The NFL staged a regular-season game in London recently. In a press conference to promote the game, Miami Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder said that he was surprised to learn people in London spoke English.
And then he followed up with: “I know [Washington Redskins linebacker] London Fletcher. We did a football camp together. That’s the closest thing I know to London. He’s black, so I’m sure he’s not from London.”
As every single writer in Britain was quick to point out, London is probably the most multicultural city on the planet—the diverse, polyglot, immigrant capital of a country founded by immigrants and shaped by immigrants.
And that’s reflected in the city’s music, as personified by the British/Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. It’s her very un-Englishness—or rather her very English refusal to accept limits on the definition of Englishness—that makes M.I.A. so English. As the Brit rock critic Simon Frith so astutely put it: “Hybridity is the new authenticity.”
Shame no one told Morrissey. In a recent interview with NME that has since provoked a storm in a rather large teacup, the singer made a series of anti-immigrant remarks.
“The gates of England are flooded. The country’s been thrown away,” he said. And “these days you won’t hear a British accent in Knightsbridge.” And “although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.”
Critics have noted that the 49-year-old Morrissey—the son of Irish immigrants who currently lives in Rome— isn’t actually old enough to remember how dreadful Britain was before it was enriched by post-war immigration (and by those awful American imports, rock ‘n’ roll and sexual liberation).
Morrissey has since hit back. He’s issued a writ for libel, and written an article claiming to “abhor racism” (as evidenced by his wonderfully leftist or liberal views on other matters and his marvelously eclectic and color-blind taste in music and movies) and insisting that he’s been stitched-up by NME.
But he’s neither denied making the anti-immigrant statements, nor apologized for them.
The whole mess is an uncanny echo of “Mozgate I” back in the 1980s, when the singer stirred up a similar row with a series of insensitive and clumsy lyrics (“Bengali in Platforms”) and comments (“Reggae is vile,” and “Obviously, to get on Top of the Pops these days one has to be, by law, black”).
Of course none of this proved Morrissey was a racist, His legions of fans pleaded for him to be given the benefit of the doubt.
And so they do now, in their thousands, clogging every music message board with spite, ignorance and denial. And, in far too many cases, out-and-out racism.
The hoo-ha follows hot on the heels of a widespread debate about claims that—despite its liberal pretensions—indie music is inherently racist.
The poisonous fallout of Mozgate II suggests that the critics might have a case after all.
Channing Crowder can be for forgiven his ignorance. Morrissey has nowhere to hide, nor do his fans.