Robert Sharp

I see that an Alaskan lady named Marie Smith Jones has passed away. As the last speaker of the Eyak language, an entire way of thinking dies with her. (h/t Mark G)

A couple of competing quotes come to mind. From GK Chesterton’s Napoleon of Notting Hill:

“The Señor will forgive me,” said the President. “May I ask the Señor how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?”

“I never catch a wild horse,” replied Barker, with dignity.

“Precisely,” said the other; “and there ends your absorption of the talents….
In Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses–by lassooing the fore feet–which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilised.”

Versus this one, from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia:

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

I doubt very much that my inital thought, that the Eyaks of Alaska are some kind of Eskimo (or Esquimaux, as Chesterton has it), is correct. Nevertheless, their Northerly homeland does remind me of the story about how Eskimo’s have fourty words for snow (or is it fifty? Or a hundred?) What special, specific thoughts and words have we lost now that Mrs Smith Jones has passed away? Matthew Parris, writing in the Spectator last week, says “I know exactly what I mean. I just can’t think of the word for it” referring to those Meaning of Liff or Meaning of Tingo type words that should exist, but do not. How many words, phrases and thoughts could the Eyak have taught him?

The Telegraph headline blares: Three little pigs ‘could offend builders, Muslims’

Yet another example of our country being hijacked by minority sensibilities? Of course not. Perhaps just another example of a government agency lacking either common sense, or perhaps the confidence to apply it? I fear this may be a media storm in a tea-cup.

This time, the defendant is Becta, the education and technology agency, who have refused to give a BETT prize to a piece of digital artwork featuring the Three Little Pigs. Shoo FLy, the snubbed agency, claim that the feedback form from Becta stated that “judges would not recommend this product to the Muslim community in particular” and that they are the victim of political correctness gone mad. Meanwhile, the judges claim that the product failed to impress on a number of criteria.

I think Becta have a point. Political correctness irritates people the most when they are required to change something already in cultural existence (the Telegraph mentions “Baa baa rainbow sheep” as an example). But the Shoo Fly story was a new creation. If their brief is to create something inclusive accross all communities, then pigs probably aren’t appropriate.

Either way, it is only in the final paragraph of the article that we discover that the pigs aren’t so problematic after all. “we are not offended by that at all” says the MCB. This quote seems to have been missed by many readers of The Daily Telegraph, who complain of yet more kowtowing to minorities.

I am sadly confident that this story will join the canon of PC myths, alongside Winterval and the Royal Bank of Scotland Piggy Banks, which ‘prove’ that we are being overrun by barbarians. In fact, when British cultural practices and values come up against minority sensibilities, they usually win out.

Posting here has been light due to a catastrophe that I cannot yet bring myself to discuss.  Don’t worry, no-one has died, but its a bereavement of sorts.

The political crisis in Kenya, and the US Presidential Primary season, remind me of some old thoughts on the nature of democracy.  First, is voting along ethnic lines really democratic?  Apparently the Kenyan crisis has an ethnic element, with supporters of Kibaki and Odinga dividing along tribal, rather than ideological lines.  As I said before, such voting seems to be nothing more than a count to see who has the bigger gang, and undermines the rationalism on which democracy is supposed to rest.

Meanwhile, a race row circles the Democratic Party like a vulture. “Is America ready for a black president?” squwark the commentators, comfortable with their cliches.  Just under a year ago, I wondered whether a good indicator of a mature democracy is when someone who is not from the traditional ruling elite is elected.  I admit this is a rather optimistic stance when Hillary and Barack are mudslinging, but I think there’s a kernel of truth here.  Voting for someone who is different, be it gender, colour or ethnicity, requires a certain confidence in the system.  It is an acknowledgement that you have certain things in common with someone from a different background (this is what the Dalai Lama calls multiculturalism).  And of course, it means there is a high level of political equality.

