The real way to kick out prejudice

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/15/kick-out-prejudice-chelsea-ukip

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The sight that greeted people as they approached Wembley from the station, the looks on their faces. After a mob of Chelsea fans was filmed singing “We’re racist and we like it” and preventing a black man getting into their carriage on the Paris Metro, most Chelsea supporters have been keeping their heads down, quietly apologising. And then they came out of Wembley Park station to this.

So a betting company had hired a Sikh man, a woman in a niqab, a black man and a white woman in a wheelchair to pose in front of a green banner, inviting Chelsea fans to be photographed with them to “prove you’re not prejudiced”. They tweeted photos of the stunt – pissed boys, faces like wadded toilet paper, clinking cans above the white woman’s head, one guy laughing so wide you can see the staining on his guts – but off to the sides of the banner you see the other fans walking past with their collars up, their eyes lowered like “Please, please God no.”

It’s obvious why they’re uncomfortable. In casting these minority extras, in saying fans can prove they’re not prejudiced simply by not, say, tipping over the woman’s wheelchair or standing next to the black guy and not, say, doing monkey noises, in suggesting it’s just this simple, in casting them as “others”, the betting company is aligning itself uncomfortably with the very prejudice it’s claiming to fight.

I shouldn’t really be talking about it, fuelling their crap, but honestly, I love it when this happens. I love it when a brand or fashion designer or footballer or pop star reveals themselves as a bigot, because then you know. It’s so beautifully straightforward, like a children’s book. Where’s Spot? Is he under the rug? No. Is he in the wardrobe? No. There’s Spot! Spitting at a synagogue!

This betting company (one that has just reported record profits of €167m and that positions itself as the choice of trolls, taking bets on things like the Oscar Pistorius trial) is the latest to utilise the argument of innocence via proximity. At photo calls Nigel Farage surrounds himself with ethnic–minority Ukip candidates to avoid claims of racism. That doesn’t stop his councillors saying they have “a problem with negroes” and “people with negroid features”. Vice went to the Ukip conference and spoke to their most visible black candidate, Winston McKenzie, who discussed his views on gay adoption (“child abuse”) and the Christian Soldiers of Ukip’s “LGBT recruitment drive”. “As such people cannot reproduce their own kind,” the leaflet read, “they must recruit fresh blood, and this is best done among children in schools, the younger the better.” I look forward to them rolling out a gay councillor to prove they’re not homophobic. The gay councillor will stand next to the black one, who will stand next to Farage; possibly chuck a Jew in there and everybody will vote for them.

It happens in fashion, too, a single model of colour suddenly silencing all claims of racism with a brushed-out Afro and one expensive photograph. It happens in the “body” editions of style magazines, overflowing with oily size-12 nudes for one week only. Or the “age” editions featuring white-haired ex-models, couture authors, only reminding you of their absence elsewhere, reminding you that until now you’d forgotten to be shocked at the extreme 14-year-oldness of the people usually featured. But there the older people stand, there the non-white actress flops, there lies the naked model whose rounded tit erases all question of evil within the industry. Diversity! All done.

In its obviousness the betting-company photo was a comment, wasn’t it, on the futility of such a stunt. On the very stuntiness of it. They were breaking the fourth wall, weren’t they, sending up the hypocrisy by taking the photo call public. By telling them to stand on the cross, with their arm round a minority, and grin like they mean it. Grin, goddammit, grin.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

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