Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
I shouldn’t really be surprised perhaps at how negative, miserable and badly thought out peoples comments on Twitter (AKA “X” as it is now known) can be. It really is the ultimate cesspit of human stupidity, half baked ideas and opinions with little to no backing. More over, trolls, pranksters and “men who just want to watch the world burn.”
But occasionally, I’ll admit it still does surprise me how nuts it can get.
For some reason, last week, on Wednesday/Thursday (14th Sept 2023) there was a sudden flurry of upset about a video clip of a song by the BBC. The clip that caused the sudden outpouring of anger was from the BBC’s Horrible Histories show, an educational series for children about history, which often uses jokes, comedy and songs to explain history and historical events.
You can see the clip here
Weirdly, the song was actually part of a show (and published by the BBC) over a year ago but only suddenly seemed to be upsetting to people last week? I’m not sure why the delayed reaction?
But reaction there certainly was. Oddly, several accounts (all of which seem to have a right wing/conservative bias/theme) posted the video with exactly the same comments, word for word (or, in some cases, extremely similar)
Been Here From the Start’ – the BBC’s “Horrible Histories” teaching young children that Europeans were black (Africans.)
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed,
It’s difficult not to look at a situation like this and expect conspiracy? Given this isn’t a repost of a single tweet someone wrote, this is the same verbiage being posted against and again by different accounts, it raises questions?
Are all of these accounts run by the same person/people? Is there a script/bot at play? You’d be forgiven for thinking that there is a script writer somewhere who wrote the words for publication on a particular day/time ? Someone is agenda setting?
The comments under each of these were as unhinged, scaremongering and half baked as you can imagine.
Look, I’m a white guy. I have no skin in this game (excuse the pun). And whilst I generally vote left, I’m a long way from woke. I get tired of the media constantly trying to “get the message across” too. Whether it be remaking films with only women, the “stupid dad” trope or the unusually high number of mixed race couples in adverts, I’m as put off and annoyed by wokeism being pushed down my throat as the next person.
All of that sad, I genuinely struggled to understand the meltdown over this one.
It struck me that actually, most of these accounts had actually not really watched the clip or listened to the lyrics?
The lyrics are as follows :-
Please lend me your ears For this news I shall impart You may not have been told We have been here from the start. We worked in the Stone Age, Went to war with Bonaparte; Before these isles were British Black people played their part. Cheddar man was Mesolithic 10,000 years from now, When the animals were terrific (You should see his giant cow.) And the Roman Emperor General And the brave Aurelian Moors, Were just a few of several Who walked upon these shores. Listen to the tales And these words I shall impart Before Harold lost at Hastings Black people played their part. Queen Catherine and Henry Had a trumpeter called John And a maid call Catalina But from history books they're gone! Of naked Georgian writers And the stars of boxing rings To the battlefields of Europe And the Windrush I can sing Please lend me your ears For this news I shall impart Before Harold lost at Hastings Black people played their part. These histories are just stories, there's truths for us to see That for 10,000 British years some Brits have looked like me. And today the future's hopeful; Rashford and Stormzy light the way Evaristo, Blackman, Hamilton, Kaluuya and many more names to say. Listen to the tales There are words to fill your heart You may not have been told We have been here from the start. Try to map our journey You will need a bigger chart Before these isles were British Black people played their part.
The song does NOTHING to destroy anyone’s culture that I can see? It does NOTHING to attack white people or the UK? At least, I didn’t feel remotely attacked in any way watching it.
Further, it does NOT “claim ownership” of the British Isles or Europe or any other such ridiculous notion. I don’t know how anyone could read/hear these lyrics and think this ?
So many people however on twitter seemed so intent on arguing against points like these, that actually weren’t made? I see this so often in written debate, on twitter and also in the past on quora. Where someone makes a counter point against an argument that wasn’t really being made to begin with? It’s as if people want to have an argument and be upset about something,just for the sake of it.
