my points about civil rights is that despite the best intentions of parliament, institutional racism still exists. who has been the gandhi/mlk jr figure in britain? civil rights movements allow public spaces for historically marginalised folks to enter — for example, in America, hiring practises in the academy are less racist than in the UK (something that even white British scholars I have conversed with have confirmed. civil rights have put minorities into positions of political power, and have created opportunities for other changes –like in urban planning to combat racial segregation (again, not perfect)– to take place.

and with all due respect, gentlemen, i am female, and therefore have experienced the nuance of gendered racism (thus the nautch girl reference i made), something i sincerely hope you don’t deal with on a regular basis.

my personal interactions that inform my opinions have been primarily with middle-aged white British men; that possibly also has something to do with it.

there is a flip side to this — in the asian community in the US, we still suffer from the identity politics of the past. hindu-muslim-sikh-geographic-linguistic relations in the US are tenuous among the middle-aged, whereas in the UK i found the same generation of asians to more readily associate and provide support for each other, particularly in yorkshire where asians are most definitely suffering from the repercussions of 7/7.

this isn’t a matter of the uk being better or worse than the us — i appreciate many things about british society, like the comparatively more progressive attitude toward environmental issues, but in my humble opinion and given my own experiences, the racial and religious backlash in northern England specifically was enough to outweigh the green movement.

i’m not looking for you to agree with me, but i believe it is difficult to argue against the fact that postcolonial sentiments do not contribute at least in part to the comments made to Shilpa Shetty.

jagdeep, i don’t believe i ever mentioned anything remotely insinuating that ‘the american way’ is the way of the world — simply a comment supporting civil rights movements. britain and america have similar political trajectories currently, and they both suffer from the same social problems to different degrees. i think you would be surprised to live in a part of the US that isn’t NYC or DC, just as I was surprised/shocked/appalled to live in a part of England that isn’t London.

that is my olive branch.

Reason certainly has gone out the window.

Right. Fine. Because I’ve actually got a great deal of respect for you, I don’t want to rise to cheap crap like this so I’ll leave it.

Forget I mentioned it; this bollox really aint worth getting petty over.

Also, why do you presume that the all 40,000 of those complaints were to do with racism? I complained because I thought it was bullying and victimisation. Are you privy to the content of all those complaints?

And finally, only 400 complained about the palpable racism on Shipwrecked as opposed to 40,000 for CBB. But why is that the fault of the complainants of CBB?

Reason certainly has gone out the window.

I wondered about that as well. That girl is clearly out of her mind. Maybe she wasn’t chavy enough, or I think Channel 4 had said that she changed her views as she realised how ignorant she was. Or maybe people just didn’t care. I don’t know, take your pick.

I thought I already did so I’m at a loss as to what you’re implying…

I guess at it’s heart it’s the same view I take of the whole Diana worship thing (man, the heated arguments I got into over pointing out that she was no saint!).

Seems to me when people lose their sensibilities over a celebrity reason has little use in the conversation.

Anyone getting back to my original point about the substance of the ‘outrage’ over her treatment on CBB a question: Why over 40,000 complaints over that but little over 400 over Shipwrecked (when the racism there was far more explicit)?

Since the Protectorate?

By the way, I see it’s 250 years since the Battle of Plassey. Anyone know if commemorative events are planned? A couple of years ago they really pushed the boat out on Trafalgar.

“By jove, those nautch-girls look rather tasty. Fancy a dekko Pilkington?”

That kind of thing. First of all, saying the UK has had no ‘civil rights movement’, when since the 1970’s a mass movement of anti-racists combined to decimate the far right and take the streets back from racists, and the British Parliament passed legislation outlawing racial discrimination and the general activism that has transformed British society and workplaces in the last 30 years shows he literally doesnt know what he is chatting about. But the other dice he throws is just as ridiculous — that there are no issues around race, no racist violence in America, as compared to the UK, which as we know, is pure bullshit. Maybe it’s got something to do with the model minority myth so many Indo-Americans are up their own arse about. But even then, saying that Asians don’t face discrimination, ignorance about their culture, and discrimination in America is equally fatuous.

In all my years, I have never ever heard Brits refer to Indians as “nautch girls” or “sammies”. If anything, thats how upper class Indian toffs refer to their own underclass. Have you created a version of Britain from a reading of Rudyard Kipling alone?

i am writing this after living in Yorkshire AND Liverpool and London AND western europe. And I can tell you, Holland, Denmark and Germany are still far more racist societies than exist in the UK.

One of these days, you should come clean about your feelings towards Shilpa or what you feel she stands for for you. If memory serves, you seemed to have some antipathy towards her, as opposed to other celebs on CBB, way before the racism rows began.

If she has managed to ameliorate her bank balance because of the rank stupidity of the other CBB celebs, then that shouldn’t be counted against her since thats exactly why they go on the show.

This is the nature of celebrityhood in the modern world. Don’t be hatin’ the playa.

I knew she was little but a money grabber willing to exploit all who swooned over her from the outset…

Wow Leon! She really gets on your tits. I think she’s quite charming and lovely. At the most she comes across as a rather sheltered and slightly pompous lady, in the way that some middle class Indians are very posh. But I can’t imagine why she agitates you so much. Weird.

Good luck to her! Make your money and enjoy Shilpa.