The white guys are at it again, referring to what’s happened to Danny Baker as him being “burned” or being a victim of some kind of lynching. I find the lynching rhetoric about as insensitive (you know, given history) as the failure to comprehend why black people might still, after all these hours, be upset and angry at Danny Baker’s “monkey” tweet (yes – even in spite of an apology!)
Nobody rounded up a posse and called for Danny Baker to be put to death. He’s just working through the consequences of his actions. One of the consequences is people are saying negative things about him on the internet (generously peppered with “he can’t be racist, I met him once and he didn’t kill any people of colour”-type comments). The other consequence is he got fired. These things are not: a public flogging, a lynching or a burning at the stake.
Literally a white hot take
Christian Reilly 
Personally speaking, having heard/seen Danny Baker on TV & Radio he comes across as trying to be humorous and attention seeking st the same time. In this instance it’s back fired through a very bad taste attempt. Someone of his age and experience of the media should be more savvy about current social trends. As much as PC is a massive overkill at times it is the world we live in….
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Thanks for the comment, Paul. I don’t agree that political correctness has gone to far. Here’s what I wrote about some of the discussion on this post over on Facebook:
“Just to underline. This post isn’t a “Is Danny Baker racist/not racist? – discuss”-type post.
It’s a “The fact that it’s even under discussion and white people are using their endless privilege to lecture black people about what’s really in Danny Baker’s head and heart (because they know, somehow) and what is or isn’t racism (without even feeling the need to add so much as an ‘in my opinion’ disclaimer) while using ‘lynching’ rhetoric (and seeing nothing wrong with that) underlines the systemic racism in our culture”-type post.
And I think I understand the slightly more compassionate “Yes, wasn’t racism much worse *in the past* and the fact that we’ve come a long way really counts for something.” reactions, and that they’re coming from a good place, but…
With respect, it seems to me (see the disclaimer?) racism is not in the past if you’re black anywhere on earth and no matter how far “we” (I guess the “we” refers to white people) have come, there’s still a prominent white man making “monkey” jokes, referring to the incident as a terrible day (for him) and having droves of white people flocking to his defence, and other prominent white people writing opinion pieces in newspapers characterising him as a victim of “hypersensitive” people.”
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