You should get some better friends. Or come to one of mine, they're a blast.
Edit: don't see how it's even "borderline" racist though, as far as I can see he doesn't mention race or anything that's even connected with race - and we all know by now that the rioters came from a broad cross-secion of ethnic backgrounds...
Ha - no, I think it's childhood disgust at my parents' dinner parties - it's the format rather than the people. If you call it 'having people round for dinner', I'm there; the instant dps are mentioned (ahem), I'm outta there.
Well, yes and no. It was more 'racialised' than 'racist', I should have said. But the article comes perilously close to ridiculing what is perceived (and I know it's not true, it's a stereotype, but I've never seen Brooker say anything that shows he's not working with stereotypes in this area, and i've read a lot of his stuff) as black culture/black fashion. Plus, non-white people are disproportionately poor in the UK (as most others), so, while it was in no way a race riot, but a poverty riot, then that will mean that non-white people are disproportionately represented in what happened.
And, specifically, the violence in Hackney resulted immediately from two (?) black guys being ridiculously stop-searched, and obv there was the racialised context of what happened in Tottenham - there was a strong element of reaction to societal racism in it, although yeah, more about poverty than race per se.
And in Clapham it was definitely racialised, mainly cos Clapham is a particularly apartheid-ised part of London. (As - dear fuck, having been there the other week - is Dalston, but that's a side observation).