I'll deliberately tune in to watch....Jade?

Back to a PC after a coupla days and really interesting to read all this stuff.

There was bullying, the catalyst, I think being typical English issues with class. Many english people remain very conscious of 'class' and can easily be intimidated and daunted by it - I think this led to the kind of behaviour we saw with three very jealous chav lassies ganging up to bully the clearly more intelligent, more refined, more respected, more famous, more beautiful, more capable, more tolerant.. Shilpa who preferred not to discuss, getting trashed, losing her virginity etc etc.

It was easy to see how Shilpa could have been seen as patronising or condescending from time to time but throughout she remained very dignified and showed great mental strength. Ultimately she was able to see the character of the chavs more clearly than they can see themselves - as a result she has shown a great deal of forbearance and forgiveness of their behaviour - dare I say it - classy ! Surprised some people here have said very neagative things about her.

I didn't see any overtly racist stuff directed at Shilpa but a horrible gang and bully mentaility developed and it became clear that Shilpa could do no right. When the gang discussed Shilpa when she was not present it was very clearly racist - 'I think she should fuck off home' being one of the obvious examples. So, racism was very evident but for the most part it was a glimpse into very nasty bullying - imagine how it might have gone if Shilpa didn't have the fall back of being able to seek comfort with the more normal people in the house.

Jade is clearly a little intellectually challenged - I feel sorry for her and feel she is being made a scapegoat - when she said Shilpa Poppadom it would be like one of us referring to an Italian we didn't like and saying something like it was Antonioni Ravioli - bit childish maybe but not racist in my opinion.

When the big row happened she was vile and rude but I don't think it was racist or even bullying at that point, She just showed herself unable to debate on an adult level and resorted to a series of increasingly outlandish insults because she had lost control and was just about self aware enough to realise she couldn't win a normal argument. From that point on she was constantly on the brink of tears because, again, she was just about self aware enough to realise she had done wrong but didn't have the emotional intelligence to retrieve the situation.

I think Jade is guileless and fundamentally good hearted. Danielle and Jo were the truly nasty pieces in this play - ugly people, ugly characters who egged Jade on in an insidious way and then tried to present themselves as following Jade's lead - shockingly awful people. People whose faces, frankly, I would never tire of slapping.

I think the programme makers handled this reasonably well - I guess we don't know all the communications that go on between them and the contestants but I liked the way they appeared to resist the pressure to wade in and tell people to stop. Instead they held a mirror up to people like Danielle with open questions like 'What did you mean when you said xxxx ?' Far more effective and exposing of their hate-filled agenda.

I do think it is easy to be too PC and brand too many things as racist rather than 'differentist' but, as Flushy has alluded to many times very eloquently in this thread, it is probably better to be too PC than to let a kind of casual racism (prevalent still in the UK in my view) go unchallenged.

On a positive note, in many ways I think it is amazing how little overt racism there is in this country as opposed to how much there is. Also, it is a massively more positive environment for asian/black people here now than say 20 years ago.

Don't know why I wrote so much but I think it's because this programme has ended up stimulating a whole load of deabte about the nature of our society that it's irresistible to have ones own tuppenceworth.

xxx