Rhodes, race and religion

A modern-day Cecil Rhodes would share at least one characteristic with his alter ego; he would be fabulously wealthy, controlling the world’s diamond supply through his company, De Beers. Almost certainly he would still have a large slice of South and West African gold mines. Back then, he accomplished everything in double-quick time, from a sickly 18-year old remittance man to his death at the age of only 48. Now he could probably have looked forward to a more normal life-span.

 

It is doubtful, though, whether he would be quite such a benefactor.

 

His core belief was based on patriotism that the British were a source of good in the world, which would be a better place if there were more ‘like us’. Instead, he might very well have become a home-grown ‘oligarch’ in its misused sense of one so rich that he can control events. He may have bought a Premier League football team or a failing newspaper were it not for the business acumen that would have deterred him from such unrewarding investments.

 

He is more likely to have become a key donor for universities, particularly by funding and encouraging more diversity. He was a Grammar School oik who kept only one term a year at Oriel so that he could spend the rest of the year on business. He would probably fall more into the Lord Nuffield or Bill Gates mould, not the swaggering vulgarity of the Russian  billionaires.

 

Racist?

 

Here is one definition: the ​belief that people's ​qualities are ​influenced by ​their ​race and that the ​members of other ​races are not as good as the ​members of ​your own, or the ​resulting ​unfair ​treatment of ​members of other ​races’.

 

The first part of that interpretation would probably apply to a significant proportion of the human race.

 

Rhodes would probably give little thought to this. He would be driven by whatever was the business advantage. He would have no compunction about bribing the Big Men of Africa or elsewhere. The only colour that really interested him was the colour of money.

 

The English went along with Rhodes when he said that they ‘had won first prize in God’s lottery. We casually used descriptions that would be totally unacceptable today. ‘Spades’ , wogs, coolies, and many others. But it was two-way; ‘honkey’, white trash, and a whole lexicon based on nationality rather than colour – Frog, kraut, dago, Jew-boy.

 

Well, it is certainly true that in today’s understanding the British in past years were ‘institutionally racist’ (dreadful phrase). It was not an issue. Outside the big conurbations few people had ever seen a ‘person of colour’. My first was in WW2 when a West Indian airman came cycling gaily through the village. We all gave him a big cheer and he gave us a smile like a row of piano keys. I never saw another for around 20 years.

 

The British have never been much concerned with colour. Black GIs were welcomed during WW2 and afterwards, sometimes a little too warmly by the local girls. When real tensions arose these tended to be more about culture than race. We are now nearly 70 years down the track since the Empire Windrush brought the first batch of West Indian immigrants, and nobody gives much thought to ‘black Britons’ these days except when they are Lenny Henry,  Louis Hamilton or winning Olympic medals.

 

One hundred years ago an Englishman would have been thought deranged if he suggested that an illiterate half-naked African tribesman was his equal. Rhodes was a man of his times, as he would be were he alive today. And yet our attitudes were ambivalent.

 

Indian elites have been attending English public schools and universities (and playing for English county cricket teams) since Victoria’s time, plus a smattering of West Africans.

 

In both World Wars men ‘of colour’ have been accepted as equals. The first West Indian officer in the British Army was Norman Manley in WW1; he was, incidentally, also a Rhodes Scholar. Jamaicans in  particular joined the RAF as aircrew in WW2. The walls of the  ex-servicemen’s club in Kingston are replete with photos of bomber pilots,  caps at the required rakish angle  and sporting an equally vital ’wacko’ moustache’

 

There is a great story in the biography of Giles the cartoonist. He was a fine jazz pianist and would play in his local pub in his small Suffolk village. One night newly-arrived Americans came into the bar. Solitary black guy was also there. They promptly proceeded to beat him up and throw him out. This had consequences.

 

The landlord henceforth banned all white Americans. Then black Americans took over; many of them were professional musicians and in no time Giles had one of the best jazz bands anywhere.

 

Unfortunately for the thugs, the black guy happened to be a Squadron Leader in Bomber Command, so courts martial beckoned. Tragically the Squadron Leader was killed in action before the case came to trial.

 

The liberal elites have a simple interpretation of ‘racism’. ‘Whites’ are inherently racist, and only ‘whites’ are racist!. Because of arrogance and dull-wittedness, the race relations industry  is quite unable to adopt historical relativity, the ability to see and interpret history through the eyes of people of the times. They constantly apply 21^st century attitudes to 18^th or 19^th or even 20^th century norms.

 

The RRI is totally confused as between ‘ethnicity’, ‘race; and ‘colour’. But their main – perhaps only – criterion is colour. And when they started to become a powerful lobby from the 1960s onwards, their obsession began to take on a lunatic tinge of its own. The golliwog on the marmalade jar was ‘racist’. Did complaints come from blacks, or from the usual suspects, the middle class middle aged women missing the fun of Greenham Common?

 

They constantly parade their own ignorance. ‘Baa, baa black sheep’  is about slavery. Not quite, dears. Slaves collected cotton wool, not sheep’s. How about ‘nitty-gritty? That was supposed to be the detritus at the bottom of a slave ship. The fact that the word was unknown until the 1930s is immaterial to the closed mind.

 

Then there’s ‘nig nog’. Nothing to do with race or colour. Years ago we new recruits in the army were called ‘nig nogs’ – raw and inexperienced, Yorkshire origin. But we mustn’t use it for fear of being done for ‘hate speech’.

 

The real problem  isn’t race. It is religion.

 

The RRI makes it worse. They are addicted to ‘multiculturalism’, the conceit that leads to Muslim ghettos  that refuse to integrate or even accept compliance with the norms of the host country, such as something as simple as appropriate dress for schoolgirls, or, indeed to learn English. Many British who live in proximity to these ghettos believe that the authorities turn a blind eye to unacceptable behaviour by these minorities; that they are exempt from the law for fear of them crying ‘racist’. How else is the long-standing and systematic abuse of under-age white girls to be explained?

 

How else does one explain a sentence of 3 years for defacing a mosque with red paint and  fine of £15 for burning poppies on Remembrance Day?

 

We seem to be creating a whole new concept of ‘Asian untouchables’ that has nothing to do with Dalits.

 

"I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour." ." CJ RHODES.