White actor to play Muhammad Ali !
As if. Only kidding. Should this absurd proposal ever be made it would rightly be regarded as complete and utter nonsense causing incredulity, anger and annoyance within the black community, but not exclusively as I’m sure the vast majority of non-black people would be equally bemused and offended by it.
Why have I raised this nonsensical red herring? Well, it’s in reaction to what’s going on in the field of film, theatre and television where British history in particular is being misrepresented by the wokerati to create a false narrative in the minds of the gullible, impressionable, ill-informed and, frankly, ignorant members of our society. It’s a sort of brainwashing exercise dressed up as popular entertainment. It’s not even Political Correctness gone mad. It’s more sinister than that.
I’m referring to the BBC in particular, but not exclusively, and their policy of being “colour blind” in the casting of actors. In a recent edition of Dr. Who the character of Isaac Newton, one of the great men of British and world history and unquestionably white, was played by Nathaniel Curtis, a “person of colour”. Why?
“The Mirror and the Light” the late Hilary Mantell’s final novel in her Booker prize-winning trilogy surrounding the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell and the goings on of the Tudor Court will shortly be released by the BBC as a sequel to their wonderful award-winning series “Wolf Hall”. However, this time around the BBC’s policy of colour blind casting portrays “people of colour” in the Tudor Court. Whilst it is probable that “people of colour” would have been present in Tudor England none is recorded as inhabiting the rarefied atmosphere of the court.
The BBC is also about to launch a major new series entitled “King and Conqueror” which is set in Anglo-Saxon England at the time of the Norman Conquest, 1066 and all that. However, despite the fact that there is no record, however tenuous, in or of Anglo-Saxon England of the existence of “people of colour” the BBC has, apparently, cast “non-white” actors to take the roles of Anglo-Saxon noblemen. In the full 70 metre length of the Bayeux Tapestry and the contemporaneous chronicles there’s not a single representation of “people of colour”. I wonder why.
The BBC is not alone in this active misrepresentation of British history. The Netflix TV period drama series of “Bridgerton” also cast “people of colour” in a number of roles. Whilst “people of colour” would certainly have been present in Regency England due to population movement within the blossoming empire, these will have been in service, or merchants, or visiting dignitaries. I’m not aware of any of the British aristocracy being of such ethnicity and, if so, certainly not to the extent portrayed.
This trend of colour blind casting isn’t confined to television. The 2018 film “Mary Queen of Scots” included “people of colour” as nobles in both the Scottish and English Courts. Again, unlikely and not existing in recorded history. Adrian Lester is an excellent black British actor who appears in the film who has an incredible history of outstanding performances on stage and TV. Good an actor as he undoubtedly is, he was, in my view, miscast at another time by the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Henry V, one of the great kings of British history and certainly not a “person of colour”. This, I feel, could be the equivalent of “White Actor to Play Muhammad Ali”. Something of a nonsense.
My motive in highlighting this issue is simply to expose how parts of the wokerati-controlled media are attacking and undermining British history through the deliberate misrepresentation of a historic multi-cultural society that simply did not exist. Is their motive to deceive both the white and non-white members of our society into thinking that Britain has always been multi-cultural when it demonstrably has not?
If social engineering isn’t the motive behind all this it’s perfectly legitimate to ask why the movers and shakers at the BBC and elsewhere haven’t had the courage, or idiocy, to cast a white actor to play Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King or Barak Obama. As I think we all know, the chances of this happening are zero, but in any event I would rail against it just as I am now because it would be a nonsensical misrepresentation of black history and black achievement.
There’s not much history of white actors playing black characters. The exception is, of course, Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice” where the male lead, Othello, has been played by “blacked-up” white actors such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Orson Welles, Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins. As Othello is described by Shakespeare as a “Moor” “blacking-up” for the part was intended to bring authenticity to the role and not a clumsy racial slight or crass insensitivity as now perceived through our 21st century mores.
There are many excellent black actors who have played Othello. As long ago as 1825 the black American actor Ira Aldrige played the part on the London stage. The multi-talented polymath Paul Robeson (athlete, classical bass-baritone, actor, lawyer, human rights activist) played Othello at London’s Savoy Theatre in the early 1930’s. Of more recent vintage the part has been played by James Earl Jones, Denzil Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Avery Brooks, Idris Elba and David Harewood who was the first back actor to take the part at London’s National Theatre.
It might cause some to baulk (facts that don’t fit the entrenched prejudice often do), but it is worth noting that Othello was not a black African as generally perceived in that the term “Moor” at the time the play is set refers in the main to the Muslims of North Africa not to sub-Saharan Africans.
The only instance of which I’m aware where a black actor “whited-up” to play a white character was in the 1970’s film comedy “Watermellon Man”. Here the black actor Godfrey Cambridge played a white racist bigot whose skin changes overnight from white to black with the ensuing chaos in his life. Initially, Cambridge had to “white-up” to play the opening scenes before his unexplained metamorphosis. This was clearly a comedic satire on American society and unlike the “colour blind” casting of the BBC and others to misrepresent the historic culture of a nation.
Just as we now rightly consider that a historical or fictional black character should be played by a black actor what different criteria is applied when black actors are cast to play historical or fictional white characters? What is the purpose of this phenomenon? There must be one. It can’t be to give work to under-employed black actors, which in itself would be patronising and racist. No, the term “gaslighting” in the sense of manipulating reality to create the oxymoron of a false truth springs to mind.
If you’re concerned and offended by this trend you will, I think, be incensed by what follows.
An illustrated children’s book targetted at seven year olds entitled “Brilliant Black British History”, recently published by Bloomsbury and promoted by the charity The Book Trust, which is taxpayer funded by the Arts Council, claims that Stonehenge – wait for it – was built when Britain was a “black country”. The book states that “Britain was a black country for more than 7,000 years before white people came, and during that time the most famous British monument built was Stonehenge”. Is that clear? Stonehenge was built by black people when Britain was populated by, you’ve guessed it, black people.
Further, the book states that “Britain has been a mostly white country for a lot less time than it has been mostly black.”
The author of this egregious drivel is Atinuke, a Nigerian-born writer who claims that “every single British person comes from a migrant” and that “the very first Britons were black”. Her first phrase is certainly correct in that every British person in common with every other nation on the planet will have evolved from a migrant mix. However, the contention that black Africans colonised Britain and, I assume, the rest of western Europe can only, charitably, be based on Atinuke’s complete misunderstanding of the evolution of homo sapiens as the sole surviving member of the homo genus.
A simple question to ask Atinuke would be : if black Africans originally colonised Britain thousands of years before the arrival of white-skinned migrants, what happened to them? Where did they go?
There is, of course, no archaeological evidence for Atinuke’s thesis.
Historian Dr Zareer Masani says the book “seems typical of the kind of wokedom that’s been colonising our schools and universities”, and further it is “evidence of brainwashing children with outright lies, confusion and misinformation.”
David Abulafia, the internationally respected emeritus professor and historian at Cambridge University has said in response to Atinuke’s unmitigated tripe is “The Nazis claimed that the cultural achievements of the north were the work of blond, fair-skinned folk. Making skin colour a criterion for judging great achievements like Stonehenge is therefore not a new idea. It is also rubbish. It only gets interesting if their skins were blue or green.” Aliens, perhaps.
Some might think that casting black people to play white historical figures and the misrepresentation of evolutionary facts to early-learning children is just an inconsequential recognition of the multi-cultural society that Britain now is. I beg to differ. For me the factual truth and accuracy of information, particularly when presented to children in their formative years, is absolutely essential.
Why do we put up with this nonsense?