There is no such thing as a black community, or a white community, or a gay community. Everybody lives amongst everybody else. It is wrong to use that term as it create divisions
But there is significant segregation. If there were not I might agree with you. While the UK is not as segregated as the US, or even France, the Casey Review the Cameron government commissioned ( https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/575973/The_Casey_Review_Report.pdf ) found that social integration in the UK had not kept up with the “unprecedented pace and scale of immigration” over the previous decade and have some local communities to become increasingly isolated and divided. It’s all well and good to say “yehbutt Blair”, there is little doubt that immigration increased on his watch and his government did little or nothing about integrating immigrants into UK society, which was a contributing factor to Brexit, whatever the causes the problem of economic and geographic segregation is real and has to be dealt with now. There’s no point in denying it.
I think it's well-understood that Hong Kong was born of a trading concession brought about by the Opium Wars. But you can't judge the British legacy on that alone. It's also true that through that concession it became a thriving economic hub and a centre of liberalism and free speech.
The "civilising mission" of the British Empire, such as it was to develop, educate and improve colonies, developed during the 19th Century as parliamentary democracy became established and debate more widespread - so you can't just pick a few points in time to establish your case. Hong Kong ended up becoming a place of refuge for many Chinese dissidents during the civil war and communist clampdowns that killed 40 million or more lives. So much so that common law and a free press is fiercely defended now by those of a Han ethnicity . I don't see how Britain is responsible for the CCP, but perhaps someone can enlighten me,
In South Africa, it was the Afrikaner ethnic National Party that imposed apartheid and wouldn't give it up until the 1980s, and they were descendent of Dutch colonists - not the British. And whilst the UK was responsible for the USA up until 1776 (or 1783 and the peace treaty, if you will) the slave trade was abolished by the UK thereafter and after American independence, whereafter the US was solely responsible for its own affairs. There's examples of ignorance in this article here as well.
I'm not sure this slaveowner and streets thing is correct either - especially given so many vandalised the statue of Abraham Lincoln in London (who abolished slavery) - because they didn't know who he was.
There are issues of disadvantage for black people (and I think it is worse for black people, and not all ethnic minorities - Chinese and Indian people do far better) and I don't like the football and rap thing either. But let's keep a sense of proportion.
I'm afraid this is as one-sided as those who profess that our history is entirely rosey, and there is no issue with policing or racism at allwhatosever, and badly let down by racist words like "whitesplaining",and I sense born of an own self-loathing of his own country.
Scottish independence rising as a political force rather than being destroyed by devolution is a matter of public record, and as is the increase in migration (notably by no transitional limits on new EU member states), with the desire to rub the right's face in diversity thereby revealed through leaks.
If you meant I was either too ambiguous or broad brush over the culture war comment then fair enough, that could've been more precise.
Your comment, "Labour's hiking of migration to rub the right's face in" is arrant nonsense.
Thanks Alastair for such a clear eyed summary of the British opium trade between India and China. For Scots like me who think the Union is long past its usefulness, it is a hard fact that Scots like Jardine and Matheson were right at the centre of the hard drugs trade and central to Hong Kong's commercial success. Scotland and England need to acknowledge this enormous historical plunder, which is the imperial legacy, before we can move on. Scotland is littered with stately homes which were built by homecoming colonial "traders" laundering their fortunes. The whole enterprise was built on the idea that black lives do not matter. We have forgotten this but much of the world has not.
V pleased to hear Bercow not happy about . his non peerage. Apparently he is a county standard tennis player and i read somewhere he duffed up Boris 6-0 6-0 6-0. ..not very charitable if true... how to win friends and influence people eh...
If the report that Framk Field is being ennobled is correct, I don't understand why Bercow was blocked, not because of any real or imagined faults of behaviour, but on the grounds that Corbyn had nominated a non-Labour candidate. Why is it then OK for the Government to nominate an ex-Labour independent, apart from mischief?
