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I’m Concerned by Benin’s Lack of Diversity. Or Perhaps It’s OK. I’m Not Sure.
A British actress named Adjoa Andoh recently said that the coronation ceremony for the British King was too white: “We have gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly White balcony.” Some shared her concerns, others were critical of her demands for racial diversity.
I wonder, if someone were to show her the picture below, of the coronation of the King of Benin a few years ago, if she would be concerned by its lack of racial diversity? If not, then why not? Benin is a West African country, and England is a northern European country. Should they have different standards for diversity? If so, why?
This is all very complicated. I don’t understand leftism. I’m not a leftist because I’m not smart enough. I wish Ms. Andoh would explain this to us.
You must have missed that class… Diversity only works in one direction, it’s the new thing.
For a doc you’re sure not very smart!
Of course you’re not. LOL.
Here’s a quite privileged British bi-racial woman (family photo above; mum was an English teacher, father a Ghanaian journalist and musician who ended up working for British Aerospace) who has not much else to do other than to try to bring herself some attention by inflaming and dividing tempers at a time of relative national unity. I won’t speculate on whether or not she’s dog-whistling about the “institutional racism” of the royal family, and–by extension–their supposed maltreatment of Meghan Markle. I’m not sure if that’s the case; of course I’m not.
This Andoh woman has been feted in the arts and by the press (lead roles in all of the British national theatre companies, starring roles on several television series, and a smaller part in Netflix’s sick-making Bridgerton. Were I to be uncharitable (which of course isn’t the case) I might speculate that she’s trying to grab her 15 minutes of fame in the so-far not terribly interested United States market. Maybe there’s a job in her future at Archewell.)
She’s married to the melanin-deficient Howard Cunnell, a successful literary artist on his own account. She’s also a Church of England lay preacher. Imagine my surprise.
IOW, she, herself, is a successful woman, living her dream.
And yet. Rather than encouraging those of her own ethnic and racial community to excel as she has herself, she cannot bring herself to express gratitude for the open and decent society in which she’s lived all her life, and in the midst of which she’s risen to the heights of acclamation and fame. She’d rather feed the fires of bitterness and resentment for grievances she hasn’t suffered, and which those of her community needn’t suffer either.
She herself praised the “rich diversity of the Abbey [coronation ceremony]” and then compared it to the subsequent appearance on the Buckingham palace balcony which she described as “terribly white.”
Glory be. Genetics is as genetics does.
Other than a couple of the child pages who were not related to the family, everyone else on the balcony was in the family.
Would she have been happier if a few of them had appeared in blackface, just to make a point?
There probably have been similar complaints about Benin from a few people, and nobody cared. In the Twitter age, many crackpot complaints become an international news story for 15 minutes that would have been dismissed as a news story in an earlier age.
You probably see this in medical and pseudo-medical news, Doc. Fifty years ago some quack says he’s got a miracle snake oil cure for something and he’s largely ignored outside his hometown. Today, all kinds of people will jump on it and say “Ah ha, I knew there was a simple cure that those evil pharmaceutical companies were keeping hidden from us.” The great thing about the Internet Age is that useful information can be cheaply transmitted around the world. But so can ridiculous things.
The leaders in Benin have not yet sent off all the fuel their people needs right now to help the people of The Ukraine.
The people in The Ukaraine are white. While the people of Benin are dark skinned.
So is it not really really racist of the Benin leaders and their citizens to hold back their resources from the needy white people in The Ukraine?
What absolute anguish has this tiny nation deliberately caused the people of the Ukraine?
Of course it could be that the World Bank or the IMF have already arranged to take over the resources of the Western African nation, so Benin has little left to offer.
I don’t really know. I am not that worried about Benin or the royal family of Great Britain.
As it is I do worry about the situation of the American middle class. I do know my last 4 utility bills have been 230% higher than a year prior, and this is inside an all electric household. So one big worry is that all the libs will go the route of EV’s and my electric bill will be even higher!
“Shut up, you white racist!” she explained.
I will. Ms Andoh misses Walmart Wallis.
I’ll do it:
White=bad, black=good. Nuff said . . .
It’s complicated…
The coronation referenced is to that of the Oba (traditional ruler) of the kingdom of Benin, which, today, actually pertains to a region in Southwest Nigeria, so it’s not actually a “nation” unto itself at all.
