The Human Zoo and the ‘Censorship’ Debate

Today’s comment piece in The Observer by Catherine Bennett (“What price artistic freedom when the bullies turn up?”) was the latest piece of hand-wringing despair in our media at the success of the campaign to pressure the Barbican to withdraw (some say ‘censor’) ‘Exhibit B’. Bennett compared it to the protests over ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’ and Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s ‘Behzti’, ending by admitting that “I struggle to see the essential difference between [Lee] Jasper’s determination to deny sight of Exhibit B to London audiences and the remarks by Lord Griffith-Jones in the Lady Chatterley trial, in 1960: ‘Is it a book that you would ever wish your wife or your servants to read?’” As no other white commentator seems willing to defend the protesters, let me attempt to clarify.