I say that as someone who quite likes Frank and I don't oppose his nomination. But either all party leaders should be able to nominate people outside their parties or none should.
I wonder if it will now be followed by a bunch of almost exclusively male pale & stale posters seeking in their different ways - some by absurdly reductive simplification, some by convoluted whataboutery, some by outright head-in-sand denial - to downplay or deny the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism?
I'd want 1.01 on Betfair before I lumped on that possibility.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
That could work if racism was purely a conscious, deliberate act. Yet what makes it so pervasive and common across human societies is that it is mostly an unconscious, involuntary act taken by our subconscious mind, which relies heavily on pattern recognition, and the colour of people is an obvious pattern that it finds.
Your solution is doomed to failure for that reason, if we all do nothing consciously and pay it no attention, our biology will encourage us to treat different groups differently. To be serious about treating them the same we need to make adjustments, both to ourselves and to society.
Mr. kinabalu, it's ironic that you complain about the potential of people to downplay racism whilst at the same time mocking them as 'male pale and stale' and mocking their skin colour (and gender).
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
Excellent article, Alistair. Your gentle suggestion at the end seems to have provoked vehement opposition.
Yes it is a good article. And it can be very hard to understand - if you do not have experience of it - what it must be like for people to make assumptions about you or treat you in a particular way because of some inalterable characteristic like the colour of your skin. So we should certainly try to understand.
The points Alastair makes about what it is like to live in a world made and dominated by others could equally be made with just as much force by women, who have endured all sorts of injustices and violence and harassment and dismissal of their concerns, fears etc - and still do - from men, of all types. This is far wider than the Me Too Movement. Life is certainly better for women now than it was when I was growing up, as it is for ethnic minorities or gay people. But that is no reason to pretend that serious issues still do not exist and need to be addressed.
What worries me about the BLM movement is that I do not hear any practical proposals being put forward. Changing the name of a road or college or removing a statue strikes me as patronising. A gesture which does nothing to aid understanding of history and nothing practical to help those being discriminated against.
When I was growing up, there used to be arguments about social issues such as single parents. John Major even made it a central part of his policy agenda:
I think Osborne may have changed the tax system to recognize marriage.
The video at the top of the thread cites home life as being an important part of a child's chances in life. This is undoubtedly true.
Yet all through my life, the Left have opposed the use of policy to reduce single parents households, for example. Clearly it's a difficult thing to change. But it fucks me off beyond belief for the Left to tell people who have had a stable upbringing to feel guilty about it.
They are sort of cunts who think parents shouldn't help their children with their homework.
A "c-bomb" and an "f-bomb" so early in the morning?
Notwithstanding your language your simplified stereotyping is not helpful either. Modifying the tax system to benefit married couples won't stop a poorly educated girl from a sink estate becoming pregnant from multiple partners.
Apologies, this subject irritates me greatly as a high-ish achieving white working class male employed by an organisation that wants BBC diversity (look different but think the same).
I didn’t say I supported the Tory policies. I was saying that the Left don’t want to tackle the issues that affect life chances. It is very tough to do, and I don’t know how to do it. But people shouldn’t feel guilty about having something that we should be promoting.
I am of the left. I have an education from what is now a Russell Group University and I am comfortably well off. Both my children are University students, and I had no problem helping them with their homework (your comment down thread). Perhaps you are confusing people like me with Jeremy Corbyn.
What I have shouldn't be unreachable to others because of their class, creed or colour. I am uncomfortable with the notion of social engineering, however some sort of rebalancing needs to be considered to ensure fairness to all.
Remember how this whole issue started in Minneapolis, and just keeps on happening. But why protest in the UK? Racial stereotyping goes on here too. Some years ago a nice middle-class lady I knew from University was on holiday with her family in Cornwall, they were black. She, along with some 20 other drivers ran a faulty red temporary traffic light. Her car was the only one pulled over by Devon and Cornwall Police and she got the fine and the points. She accepted she was wrong and joked she was pulled over because she was black, and she was joking. I thought, no, you're right!
