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The British media has long subjected Black people to all manner of racism. While these attacks are often blatant, there are also the more ‘excusable forms’, such as when an outlet ‘accidentally’ mixes up two different Black women (‘excusable’ as in these outlets always have the same excuse – namely that it was a ‘mix up’):
.@BBCNews @BBCPolitics I love my sister @MarshadeCordova but we are two different people. Marsha is amazing and deserves to be called by her own name. Diversity in the workplace matters it also helps to avoid making simple mistakes like this. pic.twitter.com/pXyrGKJ4hZ
— Dawn Butler MP✊🏾💙 (@DawnButlerBrent) February 3, 2020
Now, the Mail on Sunday has invented a new form of ‘accidental’ racism: claiming that Damson Idris is somehow Idris Elba’s “younger brother”:
Read on…
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Mail on Sunday report mistakenly imagines that Damson Idris [surname: Idris, born in Peckham, parents from Nigeria] must be the brother of Idris Elba [surname Elba, born in Hackney, parents from Sierra Leone & Ghana] pic.twitter.com/7GHpqTEhMB
— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) July 30, 2023
Family names – easily confusing when it comes to Damson Idris
Presumably writer Caroline Graham has some grasp of both the English language and English culture given that she arranges words in an English newspaper for a living. Accordingly, she almost certainly understands that this is not how naming works in Britain:
- You give your first son your surname as his surname.
- You give your second son your surname as his first name and make something up for his surname.
- You give your third son your second son’s surname as his first name, and… etc, etc.
So what did she actually think? Presumably one of the following:
Potentially she was just in a massive rush, and both she and her editors were partaking in some sort of ketamine binge. Whatever went wrong, it didn’t go down well on the website formerly known as Twitter:
#IdrisElba was born Idrissa Akuna Elba to parents from Sierra Leone and Ghana.
Damson Idris was born over 27 years later and is of Nigerian descent. pic.twitter.com/NNEBOM3LyB
— The Royal Gait-or (@royal_gator_) July 30, 2023
Not the D*ily Mail writing a whole article thinking Idris Elba and Damson Idris are brothers. This is so unprofessional and would never happen to white actors pic.twitter.com/QqGzfMrFIi
— Salma (@chronicallysal) July 29, 2023
Journalism at national newspapers now at the level where they are bamboozled by how family names work
Idris Elba + Damson Idris 🤝 brothers https://t.co/e7QVI9KnbP— ✨over-analytical (@OQuill) July 30, 2023
Even more embarrassingly for the Mail on Sunday, it’s not even the first time this issue has come up:
When Damson Idris met Idris Elba, he was told people have asked him if they are related. This Yahoo News article from April 2022 is one of a number of pieces referring to this mistake/rumour or fact-checking ithttps://t.co/djjdMRlrBR pic.twitter.com/g9BrZ67rDs
— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) July 30, 2023
Progress?
The Mail on Sunday has now re-published the article – this time with a picture of three white men who are presumably brothers if their divergent surnames are anything to go by:
The report has now been re-run without the imaginary family linkhttps://t.co/Ov4f1hvLU2
— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) July 30, 2023
As embarrassing as this saga is for the Mail on Sunday, there is at least some progress here. Not long ago, an article talking about a Black James Bond would have had the following somewhere in the headline:
NOOOOOOOOO! GAGGGGHHHH!!$@$%@£%
Undoubtedly the majority of Mail writers are still equally as fearful about the prospect of a made up character being played by a less pale actor, but they are at least worried about voicing that so clearly.
Another surprising sign of progress comes from the comments section where only about 70% are explicitly racist – a significant dip for the famously virulent website.
At this rate, the Mail group might be considered ‘woke’ by today’s standards at some point in the next 1,000 years. Who knows – by then, naming your children in the most confusing manner possible might actually be the norm.
Featured image via lukeford.net – Wikimedia / Celebrity Myxer, LLC – Wikimedia (images cropped to 770 x 403)
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