sheldrake

I haven't been posting much lately. Normally I would start off with lots of excuses and apologies for my appalling behaviour, but I'm trying to cut down on that sort of thing.

Nothing to report about the job stuff at present. Nothing much to report about anything, really.

I've said it before, but I need to stop wasting vast swathes of time reading the comments posted to blogs and online news articles. It's like I'm deliberately poisoning myself with other people's stupidity. There are lots of other things I could be doing: knitting, practising the piano, writing... hoovering.

That said, I have been somewhat preoccupied of late by the Carol Thatcher affair. Honestly, I don't even how to begin talking about it. Maybe the idea that somebody who has a high-profile job in the UK media in 2009, and whose parent ran the country for over a decade, could somehow have missed the fact that it's offensive to go around calling black people 'golliwogs'. How is that even possible? Or the fact that, having discovered this fact, that person would not simply apologise and move on. Maybe the fact that I'm really tired of hearing people say, "Oh, but in her day, these things were acceptable. It was just a lovely toy." Here's the thing. I'm 34. I had one of those lovely toys as a child (a present from an elderly relative, I think) and I seem to remember I was quite fond of it. I saw the logo on the jamjar at breakfast every morning. I didn't think these things were racist at the time (I didn't think about them much at all), but that doesn't mean they weren't. I was a child. I was also a child in a culturally diverse, working class area of North London. Racism was there, in the street and in the playground, and it was vicious. It surrounded all of us, and yet for me it could be something in the background, something always off to one side. It buzzed in my ear, but I was able to wave it away like an annoying fly. Because I was white, and that meant I never really had to see it. I could go to school and play with my friends, few of whom were white, and come home and play with Golly (who, incidentally, was not allowed out of the house. I don't think I ever questioned why. I'd actually forgotten that until now). I was not forced to make connections.

Eventally I grew up.

There was some Tory nitwit on the radio bemoaning the loss of these delightful toys and that lovely whimsical word, to the 'PC Brigade'. When Carol and I were children, he said, nobody thought there was anything wrong with them. Nobody. Right. Carol Thatcher is what, mid-50s? If you're that age, there has been a sizeable black population living in this country for your whole life. But when you say 'us', you mean white people. Say what you mean.

These things we cling to are not valuable. They are racist caricatures of racist caricatures, and they hurt people. There is nothing not racist about them. The lengths some people are now going to to prove that their beloved toys are nothing whatsoever to do with black people, and never were, that they somehow exist in a vacuum, are incredible to me. You can't make things nice and unproblematic just by wanting it. Honestly, people. Let go of this stuff now. Is it really that important to you? It's degrading and embarrassing. Grow up.

Ok, just had to get that off my chest. I'm definitely going to do my ironing now.