Big brother and Spain

Yesterday, in my advance level class, my students asked my what was the big hullabaloo about the current Big Brother.
I've never seen Big Brother, ever, and that particular show is certainly not on my list of things to watch here. So I didn't have a clue of what they were talking about. They told me that they've seen on the local news that there were loads of complains about allegations of racism on the program, that people in Bombay were incensed and that even the Prime Minister has been talking about it in the Parliament.
My students were not surprised that some contestant can make a racist remark, you can find that sort of people all over the world, but they were indeed surprised that a sort of private action, albeit one done in a very public way, could have such resonance on the society.

That lead us to a very interesting talk about the cultural differences between the Spanish and the British. Both countries have an imperial (and quite bloody) past but their own perspective and vision of their history and the outcome of and relation with their former colonies are very different indeed.

I did promised my student to do some research and about the allegations, and I did find out some videos in the net about the row between Sherpa and Jade Goody. I said that I never seen Big Brother before, but of course I knew of Jane Goody, she was a sort of national calamity and she´s infamous precisely because she was a contestant in a previous Big Brother show and she also has done a few tv shows on her own, cashing in her down-to-earth, big-mouthed, totally ignorant person doing it wrong every time. And goodness gracious me, how she outdid herself now.

I took some videos (click here to see it)to the class today and my poor students were none the wiser because they couldn't understand a word of what Jade was shouting (they've never heard the word malarkey before, now they know exactly what that means!). Welcome, dear guys, to the poor man version but very real English.

For all I could see and could understand of what happened, I personally think that big-mouth Jade was totally bitching and bulling the lovely Sherpa but I'm not convince she's been racist. I, for one, can very well imagine Jade shouting that to any other person, in any colour or shape.

My student asked me if the racial tension and racism was particularly bad in the UK, compared with other European countries, and my honest answer was that I think that racism is seen as such a morally wrong thing that normal people would not let one such public remark to go uncensored and that in my view that was a good thing.

I do hope that this will open an honest debate about racism in the UK because not only the white Brits can be racist, sometime racism lurks in the minds and hearts of the so call "ethnic minority" people. My former neighbourhood was a big rough on the edges, (there even was a racist attack to a Indian family in one shop nearby), but the worse outburst of racist language that I've ever heard by far there was an exchange between the Asian owner of a nearby shop and an a couple of Afro-Caribbean teens that he was accusing of trying to steal something. They shouted things at each other that made my skin crawl.

Racism do exist in the UK but certainly not more than in the rest of Europe, if anything it'll be less! And I think is a good step in the right direction that a racist remark or insult is considered to be such a horrible thing.

I really would like to know what do you ladies from the library think of this and what does people say in Bristol. Please, tell me!!