Former UK footballer John Barnes blames The Jungle Book for 'passive racism'

[Chris]

Strange that when I watched the Jungle Book on VHS many moons ago, I didn't even thing about race. I was far more interested in the story and the songs.


They have penned some of the nation’s best-loved books and are revered as greats of the literature world.

But authors such as Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling and Agatha Christie have been blamed for making Britain a country of ‘passive racists’ by portraying the white British imperialists as superior and native people as savages.

Former England star John Barnes said favourite tales, including Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes and Kipling's The Jungle Book, have instilled bigotry into the minds of generations.

His Christie comment was no doubt a reference to the title of her 1939 best-selling novel Ten Little ******s - which caused such a furore that it was renamed a year later in the US as Ten Little Indians.

Modern versions of the book have been re-marketed as And Then There Were None.

And In Death On The Nile, her characters express a casual contempt for 'the natives' from their boat.

The ex-Liverpool winger launched a fierce attack on classic literature in a lecture to students at Liverpool University entitled ‘What is the cause of racism in football?’

Jamaican-born Barnes - who during the 1980s suffered serious racial abuse from the stands - said he wants to eradicate the latent prejudice that he sees makes white people tend to resist having black neighbours.

And he has called for a plan that would make teaching about the non-existence of race as a concept to be made central to the national curriculum.

The 48-year-old told the audience that racism exists because of ‘preconceived ideas’ that are planted through books like The Jungle Book and films that validate colonial prejudices.

He said: ‘Passive racism is inherent in all of us and the way we feel about a group of people is based on what we have been told for 200 years.

‘As a product of that, over the last 200 years we have had negative images of black people, which featured in literature by Rudyard Kipling to Agatha Christie.

‘Tarzan showed that.

‘Racism came from the idea of race, which is a man-made construct. Race is not scientific or genetic. It does not actually exist.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146334/The-Jungle-Book-Britain-nation-passive-racists-says-John-Barnes-blames-classic-authors-bigotry.html#ixzz1vFm8IMK2

[Nicodeamus]

Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden --
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden --
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper --
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard --
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
"Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden --
Ye dare not stoop to less --
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden --
Have done with childish days --
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
--Rudyard Kipling

Maybe he meant this!

Either way, to be bloody well honest, I do see the western culture as superior to that is the 'native'. Native implying here those who still believe in backwards pseudo science and cultural dogmas like polygamy and shamanism without questing them. These include natives in the middle-east, Asia and most of Africa.

[Celine]

what the hell has he got against baloo huh? he ain't nothing but a silly gentle dancing bear. he has issues.

[killadoob]

Yea this book/movie is why they throw banana's, ban it!!!!!!!!!!!

Come on barnes here i thought u were intelligent. Stick to football

[Mila]

Junglebook? Racist?

.. / sigh

I see another attention seeking idiot found a soap box.

[Picard]

Is there an argument that Africans themselves are the cause for the racism against them?

Just asking.

[intel8080]

Race does not exist. It is not genetic. Ok, I agree. But then why does the South African government ask me every year at my work, to state my race? WTF

[Hemi300c]

John start reading big persons books.

The biggest racist in SA at the moment is the government.

[Korn1]

I love the jungle book,am I a racist :wtf: :confused:

[abzo]

Wasn't Baloo Indian?

[Mila]

Wasn't Baloo Indian?

Baloo was the bear, Mowgli was the man cub. There is a tiger in the story so it had to be somewhere around India.

[Mila]

I love the jungle book,am I a racist :wtf: :confused:

// sings
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life

Wherever I wander, wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder of my big home
The bees are buzzin' in the tree
To make some honey just for me
When you look under the rocks and plants
And take a glance at the fancy ants
Then maybe try a few

The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

[Korn1]

// sings
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life

Wherever I wander, wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder of my big home
The bees are buzzin' in the tree
To make some honey just for me
When you look under the rocks and plants
And take a glance at the fancy ants
Then maybe try a few

The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

omg Mila,I love that song :D

[Mila]

omg Mila,I love that song :D happy song!!!! I love it. I will not have a dim soccer player take it away. :D

[porchrat]

Did... did he just say race wasn't genetic?!?!? :wtf:

[DigitalSoldier]

Racism came from the idea of race, which is a man-made construct. Race is not scientific or genetic. It does not actually exist.

Oh okay....

[The_Librarian]

/speechless

because words cannot describe it...

[WatchMan]

Did... did he just say race wasn't genetic?!?!? :wtf:

Seriously dude? Are you ****ing serious? I thought you were a little more knowledgeable than this statement shows you to be.

Refer to the link, and learn something: http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

An important extract from the link's article included:

In the end, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct conclusion with respect to the plausibility of biological races: "Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves."

[Mila]

So my blue eyes has nothing to do with genes.. Oke.

