Why I'm infuriated at David Cameron for posing with Morris dancers in black facepaint.
First, some background. I'm an enthusiastic morris dancer; the face-paint I usually wear is white rather than black, but my side has had members wearing black facepaint (and every other colour imaginable) in the past, and I regularly dance out with sides whose facepaint is all black.
Whether or not the history of the tradition is linked to racism is debatable (most Morris dancers think it isn't, and that it's derived from the coal-mining history of the Welsh borders where Border morris originated; I think they may well be wrong and it once possibly did have racist connotations, but I'm far from confident of that), but if there is any connection then it's lost in the depths of time. Modern morris dancing is about as non-racist a tradition as it's possible to imagine; it's heavily practiced by beard-and-sandals lefty types.
David Cameron, the prime minister of the UK, has just provoked a row by posing with some members of Foxs (sic) Morris in black facepaint and rag jackets. This provoked a row, with idiots suggesting it was racist to do so.
Posing with Morris dancers in black facepaint is an extraordinarily canny political move for a right-wing politician, because it's one of the few ways to provoke a row over race in which you'll be on the right side; you get to appeal to the racist vote by being attacked by "the PC brigade", without offending most people who aren't racist.
Paul Ryan used a much cruder version of the same tactic in America a few months back - an attack on the "urban" population of America, followed by claiming to be appalled that people thought he had meant "black".
But Cameron's version is much cleverer, because I doubt most people who weren't already his hard-core fans believed Ryan wasn't actively race-baiting, whereas Cameron can legitimately claim that there is nothing racist about posing with morris dancers, and that the people attacking him are just being silly.
Is Morris dancing in black facepaint racist? No, absolutely not.
Did David Cameron pose with morris dancers for racist reasons? I very much doubt it.
Did David Cameron pose with morris dancers in order to whip up a row about race and morris dancing for his own political benefit? I'm not a telepath, but I suspect he may well have done. And both race relations and morris dancing are likely to suffer as a result.
= new reply since forum marked as read