Additionally, the claim that this song is “teaching young children that Europeans were black (Africans.)” is a bit disingenuous in my view.
The song claims SOME brits were black going back 10,000 years. You could argue “well, ‘brits’ are European, therefore the claim stands”
Ok, true. But this however, I think is a little bit of a stretch? And perhaps misinterpreting the purpose of the song somewhat?What this song is clearly saying in my opinion is, don’t think that the British Isles had NO black people in them until 1948 and suddenly they all turned up at once. Actually, there were black people around in the country before that and going back quite a long way. Perhaps not many. But they existed. And some of them were involved in events that might be historically important (depending on your view point).
Fair enough. I have no issue with that claim at all. It’s accurate as far as I’m concerned?
The Twitter comments obviously being short and pithy, didn’t really give much detail about why this caused so much upset although the general feeling I got was there was upset about what defined the term “black.”
Thankfully, this point comes right to the forefront and is discussed in some detail by a random dude with a beard in “survive the jive” on youtube
Clearly not content with twitter fallout alone, “Qualified historian” (patent pending) Tom Roswell decided to make a 15 minute video “debunking” the songs claims.
Originally I was going to go through and look into some of the claims he makes in his video and go point for point. But realistically, we can skip over them because it seems the “what does the term black actually mean” is the absolute linchpin of the entire upset.
Tom kicks us off early on this point, only 20 seconds in to his video he explains the song is trying to “depict sub-Saharan African people have always played a significant and important part and have always been present”
But that’s not what the song says? It says “black”
So what is the “sub-Saharan African people” piece?
At 1:54 we get a better description from Tom. “However, even if they were dark skinned, it doesn’t make any difference because they were not sub-Saharan African blacks”
I see.
So, what Tom (and presumably half the others having a meltdown) object too, is the term “black.”
From Tom’s video and the angry people in Twitter comments, I gathered that, you can only be referred to as “black” if you are specifically from “sub saharan Africa”
As Tom goes on to confirm at 2:16 – “when you say black in Britain you mean sub-saharan African.”
He says this emphatically. Like its factual and must be true. Like “black” is a race of people who can be specifically tied down genetically EXACTLY to a region of Africa.
But actually, this isn’t a fact. This is an opinion.
Perhaps Tom hasn’t spoken to many people but what someone means when they say “black” is not a static and agreed thing? It isn’t a scientific word in day to day use. Its a describing word.
People use the term “black” as short hand, (perhaps wrongly) for non white people all the time. In other words, “black” is generally based on what someone looks like and the shade of their skin according to the observer, NOT their genetic background. “Black” is not a race anyway? It isn’t as strict as Tom makes out.
And it has to be this way? We don’t stop and do a DNA analysis to figure out someones heritage when we describe their colour? We base our descriptions on what we see of people (the song itself includes the line “some Brits have looked like me”).
You could argue this is racist and a bit unfortunate and I’d mostly agree. Not all people who aren’t clearly white should necessarily be called “black” – yes. But it happens. It happens ALOT. We regularly label people as “black” without really thinking beyond the shade of their skin.
Black therefore, ALSO MEANS dark skinned in daily speech. It’s all about the person speaking and doing the describing.
And so black is basically just short hand for “darker shades of non white” then and is subjective based on the observer as to how dark a shade that is. We generally (there are exceptions of course) accept descriptions based on appearances. We especially accept them from people with naturally darker skin describing themselves?
For example, if you asked most British people about the famous formula 1 driver, Lewis Hamilton (who makes an appearance in the song too), l would fully expect they would tell you he was black. The song identifies him effectively as black, many publications have referred to him as the “first black F1 driver” (sorry Willy T Ribbs) and if wikipedia is correct, Lewis Hamilton himself would tell you he is black.
