The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #63100 Message #1022701
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
21-Sep-03 - 07:16 PM
Thread Name: UK attitudes to folk music
Subject: RE: BS: UK attitudes to folk music
That's sometimes the trouble; people who get worked up about such things tend so often to be white middle-class fashion-victims labouring under the misapprehension that they are being sensitive. When a chain of charity shops (allegedly) banned christmas decorations for fear of giving offense (not to atheists, of course, but to adherents of other faiths) representatives of the Islamic community were quick to say that there could have been no question of their being offended, and that they couldn't understand why anyone should imagine that they might be; or why, indeed, anyone should imagine that they might have a right to be offended. Sensitivity is one thing; stupidity is another.
There's always a risk, though, that "national" symbols may be annexed by extremists; the Conservative party has always, when in a corner, tended to "wrap itself in the flag", and the tactics of openly fascist organisations are only too familiar. However unfair or ignorant it may be, there will always be people who fail to understand that these symbols belong to the people (all of them), and not to any particular group. We have to fight not only bigotry, but also facile intellectual laziness: "political correctness" is actually an admirable thing in the hands of those who understand what it's for, but, regrettably, is all too often embraced and administered by idiots.