A few weeks ago I was directed to a Daily Mail article about racism in Eurovision, and how apparently all of the UK’s recent ‘flops’ (Yes, even including 2009 when we came 5th but whatever) were due to our participants being black. I chose to tactfully just close the tab and ignore the article, knowing full well that they were WRONG in the highest order, and just hoped that it was a crappy article in the Daily Mail and that next week they’d probably claim Eurovision gives you cancer.
Then, the other day, to my horror, I found an interview with none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber... who also played the ridiculous ‘race card’ about Eurovision. The same stupid idea that the UK doesn’t do well because of black participants. The funniest quote to me was “If you had seen it, you might have noticed one thing – I don’t think there was one black face on the programme”. WRONG Mr Webber, how about Mandinga? Gaitana? Frickin Loreen who’s of Moroccan decent?!
This is just like the fireman quota – the idea that just because we have ‘X’ percent black people in the country, we should ‘X’ percent in the fire service (or insert working sector here). It’s as if that quote is implying that there should be an equal number of black people to white in the contest for some reason.
As soon as you start bringing racism into it, you lose any credibility whatsoever. Hello – this contest is between nations situated in Europe, all different nations, containing all different races. Suddenly racism is supposed to mean ‘anti-black’, which in itself is ridiculous – prejudiced racism – it’s a joke.
The reason the UK don’t do well is plain and simple – some power-that-be puts in crap songs. End of. Then couple that with the fact that the media lap up every non-win with the word ‘flopped’, even when we come 5th and 11th. Guess what? Our last two best results were a semi-black woman, and a group containing a black man. Wow. Real racism there. Maybe Engelbert didn’t win because his tan makes him look black (?!).
I think this is mostly just a case of poor journalism. Jumping all over a stupid notion, and then clutching at straws and asking anyone that will say what they want to print. Plus a hefty amount of mis-information and mis-quoting.
The following sums up my feelings pretty well:
Doc Brown - Everybody’s Racist
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