No Darkies on the Climate Front

If there's one thing infotainment consumers absolutely cannot stand, it's an ill-balanced composition in a press photograph. More than mere omission or falsehood in the text, more even than the legalistic intricacies of ensuring that both casual and ideological racists get a fair crack of the whip, an off-centre picture can result in complaints, cancelled subscriptions and, in the worst cases, legal actions and social media trigger warnings. Hence the commendable caution exercised by Associated Press in removing from a picture of climate activists at Davos a dazzling white building, which distracted the eye and gave undue weight to the left. The fact that an African activist was also removed, leaving four Caucasians in harmonious balance with the pictorial ecology, constituted no more than a benign coincidence. While Africa has so far contributed little to the causes of the climate emergency, it is highly vulnerable to the effects; which means that African climate activists can hardly be in business from the most lily-white motives anyway.