The counter argument is that, in a democracy, we don’t get to set the terms on which people vote, and that a citizen can vote based on whatever criteria they choose - including racist or sexist considerations.  Attempting to stamp this out would be ineffectual and illiberal.  This may be true, but I think the point about the relative health of a democracy still holds.  If you’re voting for someone purely on the basis of ethnicity or gender, then I’m sorry, but you’re not doing it right.

Other countries are not immune.  I recently read that Jacob Zuma will probably become “South Africa’s third black president“, as if his ethnicity was politically interesting in that country, with its very particular history.  A white president in modern South Africa is currently impossible, but that would be the more politically significant milestone, because only then will politics be blind to race.

Here in London, Rushanara Ali is the Labour Candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow, and therefore stands a good chance of becoming the UK’s first female Muslim MP.  If she is elected, it may count as a contrived first, but I understand that the campaign against her is likely to centre around her religion and gender, rather than her ideas or achievements.  Not very mature at all.

The prolific Daily Dish links to a willfully provocative art exhibition in Los Angles, entitled “Merry Titmas”. Andrew makes the point that such ‘provocative’ shows are actually pretty run-of-the-mill and lacking in real bravery.

My general rule with “brave” outsider anti-religious art is to ask if they’d do to Islam what they do routinely to Catholicism. Most don’t. Poseurs are often cowards.

This is a surprisingly immature comparison to make, given the two religions’ very different attitudes to icons and imagery. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, makes no bones about exploiting the images of its deities. The powerful and often visceral images of Christ, and the invariably erroneous images of the Madonna and Child, are central to the Church’s propaganda. By contrast, Islam guards against such crassness by forbidding any visual depiction of Mohammed, Peace be Upon Him, in any form (be it High Art, cartoons, or the modern medium of teddy bear).

So creating a disrespectful image for one religion is not really comparable to creating a similar image for another, because the critique and satire that underpins the artist’s intent in one context, is not always applicable to another. I agree with Andrew that these artists tend to be ‘poseurs’, and in other areas, I’m sure that one can make the “would you do it for Islam?” comparison. But unfortunately, that argument doesn’t hold for icons and iconoclasm.

Every time some there is some kind of flash-point between hard-line Muslims, and the nebulous cloud of values we call “western”, someone always pops up on the 24 hour punditry circuit, asking for the UK’s “muslim community” to “do more”.

That familiar refrain has been absent in the latest news story, that of Gillian Gibbons and Mohammed the Teddy Bear. Why? Because the “muslim community” has been very quick to present a united front in favour of Mrs Gibbons. Inayat Bunglawala was a visible figure on TV, and the MCB were unequivocal in their position. Today we hear that Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi are off to visit Sudan, to attempt to secure Mrs Gibbons early release.

I do not note this merely to show that the “muslim community” in Britain is now responding appropriately. My speech-marks around the phrase highlight the problematic nature of that term, and groups such as the New Generation Network reject the idea that Mr Bunglawala and the noble peers are legitimate representatives of such a diverse and disparate group.

Rather, I’m simply interested in how their early intervention has shaped and changed the tone of the story. It is not, as it could have been, presented as more evidence of a Britain fractured by multiculturalism. Instead, is the story of a confident Britain, united in its values, dealing with a consular incident in a backward foreign land. Yes, we’ve traded one set of stereotypes for another, but it is nevertheless a welcome change to the depressing narratives of the past few years.

Simon Barnes agrees that there is something rather deterministic about multiculturalism:

Multifaith, multicultural, multicoloured, multilingual England: the times they are a-changing, because that’s what times do. The failure of the England team is part of a larger pattern, one in which the whole business of nationality gets more fuzzy every year and England no longer means the things that it once did. All change comes at a cost, and perhaps one of those costs is the effectiveness of the England football team – and with it, the sad loss of those biennial, heady, foolish, glorious weeks of unity.

Multiculturalism is the recognition that change happens. It is the necessary process by which we turn that change into something positive. It is the enemy of conservatism, that misguided notion that we should be satisfied with the way things are. But this also means that multiculturalism is the antagonist of tradition, the foil of nostalgia, and thus an easy target for those who want to declaim any change.

