I was shocked to read the following article in the Spectator shortly after it was published (see date; and for those who cannot access the official link, it is reproduced in full below):
When exactly did harpsichords become racist?
It’s a dangerous thing when you import the worst aspects of another culture. And an even worse thing when you import the worst interpretation of that worst aspect of another culture.
This week marked a year since the death of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman in Minnesota. Since that time, Derek Chauvin, the policeman who killed Mr Floyd, has been tried, convicted of causing his death and is currently awaiting sentence. Around the world, the actions of this one awful policeman have been extrapolated out beyond endurance. It has been claimed that they revealed the truth about race relations in America. They have been used to claim that race relations around the world are the same as they are in America. And they have been used to claim that absolutely every-thing from the past in countries like our own must be reinterpreted, ‘decolonised’ and much more.
That ongoing process looks as though it may well be endless. Each week brings ever more ridiculous examples. For instance, last Saturday, to commemorate the anniversary of Floyd’s death, Norwich city council announced that it was lighting up its town hall. So last weekend the building was lit up in yellow, pink and turquoise. I don’t know why these colours were chosen. Perhaps turquoise and pink were among Mr Floyd’s favourites. Or perhaps they had some other significance.
When I read that Norwich town hall was doing this, my first thought was not ‘How beautiful’, but simply ‘Why?’ What did Norwich town hall have to do with it? It is the sort of thing a guilty party might do, certainly. But what in the world is the linkage between the citizens of Norwich, or even its council, and the actions of Derek Chauvin?
Sadly Norwich was not the strangest such offender this week. That prize must surely go to the Royal Academy of Music in London, which confirmed that it was intending to ‘decolonise’ its collection of rare instruments. The conservatoire claims that it is necessary to look at its world-class collection, built up over two centuries, ‘through a decolonisation lens’. And so the juggernaut rolls on. It is understood that there are a number of instruments which the academy holds which are connected to George Frideric Handel, who is now most famous for having invested in the transatlantic slave trade. But it is also believed that there are a number of historic keyboard instruments held by the academy which have links to the trade in colonial ivory.
Unlike Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats in America, I would not presume to know what was going through George Floyd’s mind in the last terrible minutes of his life. Nonetheless I think he would have been surprised to learn that his killing was going to lead to a purge of historic harpsichords at London’s premier conservatoire.
But that is the thing with the weird juggernaut of the last year. It seems able to career absolutely everywhere. And it is able to do so in part because of one particular, gigantic misunderstanding that almost no one has yet pointed out.
It is perfectly possible that Derek Chauvin harbours some special animus against black people. But it is also possible that he does not. In 2016 an American policeman performed precisely the same terrible — and fatal — detention procedure on a white man in Dallas called Tony Timpa. The footage of Timpa’s death is equally harrowing, but a worldwide movement did not kick off after his death. That’s because nobody was primed to use it in that way.
From last year to this, no one has been able to produce evidence that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd because Floyd was a black man. If they could, then they would have done so at the trial. They would have shown that Chauvin left his home that morning intent on finding a black man he could throttle under his knee.
I admit that this is an unpopular point to make. Yet it is a rather important one, is it not? Especially if the whole of American history, culture and current events — and by extension those of the entire western world — are to be reinterpreted through the actions of this one damned Minnesotan cop. It’s the sort of thing that might be worth getting right, isn’t it? If you are going to savagely rewrite everything from race relations in our society all the way through to which harpsichords have a guilty look about them, it’s worth getting the fons et origo exactly correct. Something we seem to have entirely failed to do.
And such failure has consequences. As I write, a young woman called Sasha Johnson is lying in hospital in a serious condition having been shot in the head. When news of this came out on Sunday, prominent Labour politicians and most of the UK’s broadcast and print media all followed the line of Johnson’s militant allies. Which was that Johnson had been shot in the head in Peckham at three o’clock in the morning because of her ‘activism’ on behalf of Black Lives Matter. Sky ran with ‘Black equal rights activist shot’. Anyone who has ever heard one of Ms Johnson’s incendiary interventions into race relations (such as ‘the white man will not be our equal but our slave’) will know that equal rights aren’t remotely on her horizon.
In any case, thanks to this portrayal by the British press, other media from around the world have now spread the idea that a prominent BLM activist was last weekend the subject of an assassination attempt in London, most likely carried out by the UK branch of the KKK.
We shall see precisely what happened. But as I write, the British police have said that they are looking for four black men who turned up at the party that Johnson was at. It appears that — as so often in the US — this was a black-on-black attack, most likely stemming from a gang-related dispute.
I wish Johnson well, not least in the hope that when she comes out of hospital she might have a greater understanding of the importance of the police in our society. But it is also a reminder — if reminder were needed — that these imported culture wars have consequences. They don’t accurately fit America. And they certainly don’t accurately fit here.
Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, among other books.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/when-exactly-did-harpsichords-become-racist/
It is scarcely believable. Everything in this piece of journalistic bile is the product of a mind owned by a character who, if they were to go to a place of learning and give a motivational talk, would be unable to actually inspire even those whose social imaginaries and cultural literacies are similarly challenged; the reason is that Mr Murray has not become a self. This is the work of what C.S. Lewis characterised a ‘ghost’ In addition, we could use the contents of this article as cannon fodder for a class on critical thinking, as I shall demonstrate.
Let’s start with Murray’s question about Norwich City Council (which ideally would have been capitalised, rather than the inaccurate and dismissive ‘Norwich city council’ we see) and their decision to remember George Floyd. First question: why is that a question? What warrant does anyone have to question why anyone wants to commemorate anything? [This, by the way, would include those who choose to, say, commemorate Hitler’s birthday; one may not like it, but there would be little point in ‘questioning why’.] Murray’s conceptual failures here start with the hubris of assuming that anyone else actually cares about his confusion, including said city council. So this daft-as-a-brush piece of writing about the colours they chose and why is the kind of thing I’d just about countenance from a sixth-former, but not a supposedly educated adult who wants to cast both aspersions and judgment of this ilk and yet be taken seriously by the public.
So then, to the notion of inanimate harpsichords being racist. Again, let’s not even get as far as higher education (i.e. degree level study). If you’re not, then imagine that you’re a secondary school teacher reading this bit of writing (and if you are, no imagination of that sort will be necessary). Murray’s argument (if this word can even be applied) appears to be that ‘decolonisation’ is something that has transpired solely in response to George Floyd’s murder. Is that the sort of argument that could inspire GCSE, A-level and diploma students working in any humanities area?! What might someone who then goes to a half-decent higher education institution (HEI) discover when they offer that sort of argument? And if you are confused by this, then please be advised that ‘decolonisation’ is a conversation that started before George Floyd was even born. At this time of writing I teach music at King’s College London and our students take their instrumental lessons at the Royal Academy of Music; an association we’re all very proud of. Murray seems to not have understood that the entire Western art music vanguard progresses by way of material prosperity attained by mass imperialism and exploitation, so there are massive ethical questions to ask about the entire historical apropos of this music. At King’s, the RAM and many other HEIs this has finally been understood. And as for historic keyboard instruments with ivory keys, that would arguably be a conversation animal rights activists would be leading before anyone else – and some of those people are as racist as can be and would treat non-human animals better than human animals who they took to be b/Black. Decolonising is about vastly more than race and ethnicity, but Murray is away with the fairies.
The third issue I will address is the Sasha Johnson affair. How incredibly racialist AND racist of Murray to assume that this is a black-on-black crime that is ‘gang-related’, and how ethically irresponsible and morally vacuous of his employer to publish that. Two years later, Johnson is still in a terrible place physically and it is not clear what her prospects of recovery are. The police have established that Johnson was not in fact the target, but it is not a surprise that the police cannot make the case they need for any prospect of a conviction. This bit of reasoning says more about Murray than he would prefer; should he ever experience, say, being a victim of male rape, someone should ask if he led his attacker on; no smoke without fire after all (as far as he is concerned). It is unfortunate that Sasha Johnson has said some regrettable things to the effect of how she would sanction the enslavement of white people if she ever had the power; the point is not that this should be excused, but rather that her ‘imperfect’ racial justice advocacy does not mean she deserves the treatment Murray has dished out here – nor to be a victim of a conspiracy of silence that mans she will never receive redress for the violence (albeit unintended) perpetrated against her.
The fourth and final issue I raise herewith involves the quite astounding claim that no-one has been able to prove that Derek Chauvin was in fact racist. In criminal law, mens rea (Latin: guilty mind) is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof of both mens rea and actus reus (‘guilty act’) before the defendant can be found guilty. It turns out that the mens rea for hate crimes differs quite considerably across different US state judiciaries, but for more than one state the circumstances of George Floyd’s murder would be coterminous with an understanding that this was indeed a hate crime. Murray’s disingenous and ethically bankrupt attempt to pass this off as arguably just another murder looks even more foolish in light of the following BBC News article (quoted in part):
Police in the US city of Minneapolis have engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least the past decade, a state inquiry has found.
The investigation was launched following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Minnesota’s civil rights enforcement agency looked into how officers used force, stopped, searched and arrested minorities compared to white residents.
Their analysis found wide disparities in the treatment of different races.
Its conclusions could be used to force the police department to change its practices and policies.
Last year, white ex-police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to over 22 years in prison for the on-duty murder of Floyd.
The analysis of police reports, interviews and body camera footage took nearly two years, revealing what investigators said was a “pattern and practice” of racial discrimination.
While African Americans make up 19% of the population of Minneapolis, they represented 54% of all traffic stops between 2017-20, the inquiry found.
Black people accounted for 63% of police use-of-force incidents from 2010-20.
Someone is paying Douglas Murray to be a writer. I’d ask why, but work of this order does not merit the question.
Alexander Douglas - a writer of words and music 