I think I ran that light too. If I hadn't I'd still be waiting there (or been murdered by the drivers behind me).
When we look at our government, three of the great offices of state are held by the offspring of immigrants. Two of immigrants of colour. These are the highest offices a country can award its citizens.
We have taken our immigrants, and we have empowered them. We have put huge trust and faith in them
Those are not cheap words or meaningless take a knee gestures they are actions.
They are powerful anti-racist actions undertaken by the British people.
Absolutely. We must celebrate success on racism in order to help stop it in the future. As a nation, we have come further and to a better place than most countries and miles better than the US. Yet, there are still many challenges ahead.
Thanks Alastair for such a clear eyed summary of the British opium trade between India and China. For Scots like me who think the Union is long past its usefulness, it is a hard fact that Scots like Jardine and Matheson were right at the centre of the hard drugs trade and central to Hong Kong's commercial success. Scotland and England need to acknowledge this enormous historical plunder, which is the imperial legacy, before we can move on. Scotland is littered with stately homes which were built by homecoming colonial "traders" laundering their fortunes. The whole enterprise was built on the idea that black lives do not matter. We have forgotten this but much of the world has not.
Perhaps to be pedantic, it's become a recent topic of research and public dissemination - which has been quite a surprise to a lot of people, which makes your point.
There's stuff like Billy Kay's BBC series 'Scotland's Black History' and this
To go against my own advice not to focus on problems, let's focus on problematic issues for a minute.
Let us say that an outcome if the protests are successful is that police forces are measured on how many (or few) black individuals they stop - as I type this I am in utter disbelief that this could be 'a thing', and that an officer of the law would be urged by their superiors not to act on their suspicions, but it seems depressingly likely.
This means perpetrators of crime who are black, have an advantage over their white counterparts, and where it is taken to extremes, can operate above the law. This artificially inflates criminality in this community - how many of us would turn to crime if there was no punishment?
This is genuine grist to the mill of right wing social media, who can point to real injustice on the part of the police. Even the right-thinking amongst us would get a gnawing suspicion that this widespread criminality was somehow 'cultural'.
Where that would end, I don't know, but I don't think it ends very nicely. Anyone who doesn't think this story is realistic, needs to look at the grooming gangs of Bradford etc.
@SouthamObserver - someone on here suggested Dom put on a BLM t shirt and join the demo. How do you think that would have gone down?
There is a culture war in America that Trump has very much been a part of making. But the Left have played their part too. And they are trying to bring it here.
The hard right and the far left both want a culture war in the UK. That is nothing new. Why give them one?
They will get one because moderate centre ground people will acquiesce in the issues that underly it and therefore bring it about.
I am starting to get very concerned that the main real effect of these riots and protests will worsen race relations, not improve them.
This is because the language of racism (white people are culpable) is being used as a tool of anti-racism, including in this article.
I don't want a world where my 18-month daughter has to grow up feeling guilty and responsible, and perhaps worse, just because of the colour of her skin.
This will affect all of us so I will continue to call it out when people (lazily) adopt some language in a desperate attempt to demonstrate understanding and empathy.
There is no such thing as a black community, or a white community, or a gay community. Everybody lives amongst everybody else. It is wrong to use that term as it create divisions
There is no such thing as society, it's wrong to use that term as creates divisions.
If the UK were dissolved, it would help us to see the British Empire objectively as a historical phenomenon rather than something we have a knee-jerk tendency to defend.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Out of 457 friends and acquantainces on facebook, turns out I only know a grand total of 3 black people !
I had this conversation yesterday, a particularly vociferous BLM "friend" on facebook has 2 black "friends" on facebook out of 1100. And he occasionally says "all of my black friends".
Perhaps that's the reality, I know dozens of black/Asian people but I'm not sure how many of them are friends. Maybe 6?