As Barnes points out, change is sometimes negative, but we would do well to remember that we cannot stop it happening. The question is no longer “should we let it happen?” but “how do we manage it in a way which is beneficial to all?” Multiculturalism is the dialogue by which we try to answer this question.

A rewarding essay on Barak Obama in The Atlantic, ‘Goodbye to All That‘, by Andrew Sullivan. The thesis is that of the current crop of candidates for President, only Obama can heal America’s political chest-wound, a wound created by the Baby-Boomers in the 1960s and 70s.

She and Giuliani are conscripts in their generation’s war. To their respective sides, they are war heroes. … Of the viable national candidates, only Obama and possibly McCain have the potential to bridge this widening partisan gulf … If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man.

There is also an interesting passage on the issue of Obama’s race, and his reconcilliation of his different identities, or rather, narratives. Its a dichotomy that comes knocking for all those who are of mixed race, or of immigrant heritage, and something that a greater proportion of people will face in generations to come:

In Dreams From My Father, Obama tells the story of a man with an almost eerily nonracial childhood, who has to learn what racism is, what his own racial identity is, and even what being black in America is. And so Obama’s relationship to the black American experience is as much learned as intuitive. He broke up with a serious early girlfriend in part because she was white. He decided to abandon a post-racial career among the upper-middle classes of the East Coast in order to reengage with the black experience of Chicago’s South Side. It was an act of integration—personal as well as communal—that called him to the work of community organizing.

This restlessness with where he was, this attempt at personal integration, represents both an affirmation of identity politics and a commitment to carving a unique personal identity out of the race, geography, and class he inherited. It yields an identity born of displacement, not rootedness.

Sullivan, erstwhile war-cheerleader turned ferocious war-critic, notes the sageness of Obama being “against dumb wars” too.

Edinburgh residents: Don’t forget the FEAST performance this evening.

FEAST is a unique Chinese intercultural event to encourage greater understanding between Chinese and Scottish communities through a creative exploration of food, film and music.

Edinburgh-based band FOUND and Chinese composer / musician Kimho Ip will be giving a special performance at Eating Place on Castle Street (off the West End of Princes Street), Edinburgh on Thursday 30 August at approximately 6 pm. They will also present other performances earlier that afternoon. Read More

The BBC are promoting a rather extraordinary artists’ bursary from the Oppenheim John-Downes Trust.

Successful applicants must be … Natural born British Subjects born within Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man of parents both of whom are or were British Subjects born within the British Isles and neither of whose parents was or is of colonial or overseas original subsequent to the year 1900 (Section 34 of the Race Relations Act applies).

(The relevant legislation reminds us that since these provisions do not make reference to race/colour, they can be followed in full).

I suppose Mrs Downes was entitled to place whatever restrictions she wished on how her own money was to be spent. But it is clear she had a very narrow conception of what it means to be British, and the criteria leave a horrible taste in the modern mouth. It is odd that the BBC should be endorsing this sort of anacronism.

I’m way behind the news cycle on this, but it is noteworthy that some of those people who incited violence in reaction to those Mohammed cartoons have been imprisoned. The PigDogFucker points out a useful statistic:

Now the judicial process has run its course, let’s see the final statistics: number of people prosecuted for disseminating said cartoons: 0; number of people jailed for several years for protesting about them: 4.

Mysteriously, the dhimmibollocks brigade has been silent about this. It’s almost as if it didn’t fit their paranoid conspiracist agenda…

Indeed. When the cartoons came to light and the argument ensued, many asked why we tolerated these illiberals in our mists. They claimed that this was evidence that our society and values were being undermined by outsiders. But in fact this was not the case: our legal system was robust enough to see off the challenge (perhaps, as PDF implies, a little too harshly). As I have said before, our values can easily see off fundamentalist challenges, without the need to tighten immigration restrictions, or create harsher laws.