Well done Lawrence Fox!

A truly thinking person is always aware of the limitations of their understanding of anything.

Okay, susie. I get the point addressed to me but not the one addressed to anniebach. Why can't a privileged white male unspderstand racism? He moght never feel it but people are capable of understanding feelings they have never had themselves. See empathy and sympathy.

Harry doesn’t know what he is talking about , no surprise

A truly thinking person is always aware of the limitations of their understanding of anything.

Not sure that audience woman was aware of such. I don't think she showed any understanding of the fact that there will always be a range of opinions that she won't like but which are still 'valid' whether one agrees with them or not.

Where did Harry come in?

Audience woman was accusatory. LF was not.

Baggs Harry is privileged, wealthy, white , same as Lawrence
Fox, so he can’t understand racism can he ?

You’ve shifted your ground Baggs. What was wrong or accusatory in her saying that his perspective of racism is informed by white privilege? Of course it is - how could it not be?

Oh yes he was. He didn't say "I don't think it's racism" he said "It's NOT racism" if you are telling someone they are competely wrong that's accusing them.
I wish people would take a little time to understand how deeply racism is entrenched in this country. How colonialism effectively wiped out any reference to the culture and traditions of other societies and how that is our legacy. How our whole upbringing has been based on white Christian traditions and their supremacy. Until we all consider this and question things we are effectively racist (and I include myself in this). It's not enough to think I am friendly to my neighbour and he/she is black, you have to think more carefully and consider your responses every time. It isn't easy but denying that is wrong. That's what Lawrence Fox did and that's why he is racist. By the way try replacing the word racist in that conversation with anti-semitic and then consider how Fox would have come across.

If I as a straight woman said something wasn’t homophobic and a gay person said to me that it was and that my perspective was informed by the fact I was straight, I wouldn’t be so bloody arrogant as to say they were wrong. I’d listen to them and reflect on it. As I’ve said elsewhere on GN there are nuances in racism, sexism, homophobia etc that those most affected negatively by them are much more attuned to and aware of. It’s the height of white privileged to ascertain you understand racism - the irony of that is astonishing. It’s one reason I won’t have any transwoman go unchallenged when she tells me she knows what it likes to feel like a woman.

trisher you mean as you denied the anti semetic wall mural? You said it was not anti semetic

Oh yes he was. He didn't say "I don't think it's racism" he said "It's NOT racism" if you are telling someone they are competely wrong that's accusing them.

I don't agree. It's arguing with them. One's allowed to disagree fundamentally with someone and to say that you think what they're saying is wrong. That's what LF was doing. Because that's what he thinks: he doesn't agree that it is racism that has made Meghan want to go back to Canada.

I've read somewhere that Meghan herself has said the royal family have been sexist and racist towards her. I look forward to hearing exactly how. Until then I'm not convinced.

excellent post trisher. Especially the point on anti-semitism.

'Audience woman' is Rachel Boyle, a lecturer at Edgehill, Merseyside in, I believe, Diversity Studies, and also a paid commentator for the BBC. This is the reason I stopped watching Question Time some years ago, because it was so obvious the questioners were not straightforward members of the public picked at random, but planted.

Chakrabati, self-appointed guardian of the public morals, and accustomed to fawning adulation for her role in Liberty, does not like her opinions being challenged or being expected to defend them.

Give LF a knighthood .
It`s about time someone spoke up about racism in reverse.

The ground has shifted constantly throughout this thread. It started as praising LF for 'putting a woman right', and is now about whether he can understand racism.

He didn't 'put her right'. We don't know what she was going to say, as he didn't let her finish her point. In response to his interruption, she said that as a white man he couldn't know how black people felt. Empathy is one thing, but understanding is another.

I don't know how it feels to be wrongly imprisoned (random situation off the top of my head that I am fairly confident won't be insensitive to many readers on here). I can feel very sorry for those who have been through it, and expect that they must be reeling from a massive sense of injustice, but that is based on my own understanding of situations that are nothing like as devastating, but within my own experience (eg not being believed as a child, or getting the blame for something my sister did). It is very obvious that it is not at all the same as living through wrongful imprisonment, but it is as close as I can get, as I have no real experience of it.

That is all that some of us on this thread are saying. I would also add that saying 'well done' to someone who used his position on the panel to simply sweep aside the point that the woman in the audience was trying to make, and who behaved in a boorish and disrespectful manner is a strange thing to do. I certainly don't think that that behaviour is worthy of praise.

He wasn't boorish or disrespectful at all, if anything she came across as arrogant and judgmental.

agree with Baggs
While you can present the academic argument against racism until you are blue in the face (sorry, SO racist!) the fact rem ains that racism has existed, does exist and will exist.
Calling it out constantly is not helpful and it is being weaponised against people whose ideas you do not like.
The QT woman was out to get Fox because of his colour, background and education. Bad idea.

Doodle in my experience racism and sexism/ misogyny are generally shared by the same people

The QT woman was out to get Fox because of his colour, background and education. Exactly, and SHE had the cheek to call HIM racist! Racism comes from both sides of the colour "divide".

True Opal

Doodle in my experience racism and sexism/ misogyny are generally shared by the same people

Yes, in mine too. It's depressing.

If the woman was a plant then it occurs to me that Fox is an actor and her question and his response may well have been orchestrated by the Beeb to try and make QT more lively.

Of course white people can understand racism. As my previous post mentioned, what about prejudice towards, for instance, the Irish?

I live in Birmingham and when the IRA blew up the pubs here, there was a lot of anger towards the Irish here which was understandable. A woman I worked with, who wasn't aware that my family are Irish, said to me 'Ive always hated the Irish, they are awful. I never buy Irish produce.' I said 'Actually my family are Irish'. At which point she said 'Oh it's not me it's my husband'. I think that was racism.