Tbh it was the 90s. So that’s further along than people think.
The audience went with it and all though both comedians careers advanced, it never harmed them from picking up newer fans as times gone on.
It’s clearly wrong but there’s always context you have to bring into the conversation if your going to find solutions.
Whether you buy his reasoning or if it’s just a matter of maturity, becoming a father or how things evolve generally so be it.
It’s kind of ironic that the abused gives him the platform to right the wrong, but in so doing takes the conversation forward because of that.
Those white people are literally using violence to defend black pete 
.
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Yeah black Pete in the Netherlands is a disgrace
I never understood growing up here as a child (not Dutch)
But Dutch folks get very defensive about Sinterklaas and black Pete
It’s weird
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Don’t forget those racist Spaniards either, who love blackface
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You see a few of them at the F1 Spanish grand prix still
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It also gets very little attention. I’d forgotten about it completely.
Seen some defend it by saying the black face represents coal, not ethnicity. Never saw a compelling answer when people asked how that explains the wigs… lol
I still cringe when I remember saying golliwog, and seeing black face on the jam jar.
It’s pretty indefensible at this point.
Yeah, Baddiel always struck me as a bit of a cunt.
(I assume you mean him and not Jason Lee…)
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Yeah
Think it came from his educational thing but Stephen Fry never needed that in his personality.
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Agreed. Whiny victim hypocrite
Everyone knows that working with coal gives you that type of hair. Just go look at West Virginia.
I remember watching that Baddiel stuff at the time, and even as a teenager I didn’t like it; it felt like bullying. But i didn’t consider it racist. It didn’t even cross my mind. I’m sure people did find it racist at the time, but pre social media days, just living in a small town, those realisations just didn’t exist. Likewise, my older generation family members had golly wogs in their homes, and that didn’t register either. If I do my best to remember, it wasn’t until sometime around 2004 that I began seeing it as wrong. Where Baddiel justifiably deserves contempt is his inability to just say sorry like a normal adult even just for the emotional damage he caused to a fellow person. How hard is it to say, sorry mate, at the time it just felt like banter, but now i can see it wasn’t very good of me blah blah blah.
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Not to say it wasn’t racist, but I think it’s fair to say that majority opinion in Britain would have been that it wasn’t racist, and in that sense I can see how someone like Baddiel could have done what they did without necessarily being a racist person.
I mean, it was around the turn of the century when Morris kinda blacked up a bit to parody gangster rap as rapper “Fur-Q” on Brass Eye, and it was largely permissable (it definitely wasn’t the reason that the show was highly conteoversial), as it was just seen as part of satirising a genre of rap and American music television. I’m fairly sure that Morris wouldn’t do that at all these days, as times have changed, even if the intent was still to satirise culture and not to denigrate black people. Bit like Robert Downey Jnr in Tropic Thunder, where the butt of the joke wasn’t “haha black people”.
While Baddiel and Chris Morris did this in the 90s (maybe v early 00s in Morris’ case, but I think it kight be the case that only the Paedogeddon episode of Brass Eye was after the turn of the century in 2001) and it wasn’t largely criticised, I think someone putting an old school black and white mistrel show on terrestrial telly would have been largely considered unacceptable in that same era.
These days blacking up would be considered offensive regardless, whereas in previous times perhaps there would have been a bit more consideration of the specific context, ie. What Chris Morris did vs what a black and white minstrel show would have represented. Which is not me saying that black people (and some others) didn’t consider it offensive then, or shouldn’t have, but just that on a wider societal level it wasn’t.
I should also be clear that I do think that what Chris Morris did and what Baddiel did were quite different, as above it might look a bit like I’m saying they belong in the same category and weren’t that distinguishable, which isn’t the case.
Thinking about it, Little Britain was probably on the cusp in terms of getting away with a white person blacking up to play a black character. That was probably around 04/05, coincidentally when you say you changed your perspective?
I think this is correct, and it’s why I think he might be a bit sus (want to watch that doc before passing final comment).
He should have said something along the lines of what you said above years ago and I think most people, and more importantly Jason Lee, would have made their peace with him on the issue.
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My grandparents in the UK sent me a gollywog toy and also had a gollywog necklace as a kid. Didn’t even cross my mind that it was a racist thing, I didn’t even view gollywog as being based on a human, just a weird teddy bear thing.
I don’t think my UK grandparents ever met my mum but I’m sure they knew she was brown lol although she is not of African or Carribean descent which I’m assuming is what gollywog was based on.
Totally agree. Not that I’m a massive fan or anything, but I much prefer Frank Skinner.
Both of them dissed Pele loads of times. They can both fuck off.
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It is a lot worse out there, a lot of them think nothing of their casual racism as they find it endering but it’s disgusting.
Still a long way to go im afraid
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Show was before my time really, being born in 1990, pretty much only thing I know about it is the Jason Lee bit.
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