David Starkey dropped by publisher and university after racist remarks

The Guardian
Alison Flood and agencies
Fri 3 Jul 2020 07.40 edt

HarperCollins has dropped David Starkey as an author, saying that the racist views the bestselling historian expressed in a recent interview were “abhorrent”.

On Thursday, Starkey told the rightwing commentator Darren Grimes that “slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there? You know, an awful lot of them survived.”

Following widespread condemnation – former chancellor Sajid Javid described the comments as racist and “a reminder of the appalling views that still exist” in Britain, while the historian David Olusoga said they were “truly disgusting” – HarperCollins UK said it would not be publishing any further books by Starkey.

... This is not the first time Starkey has been criticised for his remarks on race. Following the summer riots in 2011, he told BBC Newsnight that “a substantial amount of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black; a particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jul/03/david-starkey-dropped-publisher-racist-remarks-harpercollins