'I am not de problem': Benjamin Zephaniah on modern racism - Newsnight
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- čas přidán 7. 12. 2015
- Exactly 50 years after the introduction of the Race Relations Act, Benjamin Zephaniah looks at whether racism in the UK has diminished, or just evolved. * SUBSCRIBE to get our latest videos bbc.in/1iouM30 *
RIP Benjamin. What a loss. Poet, musican, actor activist. Such a talented man.
And race card player. A huge chip on each shoulder.
Giant of a man
who else watching this in quarantine and this is sent by the school for work
me
@@adrianhoti1781 wich year
zahir shah haha, me!
c
@@jacktaylor8501 what
Desperately saddened to hear of his passing today. Rest in Peace Benjamin. True Hero.
😞 I've never heard of him before now. But, I wish I had.
Gone too soon. May he rest in power ✊🏾🕊
That poetry... wow. I need to check out more of Benjamin Zephaniah. Brilliant mini-doc all around, horrible the way things still are for so many. We must do better.
so weird when you try this with headphones
HMJR GET ON THE OTHER SIDE NO STAY IN BOTH
JUST GET ON BOTH SIDES
I thought my headphones had broken
Poet, Musician, Activist and Lyricist Extraordinaire 👏👏👏 RIP Benjamin Zephaniah ❤️🙏❤️🕊🕯
And actor
And domestic abuser
Dearest Zephaniah, your poems are part of my English syllabus in Israel, I chose them myself! Thank you for the words and the inspiration.
Love this, blessings on your work. :)
What is israel
It does not exist
Do not think it is working in your country. Israel is pathologically racist towards Ethiopian Jews (sterilisation, throwing away donated blood), in The Times of Israel, a survey found that 52% of Israeli Jews believe that African migrants are 'a cancer'. Your country is racist towards Black people so teaching about Benjamin in your syllabus obviously does not work.
Benjamin Zephaniah and John Cooper Clarke, having been taught poems by both in GCSE English, were the first people to open my eyes to spoken word that wasn't stuffy old poets like Wordsworth etc. They made it fun and eye opening, relevant to modern society. Thank you to both, as they have really changed my life for the better. RIP Benjamin 🙏
Wordsworth isn't a stuffy old anything, you're just the product of a culture that wallows in the filth..
We live in a world where Henry Kissinger dies at 100, whereas Benjamin Zephaniah dies at 65. RIP King 🙏🏽
What's that supposed to mean?
@@telboyjack100 🙄
@telboyjack100 it's ironic that a warmonger like Kissinger lives a long life, whereas a man of peace is taken from us too soon...
@@nektekket852 Exactly
I've just discovered this poet...and I'm very pleased that I did.
👍💯⭐
Me too! Such a beautiful man.
I wish I could make a peace in this world... Sending my love and respect to everyone...
Hi englisch LK im proud of u
One race,The Human Race.
No
@@Liam-dv7zq why not?
Siana Bangura's story breaks my heart. NO ONE should have to suffer that anymore.
What a man - my favourite poet! RIP Benjamin.
Bless Bless & rest in paradise Mr Benjamin Zephaniah ,🙏🏾🕯🕊..sad day!
Clever bloke, real loss, brought poetry to a whole new audience, and I liked the little bit of humour he always threw in. 👍
RIP Benjamin Zephaniah!
Rest Easy Benjamin Zephaniah.
If only the world was full of Benjamins........ RIP Benjamin. Such a loss.
Through Benjamin Zephaniahs documentary you can see that the British culture still doesn‘t reach the expectation of appreciating the black culture. Zephaniah also feels the racism and says ‚there is still work to be done‘. The society has gotten more tolerant over the last 50 years but still hasn‘t quite changed their eyesight on other cultures to the fullest yet.
The panning on this clip is all over the place it keeps playing in my left an right ear an goes mono 😂
Love to Benjamin. A real voice
He's a wonderful man and he lives by what he says.
He's a sociopath. If that's wonderful, then I'll eat my hat.
@@stuartbritton7408 You're an ignorant. You've used a word you don't understand.
pressurising institutions are only part of the solution, we have to learn to reach each other's hearts, wonderful poem!
+Bo Pick I'm still waiting on those sources.
Obviously you don't actually want a debate, merely a platform to spout your retoric.
Enjoy your tiny little world, I'll take culture over ignorance any day of the week.
+Bo Pick There is always room for dialogue and debate. Without either there is only paranoia and scapegoating, the later ends in murder, the former in suicide.
Bo, I have to ask, do you have any friends of a non english ethnic background?
If not, why not?
+Bo Pick. You come across as a very strange individual over the internet, your prose could do with some work to prevent this.
