Amber Rudd apologises for causing huge offence to BAME women
DWP Secretary Amber Rudd caused enormous offence to women from ethnic minorities this afternoon during an interview on the BBC’s Jeremy Vine Show, describing women from ethnic minorities – and specifically Labour’s Diane Abbott – as ‘coloured’:
Discussing online abuse of women, Rudd came out with the term, which Shadow Home Secretary Abbott described as “outdated, offensive and revealing” in a tweeted response:
Journalist Stephen Bush expressed astonishment at the archaic language and the mentality it reveals:
Rudd has apologised on social media:
SKWAWKBOX comment:
‘Revealing’ is right and not just about Rudd as an individual Tory – and no apology can cover it.
No doubt this will be amply covered by the BBC and other ‘MSM’. Or not…
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It’s probably true that Rudd should be more up to speed on current use of language. But before busting a gasket, I recall my mother (1922 vintage) using the term ‘coloured’ quite frequently.
… yet I also recall her hauling a woman over the coals in a shop because she insulted a young girl assistant – probably of S.E. Asian family – in racist terms. I doubt that surrounding customers will have been supportive – it took principle and guts.
‘Offence’ in the eye of the beholder can be too simplistic, and virtue signalling outrage is cost-free – not necessarily particularly virtuous. See ‘antisemitism’.
In a normal world, that would wash.
In the world in which the Tories and the media are slamming Labour for completely fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism, it doesn’t. Not remotely.
My comment was about an aspect of the ‘normal’, flawed world.
Underlying my comment is, in fact, the need to counter political hyperbole in order to properly discriminate key issues from lesser ones.
Speaking as someone born just after WW2 & from a mixed race family, I personally wish the bourgeois liberal elites would stop virtue signalling & shining their liberal badges @ every opportunity. Times they are-a-changin’ & now the Groniad readers don’t use such terms as ‘coloured’, unlike Lou Reed when he was walking on the wild side. Being described as old fashioned language is an insult to an older generation, but baby boomers are now ‘fair game’, as the generation that now has everything.
Fair enough, Steve, and yet I don’t see Abbott (a woman in her sixties) prepared to forgive Rudd for her inappropriate language.
Why be soft on ‘Baby Boomers’ who are too lazy or up their own arses to know which century and which decade they are living in?
Besides, as another contributor has very aptly put it, Amber Rudd is a Tory turd; why the hell should we give her any leeway whatsoever?
Here’s some modern up to date language , I don’t give a fuck what she says she’s a Tory turd and nothing they say is to be believed .
There you go stick that up your arse Rudd and smoke it
“…no one should suffer abuse because of their race or gender”. – Amber Rudd.
Yet she has just verbally abused BAME women (Diane Abbott in particular) calling them “coloured” – a description I haven’t heard used for forty years or more. Evidently Rudd believes herself to be living in 1959 rather than 2019. What a fool!
We can only hope that her slender majority in her constituency of Hastings will be wiped out come the next GE (or by-election if that comes first). Then we will no longer be threatened by the possibility of her taking over as PM from May later this year when the latter steps down, as she has been told by her own party that she must.