Monday 13 January 2020

100% belief about 100% racism

As promised, more on Stormzy. He caused a right ruckus the other day, not on purpose. In an interview in Italy, he said, when asked if he thought Britain was still racist today, "Definitely, 100%". This was reported by ITV and then others as him saying that he thought Britain was "100% racist". This was widely condemned, ridiculed and mocked, as well as provoking an absolute meltdown among people who took it to mean that Stormzy was calling them personally racist. (An aside: even if he had meant that Britain is 100% racist, he wouldn't be wrong, on the sensible definition of a racist society as one in which your racialised identity affects your success and advantage in life, which it does in Britain.)

Curiously, both phrasings could actually mean both things, but there's a tendency for them to be interpreted differently. The two meanings are: Stormzy is 100% of the belief that there is (some) racism in Britain; and Stormzy believes that Britain is 100% (i.e. entirely) racist. '100%' either quantifies the amount of racism (complete racism), or it quantifies his level of belief (total belief). While his phrasing lends itself strongly to the interpretation where he means "Yeah, I believe 100% that there is (some) racism", the phrasing reported lends itself more to "Yeah, I believe that Britain is 100% racist". Why? the position of the '100%' next to the adjective 'racist' in the inaccurate reporting implies modification of that adjective, or in other words, totally racist.

His answer as it was actually given could also mean this, though, even with the preceding question ("is Britain still racist today") for context: "Definitely, [it is] 100% [racist]". As noted above, I'd have supported his answer if this had been what he meant. But he was clear about the fact that it wasn't!

And I think you can get this correct reading even with the inaccurate phrasing, although it's less salient. In "Britain is 100% racist", I can get an interpretation here where '100%' is an intensifier rather than a proper quantifier, and means something more like 'definitely'. The meaning of "Britain is definitely racist" doesn't necessarily mean that every aspect of and person in Britain is racist: "Britain is racist" can mean "There is some racism in Britain". But because it can also mean the entirety, and the partial meaning isn't made explicit, the 'entirely racist' meaning is more readily available.

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