'RURAL RACISM'
BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison brands the British countryside ‘racist’
BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison has branded the British countryside racist.
She said there was “work to do” to end prejudice in rural areas and that white people must acknowledge the “lingering, ambient racism” from the past.
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Harrison was defending the nature programme’s decision in the summer to show a film by presenter Dwayne Fields who investigated the issue.
The programme's report drew on research from the Government's Environment Department, published last year, which said that some ethnic groups felt UK national parks were a "white environment".
Harrison, who has presented the show since 2009, said the huge reaction to it on social media, including comments from those who had experienced racism in the countryside, took producers a week to pick through.
Writing in the BBC’s Countryfile magazine, she said: “I spooled through the comments which broadly came in three flavours: ‘I’m not racist so there is no racism in the countryside’; ‘I’m black and I’ve never experienced racism in the countryside’; and importantly, ‘I have experienced racism in the countryside’.
“So there’s work to do. Even a single racist event means there is work to do. In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.”
The 42-year-old added she was moved to do more to challenge racism following the death of George Floyd this year and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
She wrote: “Until this point, I believed ignorantly that me being not racist was enough.
“I believed that I should keep quiet and listen to black people. That’s because I read and loved every Alice Walker book as a teenager, have watched Oprah every day since I was a youngster . . . it wasn’t my problem.
“There is a big and crucial difference between being not racist and being anti-racist.
"At times in the past I have given measured and polite replies to people — sometimes close to me — who had said racist things. But being anti-racist means being much clearer that it isn’t acceptable... Let the knife and fork squeak uncomfortably over supper."
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She also said white people needed to learn from history and do more to understand what black people have been through.
“It’s our individual work to wrap our heads around history. The work also includes recognising the pain of the past and the lingering ambient racism we don’t get to feel," she wrote.
"It means acknowledging that we have benefited from the past, the behaviours of many generations ago.”
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