Wednesday 16 October 2019

Of the funny tinge and common sense...



It's interesting is it not that the husband of Ann Williams the Lib Dem MP accuses Dawn Butler of lieing about her experience of racism in the House of Commons .? There is a strange correlation between this and her "funny tinge" comment from the glory days of Change UK. There is a truth that many fail to recognise in themselves that we do not see our own prejudice or failure to see discrimination or intolerance to others who have a different ethnicity, faith or sexuality I remember being told on one Facebook page that the solution to my partial sight disability was to put my "glasses on" and I remember others commenting on my spelling at a time when I could hardly distinguish one letter from another. The truth is that it is so difficult for us all to understand how another lives or experiences the matter of exustence.

In Chingford Faiza Shaheen the Labour candidate also notes that the Lib Dem candidate there is taking part in a dog whistle approach by using Islamaphobic tropes to build the "liberal" vote. White fragility becomes a tool to build the 'liberal democratic society" beloved of Jo Swinson.
Years ago I read of Keir Harris being "mistaken" by a Tory MP as a workman rather than a Member of Parluament . Is it that difficult therefore to deny that Dawn Butler was "mistaken" for a cleaner.? Undoubtedly the same "mistake" awaits the first transgender parliamentarian
. A "funny tinge" simply means someone who is not like I am. Our prejudices disturb us all and denial is often the response...

History is written by white men who won wars . It is the deeds of the great and the good and not of the forsaken, different or excluded. It is the history of monotheism in all faiths, lenses and theories. It is power that determines who or what is funny tinged, "weird" or eccentric. It is a statistical average perhaps one standard deviation from a constructed mean or mode. It is nothing more than a social construction...and it's in need of deconstruction...

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