Shilpa & Jade: Class or Race?
D. S. thuja | 22.01.2007 14:45 | Analysis | Culture
Examining reasons behind the current media frenzy over the Big Brother "racism" allegations: I propose that issues between Jade & Shilpa are class and not race related.
Goody & Shilpa: Class or Race?
Though I don’t watch Big Brother at home, it’s hard to avoid, friends relatives, news clips etc. it’s everywhere. I was visiting a friend when I saw the episode in which Jade Goody made apparently racist comments. If anything, Jade’s calling her housemate “Shilpa Poppodom” was a very mild remark considering the two women clearly disliked one another. And that’s what all this is really about - two people who don’t get on, to take their issue out of the house and apply it as a racial slur on all Indians is completely ridiculous but really, only what we’d expect from those middle and upper class medias, who are currently on a mission to portray all poor/working class people (especially those who grew up on council estates), as the primary cause of all the evils in UK society.
Jade has had little or no input, intellectually, she’s malnourished, like most kids of her class who attend shoddy schools and have little or no access to higher education, not because they’re too stupid but because there are no places for them. Jade has not created herself, she is a reflection of UK society – the poor bear the brunt of the harsh and cruel reality of surviving in an economic system with very little income. Recently, UK workers have experienced redundancy, cuts in wages etc. because of a massive influx of cheap labour from abroad and jobs being transferred to places like India, where workers think them selves lucky to earn a fraction of the salaries UK workers need just to pay their household bills. One man complained on a radio two phone-in, that he’s actually earning less now than he did three years ago, because prices have risen, but his wages have not. He and many others who phoned in, believed this was directly due to businesses moving overseas and employment of immigrant workers, who are prepared to work for 2-00 an hour or less (though it is illegal to pay less than the minimum wage, this crime is not deemed high on the police agenda, far more important are poor-kids wearing hoods). All those who phoned in and complained were accused either of racism or of demanding too high a wage i.e. the UK workforce are too expensive to employ: This, in a society where 1% of the population own one quarter of the country’s wealth.
Shilpa Shetty comes from a privileged background, she’s a Bollywood super star; “She’s a much better class than Jade, she has dignity…” said the media. And really, that says it all doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t, take a look at Shilpa she’s treated like a princess and lives a sumptuous existence in a country where millions – entire families – starve on the streets; India’s Caste system makes it impossible for the poor to ever work their way out of poverty – if you’re an untouchable, you will always be an untouchable and you must marry an untouchable and your children will then be the next generation of untouchables. To Indians of Shilpa’s class, Jade is the social equivalent of an untouchable. Shilpa lives in a fantasy and fiction, fantasy provides her daily bread – if only the poor Indian woman living on the street with her five children was a fictional fantasy. No one can blame Shilpa for her privileged upbringing and neither should Jade be blamed for her unprivileged background.
But, there’s an agenda behind this media frenzy, UK power circles are anxious to butter up India’s elite – India’s been forecast as the next world super-power and naturally, those power circles are eager to show themselves as anti-racist, not only that, they wish to show that racism in the UK is an inherently working-class attitude and that racial abusers are severely reprimanded. So we’re treated to Jade in tears on a Sunday morning, apologising for her “racist” comments and her “bullying”. People like Shilpa don’t exist without bullying: Go to India and see the police with their sticks, see how they beat and batter the poor when they cry out against injustice, when they band together to demand their rights to dignity and respect.
For too long now, the UK elite and their bottom-licking medias have used the issue of racism to avoid publicly confronting the real issue of class/economic oppression which affects the poor no matter what their ethnicity. The media now feels free to portray white working classes as inherently anti-social and racist – a portrayal which is designed to divide the poor and which undoubtedly increases tensions in poor multi-cultural communities. Given the vast chasm between Shilpa’s upbringing and Jades, it’s hard to imagine them behaving any differently towards one another if they’d both been British. If Jade had ever even tried to imitate the likes of Shilpa, she’d have been ridiculed as a “stuck-up-cow”, meanwhile, someone like Shilpa, being exceptionally wealthy and successful in her career, is allowed and expected, to carry herself with pride.
