UK Black Out http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:w7hw_mY9YN0J:www.ukblackout.com/content/view/262/2/+%22well+placated%22&hl=en
Sue Lawley, OBE is the almost universally recognised distinguished doyenne of radio and television broadcasting. Her thirty-year career credits include presenting the Nine o'clock and Six o' clock News, Question Time and Desert Island Discs.
Linton Kwesi Johnson was interviewed by Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs 8 December 2002
Gerald Hartup is a freelance journalist and the director of Liberty and Law, which he set up in 2002. He is a political campaigner of over 20 years experience with the Freedom Association where he was its director until 1999. He is particularly proud of his part in ending the 'closed shop', the notorious British system of compulsory union membership. He is one of the UK's foremost experts on race relations and has appeared many times on radio and television correcting the pessimistic bias of the race relations industry. He is the author of Misreporting Racial Attacks, Hampden Trust 1995.
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