What Jon Snow meant when he talked about ‘white people’ | 1 April 2019

Jon Snow has had a lot of flak for his ‘white people’ comment at the tail end of his report from the Leave Means Leave march on Friday. But in my view he hasn’t had enough. Because it seems pretty clear to me that he wasn’t simply disparaging whiteness and openly commenting on the racial make-up of a protest, which would have been bad enough — since when was it the job of newsreaders to point out people’s skin colour? No, he was also being classist, a bit of a snob. Because make no mistake: when members of the liberal elite say ‘white people’, they aren’t talking about white people like themselves — they’re talking about the ‘white people’ out there, from outside of London, with their strange accents and beliefs and habits. ‘White people’ is increasingly PC code for the lower orders.