Shilpa has her “class” and Jade is deemed a common, “foul-mouthed slut“. You get what you pay for don’t you.
Though I don’t watch Big Brother at home, it’s hard to avoid, friends relatives, news clips etc. it’s everywhere. I was visiting a friend when I saw the episode in which Jade Goody made apparently racist comments. If anything, Jade’s calling her housemate “Shilpa Poppodom” was a very mild remark considering the two women clearly disliked one another. And that’s what all this is really about - two people who don’t get on, to take their issue out of the house and apply it as a racial slur on all Indians is completely ridiculous but really, only what we’d expect from those middle and upper class medias, who are currently on a mission to portray all poor/working class people (especially those who grew up on council estates), as the primary cause of all the evils in UK society.
Jade has had little or no input, intellectually, she’s malnourished, like most kids of her class who attend shoddy schools and have little or no access to higher education, not because they’re too stupid but because there are no places for them. Jade has not created herself, she is a reflection of UK society – the poor bear the brunt of the harsh and cruel reality of surviving in an economic system with very little income. Recently, UK workers have experienced redundancy, cuts in wages etc. because of a massive influx of cheap labour from abroad and jobs being transferred to places like India, where workers think them selves lucky to earn a fraction of the salaries UK workers need just to pay their household bills. One man complained on a radio two phone-in, that he’s actually earning less now than he did three years ago, because prices have risen, but his wages have not. He and many others who phoned in, believed this was directly due to businesses moving overseas and employment of immigrant workers, who are prepared to work for 2-00 an hour or less (though it is illegal to pay less than the minimum wage, this crime is not deemed high on the police agenda, far more important are poor-kids wearing hoods). All those who phoned in and complained were accused either of racism or of demanding too high a wage i.e. the UK workforce are too expensive to employ: This, in a society where 1% of the population own one quarter of the country’s wealth.
Shilpa Shetty comes from a privileged background, she’s a Bollywood super star; “She’s a much better class than Jade, she has dignity…” said the media. And really, that says it all doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t, take a look at Shilpa she’s treated like a princess and lives a sumptuous existence in a country where millions – entire families – starve on the streets; India’s Caste system makes it impossible for the poor to ever work their way out of poverty – if you’re an untouchable, you will always be an untouchable and you must marry an untouchable and your children will then be the next generation of untouchables. To Indians of Shilpa’s class, Jade is the social equivalent of an untouchable. Shilpa lives in a fantasy and fiction, fantasy provides her daily bread – if only the poor Indian woman living on the street with her five children was a fictional fantasy. No one can blame Shilpa for her privileged upbringing and neither should Jade be blamed for her unprivileged background.
But, there’s an agenda behind this media frenzy, UK power circles are anxious to butter up India’s elite – India’s been forecast as the next world super-power and naturally, those power circles are eager to show themselves as anti-racist, not only that, they wish to show that racism in the UK is an inherently working-class attitude and that racial abusers are severely reprimanded. So we’re treated to Jade in tears on a Sunday morning, apologising for her “racist” comments and her “bullying”. People like Shilpa don’t exist without bullying: Go to India and see the police with their sticks, see how they beat and batter the poor when they cry out against injustice, when they band together to demand their rights to dignity and respect.
For too long now, the UK elite and their bottom-licking medias have used the issue of racism to avoid publicly confronting the real issue of class/economic oppression which affects the poor no matter what their ethnicity. The media now feels free to portray white working classes as inherently anti-social and racist – a portrayal which is designed to divide the poor and which undoubtedly increases tensions in poor multi-cultural communities. Given the vast chasm between Shilpa’s upbringing and Jades, it’s hard to imagine them behaving any differently towards one another if they’d both been British. If Jade had ever even tried to imitate the likes of Shilpa, she’d have been ridiculed as a “stuck-up-cow”, meanwhile, someone like Shilpa, being exceptionally wealthy and successful in her career, is allowed and expected, to carry herself with pride.
