Not today, colonizer.
When will folks learn that expressing racist views – especially on social media, especially when you have a clearly identifiable job, and perhaps most especially, when said views are about the newest British baby royal –will always put you in the losers’ column?
The BBC fired radio broadcaster Danny Baker after Baker tweeted an image Wednesday of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry holding hands with a chimpanzee dressed in a top hat and suit and the caption: “Royal Baby leaves hospital.”
The tweet was sent hours after the royal couple formally introduced their newborn son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, to the world.
Baker’s tweet immediately sparked outrage and accusations of racism. Brits on social media called for his firing, according to the New York Times.
The end came swiftly. Baker announced via Twitter on Thursday that the BBC had given him the boot — and said the network “threw me under the bus.”
And CNN reports, while Baker deleted the offensive tweet, he tried to pull a Jedi mind trick, saying the racist connotations had not occurred to him because his “mind [is] not diseased.”
Baker’s racist tweet is hardly the first — nor obviously the most original — racist attack against the royal couple. Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has been targeted by racists since she and Prince Harry started dating.
Things got so bad, Buckingham Palace included racism in its guidelines about public discourse regarding both Markle and Prince William’s wife, Kate Middleton.
As this latest episode shows, there may be no stopping people from their racist, crass, or otherwise antisocial tendencies, but perhaps, like Baker, they will continue to pay the consequences for them.