Deciding to have children in the First World supports slavery, according to a BBC Three segment pushed on social media.

In a segment for the ‘Blindboy Undestroys the World’ programme on BBC Three, the publicly-funded broadcaster’s youth-oriented channel, the eponymous “Blindboy” tells the viewer: “You think slavery is a thing of the past, but you own slaves”.

To demonstrate the point, the alleged satirist throws to “A fellow at the Africa department of SOAS [The School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London], Visual sociology researcher at Goldsmiths [University of London], and author of the book Don’t Touch My Hair, and a bleedin’ legend from Dublin, Ireland, Miss Emma Dabiri!”

Dabiri, who does appear to be a legitimate academic — at least insofar as she does hold posts at SOAS and Goldsmiths — is cast in the role of a host on the mock ‘Modern Slavery Gameshow’, with fictional upper-middle-class social justice warriors Atticus and Jemima going head to head in a battle to see who owns the most slaves.



Blindboy Undestroys the World: How Many Slaves Do You Own? You own slaves.

Blindboy Undestroys the World is now streaming on BBC iPlayer: https://bbc.in/34Ffwqt Posted by BBC Three on Thursday, 20 February 2020

The show is at pains to stress that the pair’s very deliberate attempts to live ethical, virtue-signalling lives do not free them of responsibility for slavery.

Atticus’s woke ‘THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST’ looks like t-shirt earns slavery points for the use of child and forced labour in the production of cheap cotton, as does recycling his rubbish — as a London recycling centre was once found to be employing workers in poor physical condition for £1 an hour illegally.

Jemima earns by far the most opprobrium, however, when it is revealed that she has a child — which triggers a disapproving foghorn klaxon.

“You said the magic word: kids!” announces Dabiri, cueing a long harangue from the Irish narrator.

“Bringing a child into the First World guarantees a beautiful future for people forced into slavery to meet little Quintin’s needs,” he says sarcastically.

“Toys. Fireworks. Christmas decorations. School uniforms. All have involved modern and child slavery.

“And if he eats his five [servings of fruit and/or vegetables] a day, Tesco and Asda have accidentally bought vegetables from a firm that had slaves on one of their farms, but we can’t see those people, so who cares?”

Having children anywhere else in the world was not described as problematic in the skit, however, despite significant differences in birthrates between less developed and more developed nations, where not even hitting replacement-levels of births is now the norm.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery