Doodledog
I assume he meant it was in the same way that Sunak says he is proud to be the first Asian PM. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see his comment as racist.
Perhaps given the context he meant it as a way of saying that Farage is encouraging the sort of hatred that would be dangerous for people of colour.
Either way, it’s not remotely the same in my opinion.
I agree. It’s an expression which appears to derive from French philosopher Pascal Bruckner’s 1983 book The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt.
The title for that draws on Kipling’s poem The White Man’s Burden in which he describes colonisation as a burden necessarily borne by the white man—a result of his intellectual and cultural superiority.
Jovan Owusu Nepal is a PPE graduate of Goldsmith’s with a Masters from Cambridge in History. His master's dissertation was on the history of anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements within the British Labour Movement and charting the history of the Labour Party Black Sections (1980-1989).
Only he can explain what he meant by what he is alleged to have said but I understand the comment was made long before he was selected as LP candidate for Clacton which was before Farage decided to stand. My own interpretation would that he simply wants people of colour to be treated equally, not to be seen as inferior, a social problem or a case for pious compassion.
I think it’s a shame what has happened. Giles Watling has a huge majority in Clacton but it could have been a good seat for a first time LP candidate to contest just for experience. Sadly, Farage has now made the contest a toxic media circus.
Clacton has long been a strong Tory seat and was only won by UKIP temporarily when Douglas Carswell defected from the Tories and took his supporters with him.
In 2016, Carswell said that he had "jumped ship with the express goal of changing the image of UKIP and ensuring that it was an asset rather than a liability in the referendum campaign to decontaminate the brand”. (Wiki). Interesting words - that the UKIP brand (lead by Farage) needed to be decontaminated.
Carswell left UKIP on 25 March 2017 to sit as an independent MP. He did not stand at the 2017 election.
This will be a straight race between Watling, who seems to have a sensible, collaborative approach to the small boats, and Farage who seems to want to start a war with France.
All this about Jovan Owusu Nepal is just noise to distract and disrupt which is what Farage does best. This is one seat I hope the Tories hold.