Oh. My. Lord. I’ve been looking at Dawn Butler’s spoken verse as presented by her on X and it’s difficult to know what to say. It is, it seems, Dawn’s contribution to Black History Month.
The lyrics are at the bottom of the page, though for the full effect you really need to hear her delivery, with the accompanying shots, made up mostly of fetching images of Dawn, but with some material illustrative of her point, if I’ve discerned it correctly:
As we reclaim the narrative let us all remember the global majority are of the first ones.
Listen carefully ?
Black history is British history! ???#BHM pic.twitter.com/w45TPpwUWW
— Dawn Butler ?? (@DawnButlerBrent) October 1, 2024
What she seems to be doing is addressing a racist troll, though it might be helpful if she made that clearer at the outset, because at present her unseen interlocutor would seem to be any random white person. And to put the most positive construction on her train of thought, if that’s the right word, she is rejecting the contention that a black person such as her is in any way inferior to her unknown antagonist.
‘You are’, she tells him (presumably it’s a he?) ‘the wrong one, the violent one, the weird one/Where was I?/ I am the Chosen One/Because I am of the First Ones.’
And here we go from a strange proposition to a genuinely weird one. That bit about our Dawn being one of the ‘Chosen Ones’ because she is ‘of the First Ones’ is at best the sort of portentous drivel you get in a sub-Star Wars fantasy film, or in a particular genre of young adult fiction which I unhesitatingly chuck in the bin when it comes my way.
It is a little worrying that a member of parliament feels free to express herself in this way
What I think she is saying is that because human civilisation originated in Africa and her own ethnic origins are African (more recently, Jamaican) she is a cut above the rest of us.
By the way, it’s a bit worrying that the former shadow minister for women and equalities and present MP for Brent East hasn’t grasped that ‘Whereas I’ is different from ‘Where was I?’ – though it may be a subconscious acknowledgement of an iffy train of thought. To be honest even the genius Sam Leith of this parish would be pushed to parse Dawn’s verse.
Dawn uses an interesting shot of an African king figure on a throne who sort of channels the pharaohs – I think she’s possibly channelling King Solomon’s Mines, where the African hero turns out to be a native king. Then there’s an equally suggestive shot of a human skull superimposed over a news story to the effect that new remains found in a dig indicate that humans originated not in East Africa, as originally supposed, but in Morocco. In fact, I don’t think she’s out to debunk east Africa; it was probably the first item she found online to indicate the origins of humankind. But we knew all that, Dawn. Richard Dawkins, for instance, calls the mother of the species Eve and he places her in Africa.
And then there’s the self-assertion – ‘I know I’m black and beautiful’. Dawn is channelling the ‘Song of Songs’ here, but more obviously recalling the Rev. Martin Luther King, who made that declamation. She goes on: ‘I know I’m… an African freedom fighter’, with shots of various leaders of the US civil rights movement in the background. But I wouldn’t invite the comparison if I were her. The Rev. Martin Luther King was one of the great orators of the last century; our Dawn certainly isn’t.
And then she has a little fun, apparently at the expense of white folks who sunbathe:
‘This beautiful mahogany brown, this skin you don’t like [cut to a pic of Kamala Harris] I believe./So why you trying so hard to achieve/By burning yourself with the sun?/For me there’s no need/ Because I am the Chosen One.’
Well, I am right with her there. Sunbathing is a really bad idea if you’re fair-skinned.
It is a little worrying that a member of parliament feels free to express herself in this way. It’s obviously drivel, but it strikes me as being racist drivel, no less so for being articulated by someone of African heritage. To put it another way, if a white person wrote this sort of thing, she’d be carted off by Prevent before she could say ‘white supremacy’. Granted, it may be that Dawn intends this as an elaborate exercise in irony. But I really don’t think that it adds much to the sum of mutual understanding for a black person to say that my lot are older and more distinguished than your lot.
You end up in the kind of argument that, to put it mildly, does not make for community cohesion.
The full lyrics, below:
You wanted to see me broken
Head bowed and tears in my eyes?
More for you; you didn’t realise
That my strength is powered by your lies.
You are the wrong one, the violent one, the weird one;
Where was I?
I am the Chosen One
Because I am of the First Ones.
You see this skin I’m in
This beautiful mahogany brown
This skin you don’t like [shot of Kamala Harris], I believe.
So why you try so hard to achieve [shot of Dawn with a bemused fruit juice seller]
By burning yourself with the sun?
For me there’s no need
Because I am the Chosen One
For I am of the First Ones [another shot of a pharaoh like African figure].
I know I’m black and beautiful
An African freedom fighter [shots of US civil rights figures, including Martin Luther King]
My skin is my protection,
And you, my friend, don’t matter.
Because I am the Chosen One
For I am of the First Ones.
You created a structure
That made you seem great
But the simple reality is [shot of Dawn speaking in the Commons]
It is all fake.
Because I am the Chosen One
For I am of the First Ones.
So you wanted to see me broken?
Head bowed and tears in my eyes?
More for you, you haven’t realised
My strength is despite your lies.