Dancing on Egg Shells

Is it me, or has the actual point in the Strictly Come Dancing race row been totally missed?

I'm not a million miles away from agreeing with Brucie's initial assessment that there is a tendency to blow big over small issues in current society. The trouble is that the knee-jerk response is one based on fear, not motivated by education. The very potential of an accusation of racism is such that there is seemingly an instinctive and instantaneous outrage at any comment on skin colour or mention of ethnicity at all. This failure to openly debate WHY there is problem in the phrases used or implicit messages conveyed in throw away remarks prevents us as a collective becoming more articulate and understanding about ethnicity. Instead we remain strait-jacketed by competing arguments about the rightness or ridculousness of 'political correctness'.

There is a massive issue in referring to someone as a Paki in the way that Anton du Beke referred to the newly spray-tanned Laila Rouass. Having only picked up on the incident in the media coverage, what struck me was a limited (non-existent?) consideration of WHY this is unacceptable. The only reference I picked up about the consequences of the comment was that Laila Rouass was upset by reference, but was moving on from it.

What began troubling me about the response to this incident, though, was when I found out that Ms Rouass is of Moroccan descent. Her outrage, therefore, cannot be strictly personal. She can of course be upset by the wider ignorance displayed and the wider hurt caused to individual Pakistanis or other minority ethnic groups who suffer at the mouths of similarly crass labels applied on the basis of darker skin tone or countries of birth. She is not, though, the victim in this.

The problem with Du Beke using a term like Paki in the way he did is the association of something he perceived as negative with a pejorative term that depersonalises an entire ethnic group. I doubt that Du Beke intended to offend a cultural group. I don't know him, but don't assume that he is a xenophobe (he is afterall an Englishman called Tony Beke who actively chooses to call himself by an overtly non-English moniker). However the ease with which he responded to darker skin with the term he did reveals a lack of appreciation of the insult and how its use may have a negative effect not only on Pakistani people listening to it, but to our society as a whole where similarly unthinking others need no encouragement to ignore the views, experiences and beliefs of other cultures.

This is not a chance for a witch-hunt to expose prime-time racists, though, it should be an opportunity to inform. Du Beke should be made an example, but not by firing him (which would only serve to make him a martyr for the thoughtless 'political correctness gone mad' brigade). He should be publicly educated on the issues of ethnicity. Publicly as his example could be one for many more who are not on TV, but who have never stopped to think about WHY saying Paki is wrong.