[Picard]

It's all just semantics.

So they say that we can't use the word race to differentiate between peoples. Okay, then we'll find another word.

[thestaggy]

In the end, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct conclusion with respect to the plausibility of biological races: "Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves."

Rubbish. Skin tone, eye colour, hair colour, bone structure are all based on genetics. I don't know why the human race has to make everything so touchy-feely and PC. Like every other animal on this planet, we have our differences while being part of the same species.


And Barnes needs to get a life.

[TheHiveMind]

Seriously dude? Are you ****ing serious? I thought you were a little more knowledgeable than this statement shows you to be.

Refer to the link, and learn something: http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

An important extract from the link's article included:

In the end, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct conclusion with respect to the plausibility of biological races: "Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves."

Yeah, no bias there. I mean it's not like holding those clearly irrational views are furthering her career which just so happens to want to push this agenda for very obvious reasons, while getting her awards and fame from the prevailing "we are all the same, conform you difficult sob" ideology.. oh no wait, that's exactly what's happening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_J._Fields

Awards
•1992 MacArthur Fellows Program
•John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, for Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century
•Founders Prize of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, for The Destruction of Slavery
•Thomas Jefferson Prize of the Society for the History of the Federal Government, for The Destruction of Slavery
•1994 Lincoln Prize by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College, for Free At Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil War

Works
•"Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America", New Left Review, Issue 181, May/June 1990
•"Whiteness, Racism and Identity", International Labor & Working-Class History, Issue 60, Fall 2001
•"Origins of the New South and the Negro Question", Journal of Southern History, Vol 67 No 4, November 2001
•"Of Rogues and Geldings", American Historical Review, Vol 180 No 5, December 2003
•Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press, 1985), ISBN 0-300-04032-6
•The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 1985), Editors Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, ISBN 978-0-521-13214-5
•Slaves No More: Three Essays on the Emancipation and the Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 1992) ISBN 978-0-521-43102-6
•Free At Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil War (The New Press, 1992) ISBN 978-1-56584-015-7

Fields was the first African American woman to receive tenure at Columbia University

/me spits coffee all over his keyboard. African American? How does she know that?
She's from Washington D.C

Sorry "every country with slightly disputed borders", you don't exist anymore, cos we can't define you exactly one hundred percent, you're a bit of a moving target, the entire region has been jeopardised.

BTW John, if you really thought native culture was so great you would be a convert.

I've *decided* to be Chinese FYI
KthxBai

[HiToKiRi]

Some people shouldn't be allowed to talk....period. The utter BS that comes out of peoples mouths never ceases to amaze.

[cerebus]

So what does he suggest we do about this problem; rectroactively eliminate Kipling from the canons of British literature? It's a lot of empty bluster from someone speaking far outside of his field of expertise. Nobody overlooks the racism in classic writing, but it was endemic to the times. Read Kipling's Kim - he was actually very sympathetic and insightful into the human condition of the 'natives' he wrote about. It's incumbent on the modern reader to balance the unpalatable aspects of his worldview with the brilliance of his writing.

[porchrat]

Seriously dude? Are you ****ing serious? I thought you were a little more knowledgeable than this statement shows you to be.

Refer to the link, and learn something: http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

An important extract from the link's article included:

In the end, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct conclusion with respect to the plausibility of biological races: "Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves."
Dude there is a difference between saying that genetically we all share the vast majority of genes and only have a minority of differences that actually govern physical racial characteristics (duh) and saying there is no genetic element whatsoever in race. Your skin tone and physical characteristics are still coded for by genes. It is still genetics.

The argument from your link is just political correctness gone totally apeschit. All it is saying is "we are just as genetically different, if not more so, from others within our own race groups as we are from those in other race groups therefore race isn't genetic". What schit. Of course racial characteristics are genetic. The shape of your nose is genetic, the colour of your skin is genetic, the colour of your eyes is genetic, the type of hair you are going to have is genetic etc. etc.. Now you want to tell me racial characteristics aren't genetic? ROFL yea try again.

Does that mean our racial divides are not merely groupings of phenotypes? No of course not. Does it mean your racial characteristics are genetic? Fsck yea. Otherwise having a child born inheriting it's parents' physical characteristics would be total fscking luck.

[evilstebunny]

Oh, so this explains why since watching Lion King as a boy I believe that real animals can talk .. and that mermaids actually exist, and that fairy dust & a happy thought can give you wings.

Being politically correct is one thing, this is just retarded.

[Ninja'd]

You!
I wanna be like you
I wanna talk like you
Walk like you, too
You'll see it's true
Someone like me
Can learn to be
Like someone like you.

[ghoti]

This reminds me of when Black Beauty got banned by Apartheid :D

[Jase]

This reminds me of when Black Beauty got banned by Apartheid :D

You ou toppie! :D