The English dress

There have always been naive, easily impressionable, emotional, and willful people who, in the name of good causes, have done and defended utterly idiotic things. In the mid-19th century, in his novel Bleak House —published in Portugal as A Casa Sombria —Charles Dickens left us the archetype of this type of person in the character of Mrs. Jellyby, a wealthy lady with strong philanthropic inclinations who dedicated much of her time and energy to establishing what she called the "Borrioboola-Gha enterprise," an initiative to help Black people in a remote African region. The idea was to transport poor Englishmen to Africa, where they would settle and teach Black people how to grow coffee. In her imagination, this would solve the problem of racial inequality and improve the lives of everyone involved. In other words, with one stone, she would help solve the social and economic problems of poverty in both Britain and Africa.

The lady was an activist avant la lettre . She spent her days writing letters, making lists, organizing her enterprise, and undertaking a thousand redundant or unnecessary activities. Mrs. Jellyby dedicated herself to making woolen sweaters for poor Black people, but she ignored the needs of the impoverished people she encountered every day in London, and even those of her own family. Her home was chaotic, and her five children were filthy and helpless, except for Caddy, the eldest daughter, who served as her mother's secretary. But the lady's obsession with her philanthropic project was such that Caddy came to hate the word "Africa," and her father, Mr. Jellyby, ended up ruined—and on the verge of suicide—by the sheer number of donations his wife made to her "Borrioboola-Gha enterprise." A venture that, moreover, came to nothing because the local African king enslaved and sold the workers in order to buy brandy. This utter failure did not discourage Mrs. Jellyby, who soon found a new, generous cause to devote her time and possessions to.

Many people of the time—Charles Dickens included—called the attitude of people like Mrs. Jellyby "telescopic philanthropy." Today, in our Western countries, we also have much of that kind of "philanthropy" and multitudes of people like Mrs. Jellyby—that is, people more papist than the Pope, who, in the name of noble causes and just struggles in defense of distant, foreign, or long-vanished communities, trample on those around them and ignore the rights and freedoms of their fellow citizens. However, things are even more serious now than they were in the 19th century because, with the woke movement and its desire to achieve social justice at any cost, what, in Mrs. Jellyby's case, was simple indifference or inattention to the suffering and needs of those close to her has gone far beyond that and has become aversion, rejection, disdain, opposition, anger, and aggression.

I suppose the United Kingdom is the European country where this is most common and most evident. Every week, British newspapers bring us the exaggerations and humanitarian inhumanity of modern-day Mrs. Jellybys. The latest episode of modern "telescopic philanthropy"—with its attendant hostility to what is near and dear—that I've come across involves a dress. Following the news in The Telegraph , the story is quickly told. About two weeks ago, on a Friday that was "Cultural Diversity Day," during which children can wear clothing representative of their culture and give a short presentation in class about their cultural heritage, one of the students at a school in Rugby, about 50 kilometers east of Birmingham, a 12-year-old white English girl, came to class wearing a dress inspired by one worn by the Spice Girls and whose fabric reproduced the Union Jack. They didn't let her talk about English culture and some of its characteristics—the habit of drinking tea and eating fish and chips , the value placed on fair play and good manners, the taste for a certain form of humor, etc.—they explained to her that only children from other cultures could celebrate—as British children would celebrate every day—they told her that her dress was "unacceptable"—that was the word used—they expelled her from class and forced her to sit in the school hall until her father came to pick her up. The child later confessed to the journalist who overheard her that she felt deeply humiliated.

With the issue gaining some national attention and leading to a statement from the Prime Minister's office, the school apologized with the typical politically correct, rounded, aseptic, and flavored rhetoric. But there are questions related to "telescopic philanthropy" that continue to be blown in the wind, as Bob Dylan would say, while they wait for us to give them a full answer. And the most important are the following: Are inclusion, respect, and appreciation only for foreigners? And what do we do with idiots like these Rugby teachers who harassed the white student in the Spice Girls dress? The woke movement has brought millions of these people to social media, the pages of newspapers, and the spotlight, and has also brought them into positions of decision-making and influence, such as parliaments, the courts, schools and universities, and, in England especially, the police. This is where the effort to exalt other cultures and condemn one's own is most visible and most shocking. When will we react? This small incident, which took place in an English school, is very illuminating of what has been happening in our societies and is yet another wake-up call for us to emerge from our pleasant, sluggish slumber. Do we want to be, along with our Western cultures, on the brink of suicide like poor Mr. Jellyby?