With the corona virus pandemic decimating sporting events, with large audiences banned from watching the event outside by the track itself makes for a very different atmosphere. No spectators, no personalities wandering around the pit area, no exquisitely dressed women or ultra powerful men who head not only the sport but also the royal families on who's land many of the racing tracks are built.
We in the pleb lane, offering our £10 to peep into this other world are left to consider the opportunity that birth can bring and of course this is on everyone's lips following Louis Hamilton's plea to enlarge the cohort who compete. His call for his sport to be inclusive means that nonwhite people must in some way be fast tracked into positions where they will influence young people to try to emulate their success. 97% of the people fronting the show are white, although this doesn't count the the folks in the factories who do the work to build the cars or design them but the racial bias is there. There are other sports such as tennis which seem biased towards white audiences whilst there are sports such as cricket which in this country are overwhelmed by non white spectators when their team comes over to compete. It's also interesting that in both F1 motor racing and in cricket the top contestants, the outright champions the superstars, are black people in Louis Hamilton and Serena Williams. As white people we don't beat our breasts that these out and out champions are black, we applaud them, not as black people but as champions.
The 'Black Lives Matter' movement which has gathered momentum across countries which are predominantly peopled by white people, suggestively, in response to a historical period when black people were rounded up in their tribal areas by black people and sold to exploitative human traffickers as we would call them today, usually white people who then shipped them to the Americas to pick cotton for the white plantation owners. The trade was unimaginably cruel, the conditions on the ships were far worse than we would subject animals to these days and many of the people died before reaching America. For this we should bend out knee, but history, to this day is full of stories of brutality, the Myanmar and the Uighur to name but two but who don't seem to fall under the same umbrella of concern in Black Lives Matter because of course they are not themselves black and more importantly, they are not being persecuted by white people. People with a yellow skin or the nations in the Middle East, even the mulatto skins which make up the nations of South America are all exempt from this historical blemish, only the white traders and the white plantation owners are judged.
Louis Hamilton, a black kid growing up in England broke the mould. His family were poor certainly not rich in fact his dad worked three jobs to ensure Louis could enable his dream. Recognising his talent on the Go-kart circuit his dad worked to ensure this talent came to the attention of people who matter such as McLaren under Ron Dennis. The rest is history. It's a history of hard work and a drive to succeed. It epitomises that even in the most exclusive environment, being black was no inhibitor if the talent is there, but the emphasise these days is that talent alone is not enough, there has to be some sort of reparation, some sort of recognition regarding our black exceptionalism.
But what about reparation for the hundreds of thousands of mostly white women who were raped by the German and Russian soldiers only 75 years ago, no bended the knee for them, no gnashing of teeth on the media.
History is full of terrible events so it can't be the event of slavery per se for which the hand ringing and media breast beating is all about but rather the events of today which prejudice the black persons life opportunities and are now under the spotlight.
The disadvantaged poorly educated working class white child, barely literate after ten years of schooling also deserves attention but don't hold your breath. A people who will squander thousands of pounds on their pets or hand over hundreds of pounds on relief programs to help the poor in far off places are often blind to the predicament of the poor on this island. Rather depict them as work shy low life with camera teams marauding all over the estates where they live digging the dirt so the perversity which is fundamental in any class caste system, is given full reign to vent its spleen.
We have been assailed by the so called plight of women not making it to the top and yet across the world women hold the top political jobs whilst under their stewardship nothing much changes. One is left thinking that perhaps the role mothers play, caring for their young simply outweighs their desire to become 'chairman of the board'.
And so it is with black aspirations. President Obama set the bar high being voted by a majority which included a high percentage of white voters. Vikram Pandit an Indian was made CEO of City Bank, one of the largest banks in America by a Board of largely white people. There are many black people in top positions throughout politics, business and industry in this country They occupy large swaths of senior and middle management positions in Councils and Municipalities throughout the land and do not find the barriers white people meet in many parts of Asia or the Subcontinent regarding jobs and residency. Little is said of this prejudice towards white people, its accepted as part of the status quo, a form of protectionism.
Of course Black Lives Matter and the knee choke hold used by the cops in Minneapolis has now been banned in many American states. The heavy handed tactics used in Hong Kong pale when compared to the tactics used on mainland china where dissidents simply disappear, but that is off limits to the people crying abuse in this country. They will always look for reasons of racial disparity to bemoan their lot not willing to acknowledge that the Hamilton's and Williams's of this world do, what people with talent always do, us it.
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