From what I can determine;
1. You have an Aryan complex, particularly issues with black people, possibly with Asians although your bias is not so well defined.
2. You have a tendency to throw "liberal" around as an perceived insult. It isn't, sorry to disappoint.
3. Your tendency to quote sources without providing links is becoming tedious. I did a Google search on IQ as suggested and I'm afraid to say found nothing to support your hypothesis. You really need to provide the supporting links for this to debate to continue.
Apologies +Bo Pick, I've been a little busy getting on with my life, but apparently I touched a nerve there as you resorting to "insults" instead of offering what I'm asking for which is a debate. Don't spout rhetoric at me then cower away, provide your sources!
Which Western society is it you are referring to? The faux Christian one to which people now pay lip service as they free their minds from the shackles of indoctrination? The same doctrine which espoused centuries of violence in the name of a peaceful (definitely not white) Jew?
If you won't enter the debate then let me apologise for "sitting on the fence". I'll go futher: I'm sorry that your parents, or lack of them, forced this myopic prejudice upon you at an early age. Maybe if someone had shown you the kindness and love you deserved as a child we wouldn't be having this conversation now. As it is keep up the mad #keyboardwarrior skills and have a nice, if blessedly ignorant life, I'll do my best to counter your vile opinions where I can.
Mother Country Get It Right. Benjamin Zephaniah, such a great loss. But he lives on in his poetry and his great humanity.
All my children will know of you and fantastic poetry. Your legacy will live on forever, Rest in peace Sir!!!
Gutted that he has gone. Sorely missed.
a stunning man. I am sorry to learn of his passing. sadly it is as a result of his passing that i learn about him.
We miss you Benjamin. Such a true man that lived to his principles❤
Ben you are the authentic voice.
I just discovered you and wow! I love what you have to say! Bless you!
You really do think the sun shines out of his backside don't you? I live in Birmingham (the UK one where Zeph comes from) and I can tell you that he is a dinosaur milking a bandwagon
Rest in peace benjamin
Thank you for such eloquent insight and beautiful poetry with a progressive message. It is needed for those with eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to understand the need for equality and peace. No Justice, No Peace. Peace be with you all.
Fake virtue signalling makes me sick.
Modern progressives are the core of the problem. 'Progressive', is, like most modern political terms, inverted in its true meaning.
It seems to me like Britain isn't as open as it's often idealised. It still isn't totally past the colonial times. Though, society in Britain has made progress the past years. But as he said: ''There is still work to do''.
I mean, no society is completely without any racism. We in Germany, for example do have these problems too. It's just important to work on them to make "the world a little better" : ) . Maybe, that way one day there will be a world without prejudice and racism ☯️☮
Stay healthy, take care of yourself 🤗
PS: This guy reminds me off Bob Marley 😂😂
I love this a genius has gone to advise people in Heaven.
He made me proud to be a brummie!!
What a fantastic bloke he was…..wish there was more like him
Sad to hear you left earth, Jah has a plan for you rest in peace brother so proud of you.
Goodnight Black King!
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
They have in Luton Sunshine
We are learning about this guy in school
hiding something or what....vitals talks digitally muted,we beg for new load.
Respect ben.jah.min
I love this man so much! The Fanon of poetry.
NO DOGS? THAT'S HORRIBLE. DOGS ARE LOVELY ❤
Respect from Ireland
RIP Benjamin Zephaniah
He’s right. Birmingham is a much nicer city now. Such a pleasant place to live with a strong close community atmosphere.
Rip😢
love this guy, but I can’t believe how many people are hating on each other here in the comments. This poem is meant to teach us about love and peace, not creating useless arguments. 💛 so why don’t y’all be quiet and say something nice?
Thanks for posting.
What an absolute beautiful man (I am getting Bob Marley vibes).
What a dude. Sad day 😥
I spoke to one of my black friends and he said that he's not sure if he prefers racism how it is now to how it was even though it is lesser much of the time. He finds it hard now, especially in certain places, to know if he can trust the people he speaks to.
I feel this is a Great loss for this country. RIP Benjamin
Great job by Benjamin!
4magicboxes Be nice to your Turkey this Christmas. Also fuck you
There weren't any pubs with those sort of notices, it was all done for the cameras and he should have told the truth instead of stirring up racial hatred. He made a nice living from racism.
"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support - kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists." - Thomas Sowell
RIP you lovely man
RIP Sir.
Benjamin, 🖖
Nailed it buddy x
Siana you're so beautiful!!!
His inspirational ❤❤❤
what has he sayings?
