The controversy erupted over Ms Munchetty’s comment

According to him, they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe”. The London-born Ms Munchetty would no doubt regard it as a severe deprivation if she were threatened with a return to Mauritius where her Indian parents settled. The organiser was quoted saying, “This ruling legitimises textile manufacturers racist opinions by suggesting that they should be treated impartially.“Every time I have been told as a woman of colour, to go back where I come from, that was embedded in racism,” she said during a broadcast chat with her co-host Dan Walker on the famous red sofa on which these highly illuminating and often entertaining morning conversations take place. It’s called the difference between reporting and editorialising. That’s not a white view: it’s what most Afro-Asians think.” Three of the women were born in New York City, Detroit, and Cincinnati; the fourth came to the US as a child refugee from Somalia and, as American commentators have pointed out, has been a US citizen since she was a teenager, longer than Mr Trump’s wife, the US first lady. Disraeli called race the “ultimate reality”. “Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.”Of course, she had done exactly that.Under the pained heading, “I know how it feels to be told to go back where I came from”, Britain’s ethnic Pakistani chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, recently described in the Daily Telegraph some of the racist attacks he had suffered. No one has ever said the Queen felt “angry and confused” because of the New Statesman cartoon.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been let off the hook on racial discrimination, but the deeper implications of the Naga Munchetty affair bear inquiry, not because the BBC’s impartiality is suspect but because of what the episode reveals of Afro-Asian complexes regarding white people. But there was no doubt that her comment went “beyond what the guidelines allow”.Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chandriah, to give her little-used full name to the attractive and vivacious host of the BBC Breakfast show who looks younger than her 44 years, was condemned for breaching editorial propriety by interjecting personal opinion when criticising Mr Trump’s diatribe against the four Congresswomen known on Washington’s Capitol Hill as “the Squad”. He felt “angry and confused” when told by white racist thugs “to go back where I came from”. Movement from Afro-Asia to Europe or the US is promotion.The controversy erupted over Ms Munchetty’s comment on Mr Trump’s comment.When Enoch Powell, the right-wing British Conservative politician who sought to end Afro-Asian immigration, was ranting in the 1960s about repatriating “foreigners” to their home countries to avoid “rivers of blood” in race riots, the weekly New Statesman published a cartoon of Queen Elizabeth II packed for despatch with a “To Germany” label. It’s a deadly insult with grave racial, political and civilisational overtones to tell an Afro-Asian to go back where he came from.All hell broke loose at that condemnation. But the dividing line is not very clear when it comes to an emotive subject like race, and Ms Munchetty stepped into this dangerous grey area. More than 40 well-known actors, journalists and broadcasters sent an open letter to the BBC warning that its decision had “implications for the entire media landscape in the UK and those who work within it”. Movement from Europe or the US to Afro-Asia is demotion. By saying that Naga Munchetty breached the guidelines of impartiality by clearly expressing an opinion on the author of these remarks, the BBC is suggesting that we should take comments like President Trump made — which are acknowledged throughout the mainstream media worldwide as racist — and not express a view.

Lord Hall, the BBC’s chairman, has since reversed the condemnation.”When Mr Walker asked how she had felt when she heard Mr Trump say what he did, Ms Munchetty replied at once, “Furious. But there would have been no row if someone was sent back to New Zealand or Norway. Absolutely furious, and I can imagine lots of people in this country will be feeling absolutely furious that a man in that position thinks its okay to skirt the lines by using language like that. He tweeted that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came. A viewer complained, and the BBC ruled that Ms Munchetty had indeed broken the rules. Ms Munchetty’s colleagues and several BME (black and minority ethnic) celebrities rallied to her defence. Yet, telling a white to make the reverse journey has no sinister overtones because he doesn’t need to regret his origins. The same tag would suffice for Donald Trump, whose tirades against four outspoken Democratic Congresswomen — Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — invited criticism in the House of Representatives, a reprimand from Theresa May, who was then Britain’s Prime Minister, and provoked the Munchetty controversy. Today, he would have said colour. We old time journalists were brought up on the rule that readers or viewers should not be able to discern our personal views from what we write or say, except when we are admittedly pontificating, as in a signed column. The agony and anguish are reserved only for those who must suffer repatriation to Pakistan or Somalia