Shilpa has her “class” and Jade is deemed a common, “foul-mouthed slut“. You get what you pay for don’t you.
D. S. thuja
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This is no culture clash, it’s the reality of racism in Britain today
22.01.2007 15:58
by Yuri Prasad
It’s just a clash of cultures, say Channel 4’s bosses in response to complaints against the reality TV show Big Brother. It’s not really racism, they assure us, just a “culture clash”.
But all this talk of a “culture clash” raging in Channel 4’s twisted world evades the crucial point – that a gang of white contestants are using racist abuse precisely in order to assert the superiority of “their” culture over that of Shilpa Shetty, the Indian contestant.
How else should we understand the taunting of Shilpa Shetty with the phrase “Shilpa Poppadom”, or calls for her to “fuck off home”? A language problem? A misunderstanding?
This constant stream of low level racism emanating from the Big Brother house has taken many a commentator by surprise. “How unrepresentative of modern, multicultural and tolerant Britain those contestants are,” they say.
Yet for millions of black and Asian people in Britain, the whole affair has had a frighteningly familiar ring to it – it takes them right back to their school days.
If you were one of a handful of non-white kids in a suburban school in the 1970s and 1980s, you were almost certainly subjected to a mundane diet of this type of racism. The constant sniping and casual abuse would have shaped the kind of person you have become.
The idea that racism is somehow alien to the British tradition will come as news to everyone who has to carry the effects of this racism around with them everyday.
Another variation on the commentators’ theme is to say that the racism exhibited in the Big Brother house is confined to Britain’s “lower classes”.
Apparently the middle classes long ago understood the need for tolerance and now shy away from such vulgar expressions of racial prejudice.
But for many people racism never stopped after they left school. Your prospects of getting into further and higher education, getting a decent job and finding a place to live have continue to be determined by the colour of your skin, your name and your “culture”.
Yet the type of people who implement this form of racism – hiring, firing, choosing and excluding – are generally from a very different social class to the racists in the Big Brother house. They hail almost exclusively from the polite middle classes.
The wave of outrage that has greeted the racism in Big Brother pays testament to the fact that millions of people in Britain – black, Asian and white – recognise and reject racism when they see it.
They oppose not just the overt racism that is expressed in hateful language, but also the low level background bigotry that stunts schoolchildren’s aspirations and blights peoples’ lives.
Britain is a battleground on the question of race, and the Channel 4 bosses and newspaper columnists who seem to have missed this must be walking round with their eyes closed – deliberately.
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Yuri Prasad
Smoke screen!
22.01.2007 16:43
Bored
Who fucking cares? I mean honestly...!
22.01.2007 18:03
Mr. Humph
swp
22.01.2007 18:36
shhees
Smoke screen!
22.01.2007 19:56
Brian B
Smoke screen!?
22.01.2007 21:18
Regarding "Big Brother" 'reality TV' show: Ironically, in BB, it was Shilpa Shetty who exhibited the supposedly "core British values" of resolve under unwaranted attack, maintaining the stiff upper lip, and retaining her dignity under (horrendously) trying circumstances.
reality check
Smoke screen!
22.01.2007 22:06
"As a matter of interest, the possession of nuclear weapons by India was not mentioned in their report."
Actually it appears they did mention the arrival of Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan as nuclear powers. However this did not appear to be part of the current list of threats listed at the beginning of the article that included Iran's 'quest for nuclear weapons'.
Brian B
That glass box, again
22.01.2007 22:10
The whole point of Endemol's shit-fest on Channel 4 is to force together personalities so incompatible that normal human comity would be impossible, never mind solidarity under the stress of sensory deprivation and constant surveillance. Getting 'celebrities' on the show (three of whom are only 'celebrities' by dint of a previous connection with the show) therefore guarantees a daily hit of scandal, and therefore mega mega advertising revenues. Further, since C4 controls every condition obtaining in the show, and since their interventions are designed to be humiliating and bizarre, they can always confect a bit of controversy when phone-in rates slump and the tabloids find something else to gyrate over. And what is more, when the bad guy of the hour is evicted, a new balance is created and the recipient of much sympathy the day before can become the latest villain. The infinite malleability and masochism of the characters is one of the dramatic points on a desperately boring programme. So, rancour, humiliation, indignity and daily bullying are part of the mix, and it is entirely hypocritical for people who watch and like this show to complain about it.
