UK conservative prime minister,
Boris Johnson has been accused of pushing racial stereotypes over a
newly-unearthed column written during his time as editor of the Spectator in
which he said young people had “an almost Nigerian interest in money”.
The prime minister has been under
pressure in recent months over a series of comments he made during his career
as a columnist, writer and editor, including referring to black people as
“piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” and arguing Islam has caused the Muslim
world to be “literally centuries behind” the west.
In another column which has come
to light, Johnson blamed single mothers for “producing a generation of
ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children”, saying that social
housing was an enticement for them to become pregnant.
The new columns emerged after the
chancellor, Sajid Javid, refused seven times to say whether he would use the
terms “bank robber” or “letterbox” to describe Muslim women who wear a burka,
as Johnson did last year.
The Conservative party leader
wrote in a diary piece for the Independent on Sunday in October 1999 that Tony
Blair had made people feel good about getting rich.
“All the young people I know – ie
those under 30 – are just as avaricious as we flinty Thatcherite yuppies of the
1980s in fact, they have an almost Nigerian interest in money and gadgets of
all kinds.”–Boris Johnson
He added: “All the young people I
know – ie those under 30 – are just as avaricious as we flinty Thatcherite
yuppies of the 1980s in fact, they have an almost Nigerian interest in money
and gadgets of all kinds.”
Weyman Bennett, the co-convenor
of Stand Up to Racism, described Johnson’s words as “deeply racist and
offensive”. He told the Guardian: “This can be added to the ‘piccaninnies’ and
‘watermelon smiles’, the abject refusal to properly apologise and change his
behaviour around racism.
“Boris Johnson is unfit to be a
prime minister that represents the entire United Kingdom. He had demonstrated
this by lying and falsely representing black, Asian and different communities
inside this country.
“This is deeply offensive and
unforgivable and should not be ignored and he should be held to account.”
In the column on single mothers,
published in the Spectator in 1995, Johnson wrote that “uppity and
irresponsible women” had a “natural desire to have babies” and that ways must
be found to ensure they married.
Arguing that social housing
available to single mothers was “an enticement”, Johnson blamed the then-Labour
government for not having “the courage to make the cuts in the safety net of
the viciousness required to provide anything like such a deterrent”.
Labour said the comments followed
a pattern of sexist and misogynistic words and behaviour by Johnson. Shami
Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, said: “These unearthed comments
further reveal Boris Johnson’s contempt for women and families, as he
hypocritically attacks what he appallingly describes as ‘illegitimate’
children.”
In the past 24 hours both major
parties have been criticised for their handling of race issues. The Muslim
Council of Britain accused the Conservative party of “denial, dismissal and
deceit” over the issue of Islamophobia on Tuesday, saying the party had a
“blind spot for this type of racism”. On Wednesday Johnson apologised for
Islamophobia within the Conservative party.
The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
has also struggled to move on from an intervention by the chief rabbi, Ephraim
Mirvis, who said the party had not done enough to tackle antisemitism.
*Culled from theGuardian.com
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