TV is a Blackwash

I recently remembered an experience I once had, some time in the mid 2000s. It was a different age, but in some ways which will be illustrated here, the seeds were being sown for things considered “normal” today.

Back then, the “docu-drama” format was very popular on British television. Presumably it was cheaper to make than proper drama, and engaged more viewers than did pure documentary. Either way, for a while it seemed that the only way TV producers could think to present any topic was in this format.

Watching TV one night with a friend, we flicked over and landed in the middle of a docu-drama about some 19th Century legal case. We were just “channel hopping”, as people did back then, so we did not pay it much heed and certainly were not bothered that we had missed the beginning of the programme. It was just ambience while we chatted, as two opinionated young men are wont to do of an evening.

A few minutes later, I glanced over at the TV and was stunned to see, among the English actors and the Victorian costumes… a black actor playing the role of a barrister. Remember this was the mid 2000s; to depict a real historical character with an actor of the wrong race was unheard of.

My friend and I were a couple of curmudgeons - still in our early twenties, yet full of indignation about the state of the world. We both agreed that it was outrageous for a TV show to misrepresent history!

Shortly after this, I was on a liberal Internet forum moaning about the increasing political correctness on British TV. I cited (since of course citations were needed) the docu-drama I had wandered into a few weeks earlier. A Victorian-era English barrister played by a black actor?! I said this was the start of distorting our history, crowbarring non-white actors into white roles, etc.

Since the forum in question was very liberal, a few people feigned confusion as to why I would even care about such a thing. (I recall one of them asking whether I would care if Mozart were played by an actor with the wrong eye colour.) But it was still a decade before the SJW craze of the mid 2010s, so most of the liberals were more honest and reasonable, and they agreed with me that “de-whiting” British history was wrong and, well, racist. The ideologues backed down, because they had no choice: I had persuaded the majority. It was, as we used to say, “a rare victory for common sense”.

The thread died down and was swiftly buried under active threads, and I forgot all about it.

But then, a few days later, it was suddenly at the top of the list again. New posts? I thought the issue was settled…? I clicked in.

One of my more ideological opponents had gone off and done some research. He declared that, in fact, the Victorian-era barrister portrayed in the docu-drama was black, so actually the programme was accurate, and it was me who was distorting (white-washing) history. I did some research of my own and learned, with great embarrassment, that he was correct. Incredibly, the real-life barrister had indeed been black - the very first black barrister in British history. This might well have been the very subject of the docu-drama; my friend and I didn’t know one way or the other, since we had missed the start and chatted over it anyway.

Back on the Internet forum, I now looked like a fool - at best. I had jumped the gun. I had got everyone (in reality only a few people) riled up about a lie that now turned out to be a truth. Not only did I racistly care about white Britain being misrepresented, I even hallucinated this where it wasn’t happening! So I was a latent racist, and paranoid into the bargain. Better yet, I was given to knee-jerk behaviour since I lacked the intelligence to be more careful before drawing conclusions. Ignorant, uneducated, paranoid, feckless and unintelligent - this was manna from heaven for the liberal who just relishes feeling superior to “racists”.

The regulars on that forum lit up with glee at the chance to put me in my place. Even the ones who had previously been sympathetic to my complaint now joined with the others in condemning me and my stupidity.

I expect that the more ideologically committed of those liberals secretly knew that, though my complaint was invalid this time, it would eventually be valid, because they fully intended to make sure that happened - but of course, they didn’t “reveal their power level”. It was more useful to them, in the presence of more naive liberals, to feign disgust at my behaviour. By vilifying me, they could hoodwink them.

Meantime, those more naive ones, the liberals who “just go along to get along”, probably felt some relief that I had been proven wrong. Thank God, they didn’t have to take something seriously. Thank God, they didn’t have to feel out of place in modern Britain. Thank God, they weren’t out of step with the mainstream media. Thank God, they didn’t have to question their beliefs. Thank God, the cosmos was not asking anything of them.

