Dawn Butler: Kemi Badenoch can drag my name through the mud but I’ll still agree with David Tennant
Like I said before, I agree with the white man.
There’s a lot of faux outrage about my tweet on Wednesday, when I said that not all Black women think the same and that I agree with David Tennant about his remarks on Kemi Badenoch.
The part I agreed with is where the Doctor Who actor said during an acceptance speech at the British LGBT Awards last week: ‘I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up.’
A lot of the outrage that followed has, ironically, come from the free speech brigade.
They are the first to cry ‘free speech’ for anything racist or offensive, but when it comes to me having my opinions, they are the first to try and shut me down.
The interesting thing is, it’s not like David Tennant said that Kemi Badenoch ‘should be shot’, like Tory donor Frank Hester said about Diane Abbott.
Funnily enough, I don’t remember the free speech brigade piling onto Frank Hester either – in fact, I seem to remember some of them telling me that he said nothing wrong!
In the past 24 hours, I have seen right-wing social media users jump to the defence of Reform activist Andrew Parker, who used a racist term to describe the prime minister.
My message is: you online trolls and incels can’t pretend to protect Black women, because you don’t.
And for the senior Tory ministers and Prime Minister now wading into the issue around my post on X, for them to now suddenly act as if they care about protecting Black women – don’t make me laugh!
Although they denounced them, in my view, they failed to properly act over Hester’s vile and violent remarks (which he did later apologise for). They have also pursued culture wars for years that have been damaging to us all. What they are doing is gaslighting us all.
What I have noticed is that whenever I talk about race issues and Kemi Badenoch disagrees with me, she is elevated to this higher voice about race by those on the right, simply because she is a Black woman talking against race and talking about how race is no factor.
But when it suits her – such as during an election – Kemi does want to talk about race, and everyone is expected to bow down and condemn people like David Tennant for disagreeing with a Black woman.
So when I saw the quote from David Tennant in which he wished her no harm but just wanted her to shut up, I completely agreed. Yes, he was clumsy to suggest he wants to live in a world where she doesn’t exist, but his further clarification made it clear to me that it was simply her politics that he wished did not exist.
I myself often want Kemi to be quiet because, in my opinion, she does nothing at all to advance the issue of racial equality or fairness in our country – in fact, she sets us back.
For example, when Kemi Badenoch in her role as Equalities Minister defended the Government’s race report that suggested institutional racism does not exist – despite all the evidence to the contrary and despite the many lived experiences of Black people saying the opposite – that is very harmful, especially to people of colour.
It causes immense complacency and risks leaving the very real and painful institutional racism intact. I said at the time that we are not the first and we will not be the last generation to face a Kemi Badenoch in the fight for progress.
So, wanting Kemi Badenoch to shut up is not in any way about violence. It is about sharing the very honest view that you don’t want someone who argues the opposite of what you believe in to speak all the time – which is everyone’s natural right to feel.
Following Kemi’s response tweet – in which she shared my post saying I agree with David Tennant – and called it ‘the true face of the Labour Party’ and accused me of doing ‘Keir Starmer’s dirty work’, I asked her to be honest.
Because this debate is actually about her political views on LGBTQ+ rights, which many people fervently disagree with. Most people want to live their lives authentically, as long as it’s not harming anyone else.
So why did Kemi then make it about race? I can only imagine it comes from pure desperation, from a failing equalities minister after 14 years of Tory chaos.
Like I said before, I agree with the white man.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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