The girlfriend of the leader of a political party in the UK made a racist statement when talking about Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s fiancée. Then came the excuses, the same sort of excuses I read and hear from politicians on this side of the pond, and probably the world over.
The excuses largely fall into two camps. You have the flat denial, “it wasn’t me” (as they stand next to a large plate full of crumbs with chocolate sauce all over their face). And then you have the you misunderstand me responses:
“My bigoted statements were taken out of context.” (And presumably blown out of all proportion.)
“My misogynistic conversation happened over 20 years ago.” (When I was still more than 50 years of age.)
“My racist tweet was actually referring to a different foreigner.” (None of which are my own immigrant ancestors.)
But it’s when we start making the excuses for them that I really worry.
“The president may be a murderer but he’s only murdering criminals.”
“Sometimes you just need a murderer to catch a murderer…” (… and then sometimes you just need to elect them into office. )
But when is such behaviour bad enough? Why do we hold those in positions of power to a different standard from those around us? And why do we make excuses for them?
All of us make excuses for those we support. I’m just wondering at what point we flip our stance and finally say, “ok THAT is not acceptable”.
We’re not consistent. Little Jamie didn’t mean to hurt anyone, they were just playing. Jan wasn’t really lying, they just didn’t say what actually happened. My son isn’t really racist, he was just using words he heard.
We hold those outside of our circle to a different standard. And we hold those inside our circle to different standards each day depending on how much $h!t we can deal with at that moment in time. (We’re only human, and we all have a limit.)
Maybe we need a checklist of questions:
- Would I be sacked if I said / did this to my boss?
- Would I let my child get away with this?
- …
But a checklist will only work if we also throw out our own checklist of excuses:
- Ah but home is different from work.
- Ah but children don’t know any better.
- …