The “nation” of Benin used to be known as Dahomey, and–like the United States–is a republic, so it doesn’t have a king at all. It’s totally unrelated to the Nigerian “Benin.”
Indeed.
I expect in Benin the line is more like: “How awful that they are all from the same tribe”. Man always finds the way to separate people into different Teams. Sometimes its visual: White/Brown/Black. and some times it is cultural: Different tribes of people who all look the same.
It has always been thus.
Again, indeed.
Is Britain as White as Benin is Black? That’s the question. And if not, why not? Another question. And if not, why is that balcony? Which gets you to your third question with a little bit of context. Otherwise it sort of misses the point.
If there’s one thing that Adjoa Andoh’s comments point up (other than–by the simple fact of bringing herself to our attention–her conspicuous success in a country she decries as being ruled by the “terribly white,”) it’s that actions don’t matter, and that the only thing that matters, at the end of the day, is the color of one’s skin.
She, herself, praises the coronation ceremony for its “rich diversity.”
Then she complains that the enablers of this “rich diversity” (the British royal family) are all “terribly white,” because she doesn’t like the color of those who’ve enabled all this “rich diversity” when they stand together on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Who’s the racist here?
I think I know.
I think it’s obvious…
Unless the black is conservative then common core math applies.
nuanced…
We live in a “gotcha” time and culture. Any accusation that can put one in a bad light is valid. The only response is laughter coupled with an upwardly thrusted middle finger.
Britain is about 82% white. I don’t know the calculus for the Edo State of Nigeria which is the “Benin” referenced in the post, but I suspect that it is more racially homogenous than is modern-day Britain.
Britain’s royal family is–as might be expected in such a country–white. That Adjoa Andoh doesn’t seem to have noticed the fact before yesterday really isn’t–I don’t think–worthy of much note, except to point out that she must be rather oblivious to the racial characteristics of those who’ve patronized (in the best sense of the word) her and encouraged her success over the years.
As for “why is Britain more ethnically diverse than the Edo region of Southeast Nigeria,” I should think that’s pretty obvious, both historically and in terms of the modern day.
Regardless, or irregardless as the case may be, I’m not in favor of race-trolling of the sort exhibited by this very successful and–some might say–elite Andoh woman, who seems to be raising the issue only to see if she can get herself in the news.
It doesn’t take much of that particular brand of virtue signaling to send a negative message.
Brie Larson, in what she thought was merely a call for “more diverse” film criticism, commented “I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him!”
Fair enough. I guess I’ll be sitting out her movies until she tells me that she has made one for me. There. Now we’re both happy, and I save ten bucks.
She’s absolutely right. It was made to help wokify children. His opinion is more than unwanted.
White, passing as black>white
Anyone remember Sanford & Son? I’d bet these twits — not the vowel I wanted to use — for all of their race consciousness have no idea what Redd Foxx meant when he said to Lamont’s Puerto Rican girlfriend’s father, “If your daughter likes our people, tell her to get herself a high yellow and work her way up.” Back then, we were honest enough to admit to problems on both sides.
I confess that I was naive enough to think for a while that race relations were getting better decade by decade and then, Obama showed up. It’s been downhill since then.
It’s ironic, or maybe just strange, that a white acquaintance who had never heard the term and who was married to a black woman asked her what it meant. She told him to deliver a message to me. I laughed when he told me she said that it’s not “high yellow”. It’s “high yella”.
Every time I’ve ever heard it, it was. It’s been a long time though.
Not just ten bucks, ten bucks EACH TIME!
Lol! I think you’re bringing your Hausa self to the argument. Andoh woman indeed! Might was well be….well, never mind.
It ain’t Leftism, Doc. It’s something else.
Last September, Liz Truss formed a British cabinet without a white male in any of the top 4 positions. Of course, Truss didn’t last long in office.
The new Tory government has no white person, male or female, in any of the top 4 positions. What are the chances of that? Well, if the 82% white figure mentioned above is correct, and selection is random, the chance of having no white person in group of 4 is 0.1%.
You need to understand that diversity doesn’t mean diversity. Nor does sustainability mean sustainability. Nor do equality, freedom, and democracy mean what they mean.
Put that in your decoder ring and it makes more sense.
No, it’s not.
She is aware that those appearing on the balcony were family, right?