The myth of intersectional politics

A few years ago I mentioned the profusion of moaning women on BBC Radio 4, after a longish car journey during which the station had broadcast pretty much nothing but moaning women over six and a half hours. I am glad to say that the proportion of moaning women has subsequently reduced to about 65 per cent of the station’s output, the rest of it now being taken up with infuriated and horribly subjugated black people.

When I unwisely turned on the radio this afternoon it was to hear a young black lady tell her little brother: ‘They may be beating us, killing us, but that is no reason to give up’, before her father bemoaned ‘this godforsaken country’. The country she was talking about was not the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti or Somalia, but the United Kingdom, of course. This had been part of a radio drama in which the young black man had been beaten senseless by the usual racist white English folks and nobody cared.

The previous day, the otherwise excellent Clive Myrie had been busy perpetuating more Windrush myths in a lengthy documentary, where we heard black people he interviewed saying that they’d have been much better off staying in Jamaica than coming here to be exploited and racially abused in this abject dump of a country. You might think, to hear this stuff, that there would be rather less objection, then, to the government’s forlorn attempts to deport Jamaican criminals back to their country of origin – or indeed a plea that the scheme might be extended to those of Jamaican origin who have not committed any crimes. Free airline seats and an in-flight snack, etc – surely they would be snapped up?