Oscar night was a great night for Daniel Kaluuya. He won an Oscar for his performance in Judas and the Black Messiah, people LOVED his acceptance speech, and there was a party afterwards and I hope he had a great time and didn’t think much about what we’re about to discuss.
But let’s backtrack to Sunday night – Sasha was on assignment in the virtual press room along with 600 other reporters and she texted me about halfway through the show, OMG Lainey, I want to die, the most awkward, gross thing just happened. What happened is this:
Margaret from the Sunday Times embarrassing herself twice.
— Neil Ramjee (@NeilRamjee) April 26, 2021
Funday Times, more like.
It’s clearly difficult for her to tell the difference between all the black men at The Oscars. There’s so many! Cringe. https://t.co/9wt4iply7F
You can see how frustrated he is. He answers without making it a bigger deal – because he doesn’t want it to be a bigger deal on a night when the only deal should be that he is now an Oscar winner – but he is visibly annoyed that he’s been mixed up with Leslie Odom Jr.
This was a reporter for the Sunday Times which… well…we were just here a week ago with the Sunday Times, weren’t we? Because the newspaper published an article about Prince Philip, calling his racist remark about Asians and “slitty eyes” a “gaffe”, and saying that people “secretly…rather enjoyed” it.
As I wrote at the time, this is a publication that, like other UK publications, has pushed back against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s assertion that the British papers are racially biased, and now for the second week in a row is caught up in some racially insensitive sh-t.
Many British members of the media have been, over the last couple of years, deep in their feelings about racist accusations. Many of them have insisted that their coverage is not racially biased, even though probably a lot of people have been doing the work of confronting our own biases. All of us should – because racism is institutional, which means that we’ve all been shaped by it. Except, I guess, for the British media, who somehow either managed to escape it or cured themselves of it … in ENGLAND, of all places.
Speaking of British journalists though, Robert Jobson, who’s been on the royal beat for many, many years, and wrote a book about Prince Charles a couple of years ago commemorating his 70th birthday, is coming out with a new book about Prince Philip. Here’s what Robert wrote on Facebook to promote the new book – anything jump out at you here?
Did you find it? If it’s still not clear, I’ve circled the paragraph:
“Some say he got it all wong.” Ummm…haha? Telling me it’s a deliberate typo doesn’t make it funny or not racist. But if this dude, in his book, is going to be the one trying to present Prince Philip’s “slitty eyes” in a different light, like revisionising it, un-racist-ing it, I’m not sure he’s qualified, given that in a paragraph about an anti-Asian racial slur, he went there himself.
But whatever, yes, no doubt, the British media is not racist, carry on.
