Samizdata

In times past, people in these islands went to great lengths to conceal that their ancestors were “lowborn”, or non-prestigious foreign, or, worse yet, unknown. Social climbers would frequently change their names to something more aristocratic and perhaps pay some impoverished scholar to fake them up a coat of arms and insert a fictional ancestor or two into the historical record. Then along came steam engines and trousers and we moved to saying that a man or woman should be judged on their own deeds, never mind who their ancestors were. I thought we all agreed this was a good change.

So why have we gone back to acting as if having upper class ancestors who lived here is an important component of a modern British person’s status if that person happens to be black – so important that it needs to be lied about?

BBC Told To Avoid “Clunky” Color-Blind Casting & “Preachy” Anti-Colonial Storylines In Drama Series

The BBC has been urged to rethink color-blind casting “tokenism” and “preachy” storylines about the UK’s colonial history in scripted series, according to a major study commissioned by the broadcaster.

Conducted by former BAFTA chair Anne Morrison and ex-Ofcom executive Chris Banatvala, the thematic review of “portrayal and representation” across BBC output found that “clunky” depictions of race can cause more harm than good.

The 80-page report revealed audience complaints about Doctor Who casting Nathaniel Curtis as Sir Isaac Newton in the 60th anniversary special “Wild Blue Yonder,” as well as the 2023 Agatha Christie series Murder Is Easy, which featured an allegory on colonialism.

The review noted that color-blind casting was a matter of controversy for commentators and some viewers. Urging commissioners to “consider their choices carefully,” the report said that good intentions to increase diversity can lead to inauthentic outcomes — outcomes that can sometimes be damaging to the communities they are attempting to serve.

“In depicting an anachronistic historical world in which people of colour are able to rise to the top of society as scientists, artists, courtiers and Lords of the Realm, there may be the unintended consequence of erasing the past exclusion and oppression of ethnic minorities and breeding complacency about their former opportunities,” the review said.

“What needs to be avoided is ethnic diversity which looks forced and tick box, and we found our interviewees of colour as emphatic on this point as those who were white.”

Good.

However, the writers of this review made an argument in defence of the black Newton that shows they don’t understand science fiction:

Though Doctor Who was referenced, the report raised an eyebrow about the specific concerns regarding Curtis, saying that a mixed-race Newton “seems much less of a stretch” in a universe in which the central character is a time-travelling extra-terrestrial, who regenerates into different actors.

It doesn’t work that way. In a genre such as opera that makes no attempt at realism (read a plot summary of The Love of Three Oranges sometime), or in much of Shakespeare, the extra degree of divergence from reality involved in having the passionate soliloquy in which a nominally European character pours out his heart in rhyming couplets be delivered by a black performer really is trivial, but the whole point of science fiction is that the premise can be as wacky as you like, but the consequences of that premise are worked through with rigour.

OK, maybe not with rigour in the case of Dr Who, but certainly with an attempt at naturalism.

I have no complaints about the acknowledged alternative universe of Bridgerton. (“The series is set during the early 19th century in an alternative London Regency era, in which George III established racial equality and granted aristocratic titles to people of color due to the African heritage of his wife, Queen Charlotte.”) With all the dystopian alternate timelines out there, it makes a nice change. In a similar way, the Doctor meeting the black Newton of a Bridgertonesque timeline wouldn’t have bothered anyone. Five seconds of script and the word “quantum” would have been enough to avoid the collective national wince when viewers realised they were having that line of false history pushed at them again.

Sometimes the Twitter and YouTube algorithms send me grainy film clips of life in Britain many decades ago; street scenes with policemen directing traffic, workers leaving factories, and the like. One notices several differences from the present. Working class women are wrapped in shawls. Every adult male, however poor, is wearing a hat. And, of course, everyone in sight is white. There is no logical reason why knowledge of this obvious historical truth – the fact that the vast majority of British people were white as late at the 1960s – should cause hostility to present-day black British people, but these days the comments to those historical clips quickly fill up with variations on the words “Notice anything?” I notice that human beings dislike being lied to.

As I said in a post called The Great Retcon,

This desperate retconning of the odd Phoenician, Libyan or Egyptian who turned up in British history as “black”, and the whole trend to exaggerate the number of black people in British history, has two effects, both of which increase racism. White people from the majority population resent seeing the history of their ancestors falsified and even erased, as the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, did when he said that “This city was built by migrants.” For black people, and indeed anyone of any colour whose ancestors did not come from these islands, it cements the idea that a person cannot truly be Welsh or British unless they can point to examples of people with enough genes in common with them having lived in those places centuries ago.