Monday, 21 February 2011
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Selectors
This is a lovely companion to the Reggae Britannia programme which, aside from anything else (Linton Kwesi Johnson discussing the dub engineer's art is brilliant), is a timely hour and half counterblast to Cameron's 'multiculturalism has failed'. 'Failure' or indeed 'success' don't enter into it - the territory is constantly mutating, constantly up for grabs. Alliances, mimetism, dialogue or, conversely, fractures and antagonism occur along all kinds of lines that reductive views about wholly consistent, self-contained 'cultures' don't even begin to take account of.
Incidentally, my new masthead quote (from The Fatima Mansions' 'Brain Blister') is a response to the curious victim mentality (ok, maybe not so curious, maybe it's part of the pathology) that has been noticeable in the outbursts of our masters. Things like this and of course Cameron's 'failed multiculturalism' speech.
If we boil their arguments down, they're making those tired old 'inverse racism'/'inverse sexism' claims, those laments of the historically/socially dominant group attempting to justify its phobia and its feelings of aggression.
"Not long ago, one of those good French men said in a train where I was sitting: "Just let the real French virtues keep going and the race is safe. Now more than ever, national union must be made a reality. Let's have an end of internal strife! Let's face up to the foreigners (here he turned to my corner) no matter who they are." It must be said in his defence that he stank of cheap wine; if he had been capable of it, he would have told me that my emancipated-slave blood could not possiblybe stirred by the name of Villon or Taine."
"Statements, for example, that the north of France is more racist than the south, that racism is the work of underlings and hence in no way involves the ruling class, that France is one of the least racist countries in the world are the product of men incapable of straight thinking."
Frantz Fanon, 'Black Skin, White Masks', first published in France in 1952
***
On a separate note, here's a mix I did.
Incidentally, my new masthead quote (from The Fatima Mansions' 'Brain Blister') is a response to the curious victim mentality (ok, maybe not so curious, maybe it's part of the pathology) that has been noticeable in the outbursts of our masters. Things like this and of course Cameron's 'failed multiculturalism' speech.
If we boil their arguments down, they're making those tired old 'inverse racism'/'inverse sexism' claims, those laments of the historically/socially dominant group attempting to justify its phobia and its feelings of aggression.
"Not long ago, one of those good French men said in a train where I was sitting: "Just let the real French virtues keep going and the race is safe. Now more than ever, national union must be made a reality. Let's have an end of internal strife! Let's face up to the foreigners (here he turned to my corner) no matter who they are." It must be said in his defence that he stank of cheap wine; if he had been capable of it, he would have told me that my emancipated-slave blood could not possiblybe stirred by the name of Villon or Taine."
"Statements, for example, that the north of France is more racist than the south, that racism is the work of underlings and hence in no way involves the ruling class, that France is one of the least racist countries in the world are the product of men incapable of straight thinking."
Frantz Fanon, 'Black Skin, White Masks', first published in France in 1952
***
On a separate note, here's a mix I did.
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