Love his artistry and honesty. Sadly, racism is a base human instinct not unique to any one in number. I have witnessed newly British treated like guests of honour, and light pigmented violently and mentally harmed when in minority here. BZ had the knack for wording his cause with universal appeal and affection, as well as righteous militancy.
We did this in schoolb
It was scary seein the rawness of reality out there in society but now or than never we need to stand strong and unite to embrace this world and love each other as aGod or greater being intended So funny is he Benjamin Zephaniah. Some of my best friends are white too funny that we have that in common ha ha. Love it
i'am so sad to hear this, rip benjamin zephaniah.
youre watching this in lockdown cus school
Such aa killa ending. BZ, fucking legend
People, I'm telling you: cancel your license fee. This is masochism. This is self hatred.
lol serves you for invading the world
Baas Anon if they still had influence over their former empires, it would be adequate. It just can't be denied that the ones who conquered the most and the best were the British. And their influence is still felt. I can't really speak for the experiences of Asian or African peoples. I'm from Latin American so I speak from my own experience and the knowledge I have about imperialism in this side of the world.
Baas Anon and yeah you know what? I do find it funny. If Europe had left the rest of the world to themselves MAYBE you wouldn't have so many immigrants :v
@@josephyn89🤡
Long live BZ. 🙏
Every community is riddled with prejudice, stupidity and intolerance.
Because we are all the same.
.
RIP King
people should not be treated this way because of their skin colour
❤❤
'Company boardrooms are very white ...'
Take a guess why that may be?
Go have some meetings in Asia... anywhere in Asia.. or the West Indies.. or Latin America.. or South America...
what the fuck is the sound
can't control peoples thought, so we have to keep pressuring????
+kingBenTheBadger Just turn off the MSM, problem solved.
Jahover all from San Francisco to Belize 🇧🇿 Ethiopia 🇪🇹 🏀🙏🏿⚽️🎶🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🐟🌏🌈🐝🚀🎸🇲🇱
ANISH KAPOOR
Ethnicity, religion, language and gender and sexuality are issues, group identity is the problem. Anyone who claims they have been racially discriminated against is falling subject to their own 'racism', by claiming discrimination on grounds of race you are accepting a fundamental difference between yourself and others based upon a very broad group identity. Is the UK institutionally racist? Yes obviously, it has 'race' written into it's law, how then could it not be 'racist' at an institutional, constitutional level. Our very laws are 'racist', and there are many policies that have been attempted through 'positive racial discrimination' to promote proportional representation in business, industry and public office.
When I was at school I had an encyclopedia that had a section on race, it detailed 7 or 9 races of man: Caucasian, Mongoloid, Negroid, Asian, Australoid; I can't remember them all (it was 40+ years ago and the book was probably 40+ years old then). This subject used to interest me purely from a biological categorisation perspective. The more I read the more I came to understand there is no strictly scientific basis for a taxonomy of the human species that can be as neatly categorised as 'race'. 'Race' as I came to understand it was an attempt to produce some form of hierarchical categorisation for political reasons alone. One article I remember suggested it was an attempt to use science to justify slavery by creating a sub-species of human that was less than human but higher than animal. This would have been at the time of, or not much earlier than, the Enlightenment, some 300-400 short years ago. Basically 'race' then is nothing more than a social construct, just like religion and gender.
It is sickening to me to see 'white supremacists' and how they behave, claiming status by virtue of the fact they were born into a 'white' skin. It saddens me to see people making themselves victims. All claiming credit for achievements made by a select few individuals who happened to share their nationality but not their time. Not realising here, even the language we use is an amalgamation of Greek, Latin, German and French, our science and maths is Arabic, Egyptian and Mesopotamian. Not understanding our best guess at the origin of our species, by minds infinitely superior to ours, has us all, the entire human race, an extended family of African primates that descended from the trees together.
The only way to end 'racism' is to stop using the word. Discover your own personal identity, dare to be an individual.
I am Chris, I am a 54, I was born in the UK and I am happy to meet You, whoever You are. Let us celebrate our sameness, ignoring our differences, let us come together to strengthen humanity, venture out into that great unknown adventure life. Share our experiences in an attempt to learn from each other and see how we can leave behind us a better world than we were given. Don't bring me your prejudice, bring me your hopes, don't bring me your fears, bring me your dreams. Together we will be far stronger than ever we would be apart. I don't care where you come from, I only care what you bring with you and how it can make all our lives better.
p.s. Benjamin Zephaniah, love your poetry :)
White supremacists are probably the least significant of the groups that think their race entitles them to some special privileges. What happens when if they rally? They're rightly vilified. What happens when non-whites rally for their racial advantages? "Poor dears, we have so much more to do for you," is the general, uncritical response. Race will always be a problem until society can discern between those which argue for justice and those who argue for advantage. Those who profit from this naivety will try to make sure that race never goes away.
wer kommt aus deutschland vom englisch lk ? lol
Anyone on here from ROYDS
loving the locks, serious dread,
whagwan wit da beard?
man put blade to imface?
rass
Exactly - no wonder the Britains started apartheid in South Africa (a colony of Britian just before).
