On efforts to “decolonise” folk singing; on claims of being oppressed by a rapidly shrinking minority; and on rap, the ‘N’ word, and dumb academia:
Having covered quite a few of these “decolonisation” efforts, which generally rely on a fig-leaf of widening access and removing barriers, it’s remarkable just how rarely any meaningful obstacle to access is actually mentioned. Typically, the humdrum is depicted as gruelling and somehow agonising, and motes are inflated to the size of boulders.
We were told, for instance, that racial minorities are being “deterred” from visiting the British countryside “due to deep-rooted, complex barriers.” Barriers such as the fact that rock-climbing instructors are usually white. And apparently this unremarkable state of affairs, in a white-majority country, is something that needs fixing.
Though it occurs to me that if a person with brown skin were being deterred from trying rock climbing by the fact that the instructor is likely to be white, then it seems somewhat unlikely that said person is interested in rock climbing to any significant extent. And a person deterred by such things may also want to reflect on their own racial assumptions. But we’re not supposed to mention those, at least not in an unflattering light.
