Danny Baker What a Lemon

/2 min read

As a black person, and a Londoner, I was reminded yesterday of how the conversation about race is still only really going on in the communities that it affects the most. Dominant white society steadfastly refuses to join in.

Some ten years ago now, I discovered something that I never really realised. It dawned on me that most white people don’t look at things through the prism of race, at all.

It’s like when you hold a lifelong grudge against a teacher that made your life a misery when you were at school, only to see them years later and them not even know or remember who you are. That realisation that the teacher hasn’t given you a second thought, while you routinely return to their abuse, stew on it and cry out ‘why me?’ and the end of your periodic mental self-examinations.

It’s for this reason that I don’t get triggered by mental morons like what’s her name who thought blackface was ok for Halloween, it’s why when a younger person at work from another European country questions me about whether something is racist or not. But when Danny Baker tweeted his response to the royal birth this week, I was like ‘hell no, WTF’.

I don’t for one second believe Danny Bakers reasonings, excuses or apologies. He was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time, supports the wrong football club and worked for the wrong company for that to be even remotely credible.

The cynic in me rears it’s head periodically and was triggered heavily by Baker’s tweet. It was a purposeful endeavour, one used to garner attention and cause the most offence. Baker may land on his feet somewhere else, but the BBC was right to move to dismiss his services without haste.

Main Image © Morlene Fisher