The question of “trajectories” versus “events” comes in here. I made my assumption in the first place because I found it plausible that modern TV producers would do such a thing. I found it plausible because I had observed certain trajectories in British culture throughout my lifetime. The more ideological liberals who opposed me were no doubt fully aware of those same trajectories, but tactically pretended not to be. By contrast, the naive liberals had not noticed those trajectories at all. Most people are like this. They do not see trajectories; they see only isolated states with no causal connections to one another. On the rare occasion when they begin to perceive a trajectory - ie. when they notice that something has consistently changed in a particular direction - they quickly remind themselves that they have no right, no qualifications, to make such an observation, and in any case even if the trajectory has been real up till now, that doesn’t mean it will continue into the future, so why should they proclaim anything? Best to keep an open mind - after all, that’s what intelligent people do, right? This, of course, is the midwit syndrome.

Some might say, well, I should have kept an open mind about the docu-drama, then I wouldn’t have blundered ahead and made a fool of myself. It is true I should certainly have been more careful, and this experience was one of several which taught me to avoid jumping the gun. But the trajectory I had observed was real, and, given the forces clearly gaining power in society, it was destined to continue into the future. My mistake was about, not the destination, but the speed of travel.

Meantime in the mid 2000s, the naive liberals needed reassurance from the ideological ones. Duly, they all arrived at a consensus: in being wrong about the misrepresentation of this one historical character, I was moaning about something that was not happening, and therefore (by standard fatuous extension) would never happen.

What a silly fool - and how they laughed at me.

But, 20 years later, who’s laughing now?

Not me.

The forces remained predominant in society, so the trajectories they foster proceeded apace, so the phenomenon I was being too jumpy about in the mid 2000s well and truly arrived within a few years.

Today, there are dramas being produced (including very high-profile and sumptuous productions) in which historical people who definitely were white are portrayed by non-white actors. In fact it is almost impossible today for a drama to be produced without including non-white actors, even if they have to be crowbarred into historical settings where they certainly were not present. In fact, by 2016 it had become “a thing” for producers to delight in doing exactly that.

So, I was wrong about one obscure docu-drama back in the mid 2000s. But now, flagship dramas are portraying Anne Boleyn as black, pretending that it was a perfectly commonplace thing for black men to seduce aristocratic white women in Regency-era England and that London high society at that time was multiracial, and even 18th century London was apparently multiracial, and Lord of the Rings has been similarly retconned.

The naive liberal who notices this rewriting of history, this energetic insertion of anachronisms all over the place, will assuage the anxiety it makes him feel by telling himself “well, it’s for the best” or “well, it’s only TV, what difference does it make?”

Let us examine the difference it makes.

England in 1138 AD

In the execrable Doctor Who, historical England is routinely depicted as every bit as multiracial as contemporary England, as far back as the year 1138. This is replicated across TV drama, especially in productions intended for children. It will profoundly shape their conception of Britain’s history. They will believe:

• diversity built Britain

• diversity is the natural state of affairs, not some radical departure from the norm

• Britain was always diverse (but still, we should celebrate Windrush)

• there have always been people of every colour here. At no time did white, “native” Britons have this country to themselves

• indeed, there’s no such thing as “a native Briton”, since we all ultimately came from somewhere else (Africa)

• in fact, there’s no such thing as “white”, since people have always moved around and mixed with each other

There will be many children today who sincerely believe those lies - though they must struggle to reconcile them with the other lessons that dominate modern media:

• white people absolutely exist (more’s the pity)

• white people were profoundly racist until 5 minutes ago

• white people should be quiet, because their perspective is (uniquely) of no value

• white people have made everyone else suffer

• white people should pay

Of course, we all know this stuff. An extended lament about the brainwashing machine that British TV drama has become would, by now, be superfluous.

But it interests me to wonder what those liberals on that mid 2000s Internet forum would say now. Probably they would just scoff and laugh at me, both the me of back then and the me of today. But, if you could administer truth serum to these people, my guess is that the answers would differ between the naive and the ideological ones. The naive would say:

“Yes, your warning was correct, and though we agreed with you at the time that it would be wrong to misrepresent Britain’s history, we now think it is right to do this and we are glad that it is being done.”

The ideological would say:

“Yes, your warning was correct, and that’s why we had to lie, to keep the others asleep until they were sufficiently conditioned to willingly surrender ownership of their history and homeland.”

When it comes to replacing a population, where there is not well-meaning delusion, there is malicious deceit. Rarely is there honesty. But when it does emerge, it’s as ugly as hell.