David Starkey is a jabroni !
I'm not gayyyyyy 😎
You wouldnt be any better of a person even if you were.
He can't keep getting away with it.
Getting away with what, mate?
Grüße geht ans Mgh raus
a racist rant on a bus vs a stabbing on the underground, which is worse? the one that can actually kill
+PitchBlackFox your mother
***** is a lovely person. now do you have an actual argument how words are just as bad if not worse than actual physical violence? or are you just going to throw insults over the internet
I don't know why I wrote your mother, apologies, but my point is that a rant on a bus can be just as deadly as a stabbing on the underground, because people have committed suicide, they see themselves as inferior because of their skin colour, I think most humans are disgusting tbh
***** except that suicide is highest among white men. all life has very strong survival instincts a few mean words isn't going to make people kill themselves theres always underling factors, you can't wrap people in cotton wool and pretend hurt feeling are the same as actual violence
so why is free speech only acceptable against the prophet, but mention the holocaust with a little bit of humour, its anti-Semitism, you white people make the rules so I suppose you can blatantly flout them
What an egomaniac!
> Committed burglary
> History of domestic violence
>> Model citizen
Lord Byron was a bad man too. Good poet though. Like saying green is a bad red 😂 engage brain
@@AntonSmyth-od6rc indeed, there exists many bad people past and present that receive praise all the time, with their bad deeds quietly buried. This Zephaniah guy was bad.
5:25 but.. if her family was died because of alahuakbar? This one part, is manipulation. And it shows us, we need to choose our path.
didn't see many british people in this video
How could you tell? Did you examine their passports?
wow he fucking took Enoch Powell's speech completely out of context like so many other people do holy shit
That story about the woman on the train definitely sounds like it needs more context. “Peed on all of her stuff”? Sounds like everyone on the train was trying ignore what sounds like someone who is probably severely mentally handicapped. The way she framed it like everyone was fine with the racism doesn’t sound right. I’ve been on trains plenty of times where someone out of their mind or high as hell is even threatening me under their breathe. I usually ignore it because you aren’t going to have a rational conversation. If they become violent that changes everything. It sounds like that’s what happened here. I can’t be certain but my version sounds more likely than a packed train of racists. When you’re scuba diving every shadow looks like a shark. Maybe when you’re black every action (or non action in this case) looks like racism.
Well, it could be severe mental handicap, or it could be drunken bullying. I've seem more of the latter than the former on public transport. Mentally handicapped people are almost always non-violent. But drunken racists are often violent or at least threatening. As a large shaven-headed white man with a visibly foreign wife, people like that have often expressed their opinions to me. And yes, those opinons were overtly racist. Things didn't escalate because back then, I was obviously not a soft target.
And maybe you should listen to what people are actually saying, rather than "contextualising" it into something that looks a bit like victim-blaming. If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, don't go through too many contortions to discount the possibility that it is one.
@@futatorius cmon, how is that victim blaming? Don’t doubt that a lot of people are horribly racist. Just feel the story is strange.
His improper use of the English language, made me more racist.
It's much more likely you were already like that.
@@futatorius Bruh, that's what I said, "more," meaning I already was like that, but now "more" so
It’s Jamaican Patois, it’s technically not English and counts as it’s own language
And I wish whites were only a fraction of how oppressed you think you are. You know NOTHING.
3:30 "definitely used to not getting a job because your name is a certain name"
This woman has literally no way of understanding why she didn't get the job. This is assumption at best, fabrication at worst. Just because you're black and didn't get a job does not mean you didn't get the job BECAUSE you're black. She's living in the UK, a place with high job security. The harder it is to lose your job, the harder it is to get a job. You are living in a country, where it is notoriously hard to find the job you want and when you don't get it, you cry racism. Absolutely disgusting. This is nothing but race-baiting.
There have been multiple studies done where identical CVs were sent to British employers, some with stereotypically "black" names and black person's photos, and others with "white" names and photos. Guess which had the higher rejection rate? And why is it so important to you to think that this never happens? I've been a hiring manager for decades, and colleagues have on occasion "helpfully" pointed out the applicant's ethnicity during the sifting process. "What exactly are you suggesting?" usually shuts them down.