Are Brits Racist?

I’m a huge follower of the Brit tabs and there is a current situation where the show Celebrity Big Brother has created an international incident, specifically with India. Essentially, what’s happened is that three girls in the house (Jade Goody - reality TV star, Danielle Lloyd – a topless model and Jo O'Meara – former S Club 7 member) have been racially bullying one other girl, Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. Jade Goody appears to be the leader of the gang and was kicked off with a whopping 82% of the viewers voting for her eviction.

I’ve spent the day watching all the clips I could find and I gotta say Jade, Danielle and Jo are clearly a bunch of ignorant, racist bitches. Resulting from this situation is a renewed microscope on racism in Britain. As much as I love London, I do have to admit that whenever I’ve visited there, I can’t say that I have ever felt that London is a truly multi-cultural city.

The bureaucrats of course are trying to spin it so that Jade is the scapegoat for the racist behaviour and that the others were just sheep. They are trying to portray her as an aberration and will probably bury her in bad press until she disappears altogether. Anyone who has watched the show will notice however, that even when Jade was not in the room, four other white people in the house made racist comments about Shilpa.

The sad reality is that what’s happened in this seemingly frivolous reality TV show is probably happening all over Britain every day. There is no way that these people would have behaved this way on national television if they thought their behaviour was wrong. These are media savvy people.

What they didn’t count on was the media storm that it created. Racism sells papers. Jade wasn’t publicly condemned because the British public thought she was a racist. She was hung out to dry because of the media (both in England and in India) told them that her actions were racist. Some reports show people still cheering for her and defending her actions.

Doncha just love it when reality TV actually makes you think for a change?

Coverage on the controversy:

Mirror
The Sun
News of the World
BBC
Guardian
YouTube