I would argue, his skin is not very dark compared to other black people and he is of course mixed heritage. His mother was white, from the UK and his father was born in the UK but had family from Grenada in the carribean. I don’t know and have been unable to find out, what part of Africa his father’s family came from originally – (it might be, not even they know) but I personally don’t really care?
The point is, Lewis tells us – “I’m black.” I don’t need to go back through multiple generations of birth records and DNA to check somewhere, he DOES have a relative from sub-saharan Africa? I can just accept the claim move on?
I guess for Tom, he’d need to see some kind of DNA test and evidence before he believed it though? I’m not sure how far back he’d have to go in history to accept it? How many generations before a father or mother was present in sub-Saharan Africa to accept the term “black” being used?
I actually start to wonder, how far back Tom would have to go in his own genetic history before he found an ancestor from Africa too?
Whatever the case, sub Sahara seems to be the key.
What actually counts as “sub Sahara” in Africa though seems to vary a little depending on what map you look at and which article you read? That’s because the Saharan desert (the one in the east seems to be what they refer to) is giant and covers a great many countries and nobody is in complete and utter agreement about where it ends? For example, the United Nations map has Mauritania as not included in sub-Saharan African. Other maps do.
To go back to the point about the term “black” as a descriptor, if you look at some of the countries that “border” the edges of what counts as above sub Sahara and look at their peoples, you have lots of different shades of colour of skin. Take a google of “people of Mauritania” for example and you tell me if those people are black? Are they brown? Are they “arab”? What does that even mean?
Are these even accurate, helpful or meaningful descriptions? Who the fuck cares?
Would Tom and all of his comment based buddies not have a problem if the song had said “non white people” instead of “black” ? Or had said “dark skinned people” instead? Is the shade of someones skin, really what is being argued about here? Or is it something deeper?
He accepts later in the video that black people were in the UK (but is very eager to point out “they didn’t form communities”, like it matters to the point being made) and does accept that Henry VIII DID have a musician in court who was black (even by his standards of the word). But he then goes on to argue that it was inconsequential he was there.
Well, ok. What is “important” historically and what constitutes “playing a part” is really a matter of opinion. And Tom is entitled to one.
For the claims of the song to stand though, his presence is enough. So by accepting this, Tom really is accepting the gist of the song anyway?
I don’t really understand why this type of argument matters. Indeed, it really looks like Tom and his friends are getting upset and arguing about things that weren’t actually claimed in the song? Or about things that aren’t really that consequential? His impassioned speech for example at 13:03 in the video about how the North African Romans that came to Britain left no DNA behind. Look back at the lyrics again and tell me where on earth that claim was being made? No where? Why on earth was Tom so keen to point that out then? It had nothing to do with the song at all?
Tom, like so many others then, has built a crude straw-man based on what they think they heard or what they interpreted the meaning to be, rather on what was actually said in my opinion. They’ve then proceeded to attack the strawman with a debate over what the term “black” actually mean and a hand full of other facts and opinions which are really not that consequential or important. Tom comes off just looking angry and pernickerty. Like a bored health and safety expert who wants to set you straight on the labeling of particular fire extinguishers, when it really really does not matter and they just want to look more knowledgeable than you anyway they can.
The world unfortunately, is not as black and white (no pun intended) as Tom and his chums might like.
I have no idea why one British person can watch that song and feel as if their culture is being attacked, their history rewritten and as if its the most offensive thing ever, where as another (like me!) don’t have any issue with it?
I’m not going to accuse anyone of racism and it’s not because I’m woke, holier than thou or some how smarter than anyone else. Nor because I’m more naive and stupid. I’m actually mildly annoyed at myself for sounding faintly wokeist in this post.
I just believe in listening to what is actually said and interpreting the meaning and intention FAIRLY and giving it the benefit of the doubt generally, rather than getting into lengthy and pointless “debunks” over the meaning of a word.
I think the world would be a better place all in all if there was more of this perhaps. There is genuine evil to be tackled within wokeism and far left politics, but I really don’t think this is it.