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1 minute ago, Savage Henry said:

And a nation of white, male football fans protests that what he sent out wasn't racist (it was a picture of a chimp dressed as a baby with the caption "royal baby").

 

Whether you think it was racist or not, it's pretty hard to believe Baker's argument that he didn't even consider the possibility it could be seen that way. The guy has been a broadcaster and journalist for 30-odd years - he was fully aware.

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3 minutes ago, Mark Connolly said:

Whether you think it was racist or not, it's pretty hard to believe Baker's argument that he didn't even consider the possibility it could be seen that way. The guy has been a broadcaster and journalist for 30-odd years - he was fully aware.

Right.  At the very, very best it's monumentally stupid.  The BBC had no other option.  I like Danny Baker and his show, but he deserved it.  Talksport will take him, gladly.  Their audience seem to like that sort of thing.

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Just now, Savage Henry said:

Right.  At the very, very best it's monumentally stupid.  The BBC had no other option.  I like Danny Baker and his show, but he deserved it.  Talksport will take him, gladly.  Their audience seem to like that sort of thing.

In other evidence against him, he's also a Millwall fan...

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4 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

Right.  At the very, very best it's monumentally stupid.  The BBC had no other option.  I like Danny Baker and his show, but he deserved it.  Talksport will take him, gladly.  Their audience seem to like that sort of thing.

I'm pretty gutted by it all. I even mentioned Danny Baker at my Uni interview as one of my broadcasting heroes, and I was a massive fan of his show. 

His tweet clearly had racist undertones (at best) though, and he fine well knows it, so he can get in the sea :(

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35 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Bit ironic the BBC sacking Danny Baker the same day Nigel Farage makes yet another appearance on Question Time. 

Well, absolutely.  But I guess politicians are allowed to use all the racist rhetoric they like.

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1 hour ago, Mark Connolly said:

Whether you think it was racist or not, it's pretty hard to believe Baker's argument that he didn't even consider the possibility it could be seen that way. The guy has been a broadcaster and journalist for 30-odd years - he was fully aware.

I honestly didn’t see what was wrong with it, until I read the word “racist”, then it slowly dawned on me.

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Problem with this shit is that whatever ism a person's being accused of will require a certain mental element which we cannot ever know, and which the mob is poorly placed to infer.

This is why there has been a proliferation in the sentiment that if you perpetuate a negative value then you are guilty of the ism regardless of your actual intent, which  conveniently allows us to cancel people without actually ever inquiring into their guilt.

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I doubt he meant it to be racist, because if so he would have known the shitstorm and he would likely be sacked - why would he do that?  Also, surely he wouldn't apologise, admit it was an error of judgement and call it grotesque.  

When I saw the headline - "Danny Baker fired over royal baby chimp tweet" - I genuinely didn't get the connotation until I read the article detail.  I suspect he was the same - the racist background didn't enter his head.

All that said, the BBC had no choice but to sack him, and it really was an incredibly poor error of judgement.  People in his position (especially) need to be super careful when making social media comments and have to live with the consequences when they get it wrong.

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Just now, Gnash said:

All that said, the BBC had no choice but to sack him, and it really was an incredibly poor error of judgement.  People in his position (especially) need to be super careful when making social media comments and have to live with the consequences when they get it wrong.

While this is true, I wish it were not so, and it sits uncomfortably with me that the BBC (or anyone) had no choice but to do something which is not just.

Quote

 

Ignore this quote box. I typed it on my phone and don't know how to delete it. 

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36 minutes ago, Gnash said:

I doubt he meant it to be racist, because if so he would have known the shitstorm and he would likely be sacked - why would he do that?  Also, surely he wouldn't apologise, admit it was an error of judgement and call it grotesque.  

When I saw the headline - "Danny Baker fired over royal baby chimp tweet" - I genuinely didn't get the connotation until I read the article detail.  I suspect he was the same - the racist background didn't enter his head.

All that said, the BBC had no choice but to sack him, and it really was an incredibly poor error of judgement.  People in his position (especially) need to be super careful when making social media comments and have to live with the consequences when they get it wrong.

I think it was probably inevitable that he would be sacked but only because people are afraid to stand up to the baying mob for fear of being associated with the mob's target.

I've, personally, no idea whether Baker is a racist. I've listened to a lot of his stuff over the years and have never detected any racism. He's also clearly an intelligent guy and so, it seems to me, that this was a genuine mistake. I find that more plausible than the notion that he intended the connotation but did it anyway to cause offence or to seem edgy. We'll never know though really what went through his mind before posting the picture.  

The most depressing feature of this episode is the immediate and unwavering rush to negative judgement by a lot of people. We don't know the truth but a lot of people are unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt. Those suggesting that the witch hunt is unreasonable are portrayed as fellow racists defending an 'obviously' racist act.

Very sad.

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I don't think he's racist. He claimed on a doorstep interview this morning that he wasn't aware of who had had the baby, just that there was a new royal baby. He's an intelligent guy. It's impossible to think that he wouldn't have been aware of any racial connotations, so maybe that really was the case -- he was the only person in the world who didn't know.

