Starkey’s ‘damn blacks’ slavery jibe sparks fury
Rant may see TV historian dumped by Cambridge
HISTORIAN David Starkey faces being stripped of his Cambridge fellowship after claiming slavery can’t have been genocide otherwise ‘there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or Britain’.
The 75-year-old hit out at Black Lives Matter in an uncomfortable video interview with Conservative activist Darren Grimes, arguing the only reason the protesters are in Britain is ‘because of slavery’.
Dr Starkey, known for his television documentaries, said: ‘Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there? An awful lot of them survived.’
His comments were immediately condemned as racist, with Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam College, of which he has been an honorary fellow since 2006, pledging to review his position.
Ex-home secretary Sajid Javid was among dozens of high-profile figures to slam Dr Starkey’s remarks. ‘We are the most successful multi- racial democracy in the world and have much to be proud of,’ he said.
‘But David Starkey’s racist comments (“so many damn blacks”) are a reminder of the appalling views that still exist.’ Dr Nicholas Guyett, a history lecturer at Cambridge, urged the university to ‘cut all ties’ with Dr Starkey.
Fellow TV historian Kate Williams added: ‘If he gets a lot of work after saying that slavery was not genocide because “there are so many damn blacks in
Africa” we will all know what’s going on in this society.’
During the interview on 26year-old Mr Grimes’s YouTube channel, called Reasoned, Dr Starkey said: ‘There’s no point in arguing against globalisation or Western civilisation – they [Black Lives Matter protesters] are all products of it. We are all products of it. The honest teaching of the British Empire is to say, quite simply, it was the first key stage of world globalisation. It was probably the most important moment in human history and it is still with us.’
He said: ‘We cannot decolonise
the curriculum, because you, Black Lives Matter, are wholly and entirely a product of white colonisation.’ In antagonistic remarks, he added: ‘You are not culturally black Africans.
‘You would die in seconds if you were dumped back in black Africa, you wouldn’t know how to cope.’ In 2015, Cambridge students successfully lobbied to have a video of Dr Starkey taken offline, claiming he was ‘aggressively racist’. They cited a 2011 appearance on BBC2’s newsnight in which he said: ‘A substantial amount of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black; a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.’
A spokesman for Fitzwilliam College said: ‘We have zero tolerance of racism. Dr David Starkey’s recent comments on slavery are indefensible.’