Dawn Butler is guilty of the racism of low expectations. And of projection.

Another day, another person trying to bring down a successful woman. That the successful woman in this case is Black, and her detractor also Black, and a woman, should be of no great surprise. It is a feature of the age of unwarranted victimhood that many are offended by success. And if someone of a minority achieves mainstream success, woe betide them. They are a ‘coconut’ - brown on the outside, white on the inside. Or, in the case of Dawn Butler attacking the new Conservatice Party leader Kemi Badenoch, they are a ‘white supremacist in blackface.’

Let’s absorb that for a moment. The Nigerian-born first black leader of the Tory Party is a ‘white supremacist.’ Why? Presumably because she doesn’t espouse the politics of victimhood. Not for her the clamour of reprisals for slavery, an abomination but one which occurred hundreds of years ago. If of course there were people alive today who had been slaves, it would be reasonable to call for them to be compensated. Not by the government but by those who enslaved and sold them (unfortunately, many of these slave-sellers were also Black) as well as by their ‘owners.’ But none of the original slaves are still alive. 

Of course there are people alive who have been enslaved in the modern world. The Yazidi girls and women taken as slaves by Isis/IS, raped and relegated to years of desperate subjugation. The thousands of slaves still held in Arabic countries - in 2021, a study showed that 21.3 people out of every 1000 in Saudi Arabia were slaves. The figure was 13.4 per thousand in the United Arab Emirates; 13 per 1000 in Kuwait; 10 in every 1000 in Jordan; 8.7 /1000 in Syria; 7.6/1000 in Lebanon; 6.8/1000 in Qatar, 6.7/1000 in Bahrain; 6.5/1000 in Oman, and so depressingly on. 

Do the likes of Dawn Butler campaign for these modern day prisoners to be set free and compensated? No, of course not. Butler is more interested in historical victimhood. Her resentment of Kemi Badenoch stems from her outrage at a fellow Black woman not simply spending all her time moaning and proclaiming victimhood, but actually succeeding, and showing that in the 21C in Britain, ironically in the most conservative circles, a Black women can climb just as high professionally as any white man. And this scuppers Butler’s strident claim that Black people are hampered by racism in the UK; hindered from attaining the same ground as Whites because of the colour of their skin.

The politics of envy, resentment, and victimhood is so damaging to the public. If you endlessly tell young Black people they have no chance of success because the UK is institutionally racist, you take away their hope and aspiration. If Black youngsters believe they have no hope in hell of a bright future by working hard, what motivation do they have for working hard, striving, trying to be really brilliant at something?

Of course there are racist individuals in the UK, as everywhere, just as there are sexists and homophobes. But the law forbids discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual preference, and so on. The best retort to any sort of belligerence and attempt to crush one, be it racism, sexism, childhood abuse, bullying, etc, has always been success. 

Kemi shows that Black women are as capable as anyone else. She is eloquent, smart, outspoken, unafraid. Not for her the timorousness of Labour MPs who refused to define what a woman is. Not for her the endless moaning of victimhood and demand for special treatment. Not for her the justification of healthy people doing nothing in their lives and living on benefits simply because they feel aggrieved or dissatisfied. Badenoch worked in McDonalds when she was younger. Although this may not make her working class, it does show that she was willing to do menial work on the way up.

 

Scratch the surface of any successful woman who has not had a leg up from nepotism and you’ll find most have worked manual jobs. I’m grateful that while at state school I worked in a bakery at weekends, sold insurance in the evenings (not knowing at the time that this was illegal for the underage), babysat for Labour council members, and worked in creches and playgroups. Had I not earned my own money in these manual jobs before landing a dream job aged 17 freelancing for NME, I would never have appreciated the value of money; never have stuck out 140 hour weeks as a junior doctor on one third pay for 100 of those hours, ie less than the cleaners. Jobs which are a grind in the short term are often necessary to climb higher. Of course the pay and condition in medicine improved by the time I was a consultant.

The likes of Butler and Lammy breed discontent by ranting on perpetually about racism and oppression in 21C Britain. It is true that it is not as easy for working class people to succeeded as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. There is too much nepotism around nowadays, too many intern jobs that can only be taken by those with rich parents. But it IS still possible to succeed. If you work hard at school, you will get the grades to do anything you want at Uni. A loan will see you through those years until you are earning. Obviously, it’s wise, if you wish to earn a lot, to go for professions which will subsequently be well paid, such as law and medicine. Or do PPE at Oxford and enter politics. At a time when universities are admitting more state school pupils than ever, isn’t it a more helpful message to tell youngsters from working class backgrounds of all races that they *can* succeed if they work hard? Isn’t it good to have a role model like Kemi Badenoch who *shows* how a first generation Black immigrant can become leader of one of the two major political parties of the UK? Admittedly Badenoch had the benefit of a private education, but millions of highly successful people in the UK came from state school backgrounds. The secret is not just to want a nebulous status like ‘fame’, as some school children nowadays do, but to set your sights on a career and attain it by working hard in your own time.

It’s this personal responsibility that people like Butler disregard. In their world, if you are born into disadvantageous circumstances, you should concentrate on ‘fighting for your rights’, to the exclusion of personal aspiration. That’s why she sees someone who has succeeded without echoing the narrative of victimhood as a traitor. 

And that’s why those who follow her urgings - to complain, to demand more for free, to get angry - are often doomed to small, frustrated lives of victimhood whereas those who follow Kemi’s advice - work hard, start at the bottom, work up, strive, don’t be chippy, don’t be a victim, don’t ask for special treatment, don’t harp on about the oppression of your ancestors hundreds of years ago - can inhale the sweet smell of success.