It's Louise Pepper I feel sorry for.

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I think it was probably inevitable that he would be sacked but only because people are afraid to stand up to the baying mob for fear of being associated with the mob's target.
I've, personally, no idea whether Baker is a racist. I've listened to a lot of his stuff over the years and have never detected any racism. He's also clearly an intelligent guy and so, it seems to me, that this was a genuine mistake. I find that more plausible than the notion that he intended the connotation but did it anyway to cause offence or to seem edgy. We'll never know though really what went through his mind before posting the picture.  
The most depressing feature of this episode is the immediate and unwavering rush to negative judgement by a lot of people. We don't know the truth but a lot of people are unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt. Those suggesting that the witch hunt is unreasonable are portrayed as fellow racists defending an 'obviously' racist act.
Very sad.


It’s not a contradiction to say that at the same time Danny Baker had no racist intent, and to say that it was a racist joke.

It was clearly a stupid mistake, but the result was racially offensive. As, presumably, a highly paid, high profile BBC presenter you don’t get the (white?) benefit of the benefit of the doubt.

It’s really sad, and he’s not helping his cause by complaining about 5Live. They had no other option, and it’s an incredibly serious issue.
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Just now, Savage Henry said:


It’s not a contradiction to say that at the same time Danny Baker had no racist intent, and to say that it was a racist joke.

It was clearly a stupid mistake, but the result was racially offensive. As, presumably, a highly paid, high profile BBC presenter you don’t get the (white?) benefit of the benefit of the doubt.

It’s really sad, and he’s not helping his cause by complaining about 5Live. They had no other option, and it’s an incredibly serious issue.

 

I'd say it's at the very least a semantic contradiction but I suppose depends on what you mean by 'racist'. That's a term which I'd probably only use to describe intent (even if unwitting). There's certainly a racist slur to be readily inferred from the picture in context. I suspect the joke itself had nothing to do with race.

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21 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

It’s not a contradiction to say that at the same time Danny Baker had no racist intent, and to say that it was a racist joke.

I've been thinking today that maybe people have different definitions of "racism". I have always thought racism was a malicious act motivated by a negative disposition towards the victim's perceived racial group. I truly accepted that as being uncontroversially the definition of racism. On that definition, though, then the quoted passage above is incorrect. It would be a contradiction.

I am open to the idea that people who agree with Henry's opinion, above, define racism/racist differently. They perhaps define it as "tending to create or perpetuate negative connotations about a particular race". If that's the case then a lot of this argument about whether it's racist or not can be explained away as confusion about the term.

But there are lots of problems with the latter approach:

(1) since it is about the effect of the action, rather than the disposition of the actor, you can't now really call anyone "a racist"

(2) it tends to outrage universal concepts of justice to sanction people for innocently done things which have unintended consequences. Hence the concept of mens rea in criminal law.

(3) a racially motivated action which for some reason doesn't meet the definition of creating or perpetuating negative connotations wouldn't be racist. For example, a bunch of white guys jumping a black guy because he is black, but keeping that motivation entirely to themselves, would be simple assault rather than a racist act.

I am a lawyer (I know, I get it). It has been settled in the world's legal systems for hundreds of years that criminality almost always requires a certain level of intent. It has been decided this way for philosophical and practical reasons. Given the difficulties with now abandoning that approach when it comes to calling things racist (or sexist, etc), some of which are outlined above, I remain unconvinced by Henry's approach to calling things racist.

I think it can only be called racist if you can infer racist intent - and that is very difficult on Twitter!

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Also (as if I haven't typed enough) I don't think it's nearly as justifiable to cancel people because their actions innocently perpetuate negative connotations. There is a literally infinite number of innocent connotations that could potentially be perpetuated at any one time. Some are more obvious than others granted, but are we cancelling people for behaving dumb-ly? Quietly not renewing contracts, perhaps...

Edited by Margaret Thatcher
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In this case, we aren’t talking about criminal intent. It’s all about perception. I believe police initially treat crimes as “racially aggravated” if the victim believes it to be so. Whereas I can sit here and generally take a positive position on Danny’s intent, the perception of that post could quite easily be a racial one. In the end, Baker was stupid to the point of negligent, and that’s why he’s out of a job. Not because he’s a UKIP voting mouth breather - which he clearly, clearly isn’t. He has been sacked for gross incompetence, not racism.

I think people don’t malevolently perceive racism, in most cases. Therefore, if people perceive his tweet to be racist, there’s a real cause for questioning his suitability to be employed by the BBC.

It’s the ultimate case study in white privilege for me (or indeed the majority of Pie and Bovril, I would guess) to sit here and determine racial intent. Victims of racist aggression aren’t given that freedom. Whether I think it’s racist or not is neither here nor there.

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I'd say it's at the very least a semantic contradiction but I suppose depends on what you mean by 'racist'. That's a term which I'd probably only use to describe intent (even if unwitting). There's certainly a racist slur to be readily inferred from the picture in context. I suspect the joke itself had nothing to do with race.


I don’t disagree with any of that. He hasn’t been fired for being racist, I don’t think though. He has been fired for gross incompetence.
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