A few days ago, a senior Member of European Parliament, Godfrey Bloom, used the term 'bongo bongo land' to describe countries to which we are giving charitable aid. He believes that citizens of the UK should have the right to choose whether or not they wish to give money to other countries and that it shouldn't be taken from tax money, especially in a time in which we are all struggling.
A large number of people have rung the racism bell here and stated that 'bongo bongo land' is a pejorative term for African nations. However, I want to take a look at why some people think this is racist and why some people think it is not.
Firstly, let's think about this as if Bongoland was a real country. That country would feel quite offended that a single person had such hatred towards their people. The people of Bongoland would indeed call Bloom a racist for singling them out over other countries. However, 'bongo bongo land' does not exist and was used as a collective noun to relate to a group of countries. As Bloom said himself, it is not meant as a definition of any single country, but used to mean all the countries with corrupt government officials who siphon off a proportion of the aid for themselves. In this instance, he could have used any nonsensical word, for example 'abracadabra land'. Bloom was merely using an aurally-pleasing term to emphasise his point; it's not a single country, but several. However, it's that specific term, which has been used previously in a pejorative way (by a member of The Conservative Party in the 1980s) that has more meaning attached to it. This is why it caused offence to several people and why it became a news story. Due to the semantics of bongo, it is instantly related to bongo drums, which are originally from Africa. If, as above, he had used 'abracadabra land' would it have caused less offence? The chances are that it probably would have as 'abracadabra' is not semantically linked to any region or culture in the same way as 'bongo'.
Let's look at the entire sentence that was used by Bloom:
"How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me."
With the whole context, it is easy to see where Bloom could have changed his words. 'Bongo Bongo Land' could be switched with another word with fewer connotations, like 'Abracadabra Land'. In fact, when you listen to the sentence and the way he said it, it appears as if Bloom did not plan to use this term and it was just a phrase that popped into his head. The embedded clause placed just before helps to further clarify this. This clause did not need to be said and it could have been used to fill time so that he could use an appropriate term, or at least a term he deemed as appropriate. In fact, there is a long pause directly after this clause, further showing the unplanned nature of the speech. In this way, it appears that this phrase was not used as intentionally racist here, but as a term Bloom thought was a nonsensical word that sounded catchy.
Here, I want to add another meaning, one from an African country: Tanzania. In Tanzania, the term 'bongoland' is in the vernacular and is used to mean something positive: 'a place where people have to be savvy and have their wits about them' (BBC). Now, if we add this to the equation, it is easy to see that the word has two or more links semantically, depending on your background. It is not just used to mean bongo drums.
Does this affect your opinion? Is Bloom racist or has the whole thing been exaggerated?