On the other hand, even a saucer-eyed More 4 viewer has the right not to be put through a load of racist abuse, and there has to be some satisfaction in the fact that reported racism on the show has drawn record complaints. And I suppose we had better be grateful that the recipient of the abuse was not a Muslim. If she was, we'd be hearing from many quarters that Muslims are far too sensitive about legitimate criticism. "Ah, complaing about being called a 'dog', is she? What do these Muslims have against canines, I wonder?" Had those who burned the effigy in India been Muslim, we would no doubt be hearing about the sinister Islamic threat to free speech. Not that it matters what religion she adheres to inside the 'house', eh? Shilpa Shetty is variously a "dog", a "Paki" (this bit C4 denies, saying the word was "cunt"), someone who - being from India - must be unhygeinic and eat with her hands, thus giving other housemates "the shits", someone who both needs to "go back to the slums" and also visit them for the first time and be "real", someone who is "trying to be white", and someone who should "fuck off home".
The reactions have been, er, interesting: Channel 4 greasily asserting that there has been no overt racism, titter titter (as if we didn't know that they had assessed their candidates down to the last tic, and fully expected outbursts of racism); New Labour politicians covering their already hideously mired flanks by uttering obsequies about tolerance; David Cameron saying that anyone "who doesn't like this racism, there's a great regulator, its called the 'off' button." The latter is a curious response, surely designed to tickle the fancy of racist Tories and those obsessed with whatever is called 'the nanny state' this week. Taken to its logical conclusion, we should bring back 'Love Thy Neighbour', 'Mind Your Language' and all those charming racist comedies from the Seventies, and if anyone doesn't like it, there is the 'off' switch. Actually, why stop there? It is rather unfair, is it not, that the Human Zoos of old are now 'politically incorrect'.
Or are they? Le Colonel Chabert opined last year that the show had an insidious ideological effect which was to prepare people to feel excellent about eviction (because he's an arsehole), to want eviction (because she's stuck-up), to vote for eviction (because it's not fair): in a phrase, Eviction Rocks. I can't help but think of this whole 'Neighbours from Hell' drivel we get in the British press, in which readers are titillated and outraged with daily tales of torment from hideous people next-door or down the road. If it isn't kids spitting and swearing, it's old men flipping the bird, or trimming the hedges from over the fence. If it isn't rowdy couples, it's gyppos settling on the commons, and asylum seekers eloping from the back of a lorry. These are the people New Labour promises to "boot out" and leave to fend for themselves "in a crackdown on yobs". These are the people who are expected to face ASBOs and "welfare disincentives" as part of the government's Respect Action Plan. These are the families the government pledges to put in "Sin Bins", a conceit that could quite easily have been supplied by Endemol. These are the people New Labour pledges to evict from the very country. New Labour's campaign message - vote to evict the arsehole! Let them fend for themselves in the ghetto. The tabloids will feature pictures and descriptions of new arseholes every day and encourage readers to participate in a phone-in poll to demand eviction. A daily diorama of candidates for the Sin Bin will be the topic of quasi-anthropological inspection and curiosity, their fate to be decided by our placebo democracy
lenin's tomb
Homepage:
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Jade goody's race
22.01.2007 23:48
fact finder
Know your enemy
23.01.2007 18:17
But it's the middle class with their government and their newspapers that pour out their constant stream of poison against asylum seekers and bundle them off to get raped/tortured/killed in their "homelands". While tuttutting about how gross we are. And protecting Nazi ballet dancers. And making sure this country is a caste system that suits them.
Know your enemy.
chavnproud
SWP freak show
24.01.2007 02:10
Fuck the swp
see also Jaded with the New McCarthyism
03.02.2007 11:52
The Senator
Get your facts right
20.08.2008 22:01
Radhika