Your Skincolor isn’t a Political Lifeboat
A controversial Tweet pointing a finger at the British Prime Minister caused a flurry of reactions in Westminster from deeply offensive to borderline entertaining. Rishi Sunak had the pleasure of stepping into the shoes of Liz Truss whose unfortunate mandate was famously outlived by a piece of lettuce in a blond wig that by now even has its own Wikipedia entry called Liz Truss Lettuce. Technically, it should be a triumph: the first Indian at the head of Downing Streat succeeding a leader that set the bar so low that she makes Margaret Thatcher look like Mother Theresa. You’d almost feel sorry for the woman if she weren’t such a dry bean.
But similarly to Meghan Markle, it went south just when you thought it would truly take off. People don’t like these stories because they treat them as signs of true inclusivity and all those other words that just sound pretty on paper, only to be proven wrong after all. However a skincolor does not a leader make.
If you permit me a rude metaphor, there’s nothing particularly exotic about curry anymore: both in food and politics. It’s about the attitude, everything else is just a pretty package that makes someone look more...you guessed it, inclusive. By now, the initial excitement about him considerably lost steam and we’re miserable again.
A bit like waking up after the party and realizing the dishes won’t wash themselves. The twitterstorm unleashed by all this refers to the Labor party complaining about the small numbers of sexual predators in the UK serving jail time for their crimes. Or to use popular vocabulary, they want the penitentiary system to be more inclusive to pedophiles and rapists. So just like with Obama, now that the honeymoon is over and an another glass ceiling has been burst, it’s time to pull up the sleeves and work for the cream. That’s the boring thing about glass ceilings in politics. Once they’re gone, your name is reduced to a line in the history books but that’s it.
Rishi Sunak is well aware of it. Now on top of the ladder, he’s in the simmer of the public opinion. He can try to get out of the mess but he’s the face of it due to the track record of his predecessors. When asked to adress the issue, he refuted the accusations by avoiding to answer the question altogether, instead repeating his agenda that by now sounds like a broken teleprompter. As if that weren’t already enough, there’s also the question of his wife’s business involvement with Koru Kids which is “among the private childcare providers likely to benefit from a pilot scheme proposed in last month’s budget to train new childminders” according to the Guardian.
After the backlash dubbed as gutter politics, Lucy Powell said while it might not be to everyone’s taste, she’s comfortable with it. And why the hell not? The British are notorious for their tastes when it comes to satirizing their politics, especially with tv gold like Spitting Image. King George IV is probably the biggest butt of royal satire in their history and the embodiment of the aristocratic decadence in Georgian England. You might compare it to the humor triggered by the ascent of Donald Trump in contemporary America varying from bad to brilliant. Judging by the obese stature of the late king, comedians had a lot to work with back then too.
After back-patting themselves for allowing a spare to inherit the throne, everyone proceded to running all over him for not living up to their expectations since minorities are supposed to treat political breadcrumbs like pork pies. Well, do tell, Sunak is playing for the other team and quite obviously so. He’s no Gandhi in a suit, that much is obvious. The disappointment was even more difficult because the ideological color the media assigned to him was fresh, bright and vivacious. This reaffirms the silly stereotype of minority success as an antidote to our own self-loathing. In fact, the new guy might be more even conservative than Boris Johnson.
This whole unfortunate story unmasks racism essentially as classism where constructs like the popular “white privilege” fall apart because most people aren’t privileged primarily due to their skincolor. But that doesn’t stop losers from accusing racism as the reason for their sad existence. Let’s just get off our high horses, to quote Obama: we don’t want to work, we want to spend money we didn’t work for on things we don’t need and waste time as if we were going to live forever. Fortunately, now there’s an abundance of targets you can accuse for your failures and shortcomings.
Of course, it won’t change anything but it will boost your social credibility for supposedly standing up for the little guy and barking at a whole forest instead of a tree. In fact, the message you’re communicating is, mommy was right, you’re the brightest, prettiest kid at school and everyone likes you. Mommy is still right and that’s why you’re still single. Ethnic minorities tend to build close-knit communities with a strong mutual support system. Sooner or later one of them makes it big and fulfills the dream of first generation settlers that had to struggle in a society that treated them as slaves long after the system was abolished. They settle in areas which create places like China Town in New York City.
Sunak is a cold, hardly relatable technocrat, doubling down even on policies that dig deeper trenches on the frontlines of the culture war. Like a one-hit wonder on Top of the Pops, he insists of stopping the boats, related to turning asylum seeking in the country into a mission impossible. But humans in need are like a river: they always find the way and making things difficult will place a bigger burden on authorities without desired effects. We have a saying: nothing’s too far to the hungry and the horny. Sunak should be aware of it, but he doesn’t seem affected by either.
I find it saddening that someone with a cultural background like him put his foot down so hard on something so vital to ancestors some of which may have had been victims of English slavery system themselves. The same goes for former war refugees that are so cruel to immigrants in Europe. Not just because they know what it feels like, but because it’s where their own biases come up, like nationalism. Having their soil “stained” by those they deem to be dangerous leeches is more than their heads can handle, so their ideological triggers start overheating. Curing a sickness implies that it’s an unnatural state of things that needs to be dealt with. But what about sickness as a default state of mind? The diagnosis no longer applies.
There are other issues Truss or Johnson didn’t mess with, but the new administration doesn’t seem to be shy about it. One thing is for sure, the trans community shouldn’t look forward to any favors. Their rights became the it-battlefield in politics, like an ideological status symbol. Maybe they’re doing it for the noise it creates but most have a very public attitude about it. Trust me, people just want their peace, whatever it is they got between their legs. And they want you out of their beds and panties. It’s called intimacy for a reason. But if we need to discuss it all the time, it means it’s been reduced to clickbait. Human rights shouldn’t be clickbait. We need order and method, not opportunism and fear.
The confusion surrounding the question of gender in the education system is a good litmus on which you see the true colors of those in a position to influence the process. That’s why we need to be even more careful who we put there than into Downing Street. If people start to feel like an obstacle in the process, it certainly won’t encourage them to participate. The world is in a sorry state as it is, don’t add even more to the pile. We need to find a new edible measure for time. Maybe a watermelon? It’s refreshing and sweet after all. If you thought Sunak would be like a sugar rush for the stale halls of the Westminster, the old place proved to be resistant to it. At least he’s as sweet as brown sugar: more of the same, just a different color.