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
That could work if racism was purely a conscious, deliberate act. Yet what makes it so pervasive and common across human societies is that it is mostly an unconscious, involuntary act taken by our subconscious mind, which relies heavily on pattern recognition, and the colour of people is an obvious pattern that it finds.
Your solution is doomed to failure for that reason, if we all do nothing consciously and pay it no attention, our biology will encourage us to treat different groups differently. To be serious about treating them the same we need to make adjustments, both to ourselves and to society.
Does that go for every community or just the white community?
Was Rotherham Racist? Rochdale/Telford etc?
Was the verdict of the jury at the OJ Simpson murder trial racist?
The arguments of minority communities fail to gain traction partly because of the implicit assumption that is is all the fault of the white man - their community is perfect and does not need to be changed or reformed.
There is also the assumption that nothing has changed since the 1960s when that is a patently absurd assertion. Discrimination is a matter of law in Britain now, and hate speech illegal.
What worries me about the BLM movement is that I do not hear any practical proposals being put forward. Changing the name of a road or college or removing a statue strikes me as patronising. A gesture which does nothing to aid understanding of history and nothing practical to help those being discriminated against.
I actually think that the renaming of the street is an interesting idea. The street name is in use all the time, so the phrase "Black Lives Matter" will get used and that is one more small change in the mindset of people.
Having said that, I would be more impressed if the biggest cities in the former confederate states made the change.
This top Tory look is going down a treat I see, surge must be due.......... SNP at 54% in last three polls Opinium on 4th June, with don’t knows removed has this
Hello Malky, nice sunny day with some cloud but a cool wind over in the east here.
Is that for Westminster or Holyrood please?
Hello Carnyx , sunny in the west with light breeze. I believe it is Westminster. PS: Did you see the state of Murdo in his regalia
Thank you!
That photo surprised me a bit - but I was too busy trying to find the info to look much at it. Now I look again, I suspect it's an old Photoshop job actually. There's something wrong ablout the way the sash hangs on the shoulder.
Would not surprise me with him , he is a real idiot.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
The one in Leicester was pretty diverse, if young.
Why is it that you want to delegitimise the protests this way? What is it about recognising structural racism that disturbs you?
Those opinion polls are bad for the Conservatives. Someone on here, I think it was the bluest of the blue, suggested that the whole Cummings story was a media storm in a teacup and that it was totally overblown. How wrong can you be?
I thought that the crossover might take 3 months. At this rate it will be within another month. That is a staggering seismic shift from the polls of the last few months when Johnson's tories regularly led by 20%, even by 26% as recently as the 20th April.
In all my years of watching politics I have never seen such a dramatic, sudden shift. Not even Black Wednesday.
And, for the record, I know plenty of people who are still talking about it, with anger and incredulity.
As own goals go, the Cummings saga beats everything.
Strange how quiet BluestBlue has gone since last night!
Excellent article, Alistair. Your gentle suggestion at the end seems to have provoked vehement opposition.
Yes it is a good article. And it can be very hard to understand - if you do not have experience of it - what it must be like for people to make assumptions about you or treat you in a particular way because of some inalterable characteristic like the colour of your skin. So we should certainly try to understand.
The points Alastair makes about what it is like to live in a world made and dominated by others could equally be made with just as much force by women, who have endured all sorts of injustices and violence and harassment and dismissal of their concerns, fears etc - and still do - from men, of all types. This is far wider than the Me Too Movement. Life is certainly better for women now than it was when I was growing up, as it is for ethnic minorities or gay people. But that is no reason to pretend that serious issues still do not exist and need to be addressed.
What worries me about the BLM movement is that I do not hear any practical proposals being put forward. Changing the name of a road or college or removing a statue strikes me as patronising. A gesture which does nothing to aid understanding of history and nothing practical to help those being discriminated against.
Exactly. Just as diversity advisors argue for strawman to be replaced by strawperson in workplaces.
It's entirely cosmetic, pointless and risks undermining the very serious issues it seeks to fix by making it a point of ridicule.
I wonder if it will now be followed by a bunch of almost exclusively male pale & stale posters seeking in their different ways - some by absurdly reductive simplification, some by convoluted whataboutery, some by outright head-in-sand denial - to downplay or deny the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism?
I'd want 1.01 on Betfair before I lumped on that possibility.
Another example of the sort of mindless brain-dead comments articles like this bring out.
Excellent, thought-provoking piece. Tremendous writing. The bottom line is that in the UK a white person will never be judged by society solely by the colour of his or her skin. We cannot say the same for non-white people. That does not make all white people racist, that does not deny many white people face significant barriers, deprivations and hardships, but it does explain why Black Lives Matter is such a rallying call. As Alastair says, we should listen more, understand more. We might learn something.
Whilst I don’t doubt that people from ethnic minorities face barriers that white people do, a lot of the issues in the video at the top of the thread just happen to be more prevalent in the black community. Maybe this is due to the Empire. Personally I think not.
Trevor Phillips made a programme about these issues a few years ago. A lot of people didn’t like what he had to say.
Alastair has written threads in the past about Britain going the way of Argentina. He’s right to say that we have no god given right to be a significant player. We have to work hard to be successful as a nation. I’d suggest the black community should look at itself as well as the forces of oppression.
Certainly so, people have agency and responsibility for their own decisions. These are not made in isolation though, but rather in context.
It is notable that black African communities are more academically successful than black Caribbean. There may be some legacy of colonialism, in that both slavery, and the pattern of men being absent abroad working disrupt family life.
Much as I admire and appreciate black British sporting and musical success, these are not realistic ambitions for a much broader success of the rest of a community. Too often the only entrepreneurial openings are criminal ones.
Or perhaps there's a class difference between black Africans and Black Caribbeans in this country.
And notice that there isn't an AsianLivesMatter - a demographic who have the opposite likelihood to dying in police custody as black people do:
This top Tory look is going down a treat I see, surge must be due.......... SNP at 54% in last three polls Opinium on 4th June, with don’t knows removed has this
Hello Malky, nice sunny day with some cloud but a cool wind over in the east here.
Is that for Westminster or Holyrood please?
Hello Carnyx , sunny in the west with light breeze. I believe it is Westminster. PS: Did you see the state of Murdo in his regalia
Thank you!
That photo surprised me a bit - but I was too busy trying to find the info to look much at it. Now I look again, I suspect it's an old Photoshop job actually. There's something wrong ablout the way the sash hangs on the shoulder.
Would not surprise me with him , he is a real idiot.
No, not him - someone who doesn't like him (one assumes). The pic seems to have been floating about the internet of old, on a quick peek.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
That could work if racism was purely a conscious, deliberate act. Yet what makes it so pervasive and common across human societies is that it is mostly an unconscious, involuntary act taken by our subconscious mind, which relies heavily on pattern recognition, and the colour of people is an obvious pattern that it finds.
Your solution is doomed to failure for that reason, if we all do nothing consciously and pay it no attention, our biology will encourage us to treat different groups differently. To be serious about treating them the same we need to make adjustments, both to ourselves and to society.
Does that go for every community or just the white community?
Was Rotherham Racist? Rochdale/Telford etc?
Was the verdict of the jury at the OJ Simpson murder trial racist?
The arguments of minority communities fail to gain traction partly because of the implicit assumption that is is all the fault of the white man - their community is perfect and does not need to be changed or reformed.
There is also the assumption that nothing has changed since the 1960s when that is a patently absurd assertion. Discrimination is a matter of law in Britain now, and hate speech illegal.
Yes of course it applies to every colour of human. Yes the child sex scandals in Rotherham and other places were clearly racist. No community (not a big fan of the term, as whilst many of the same colour bond together, the terms like BAME community doesnt represent reality very well and can be divisive) is perfect. It is obviously not all the fault of white men, racism exists between Chinese and Japanese for example.
Lots has changed since the 1960s, we are in a much better place in the UK, and the US is in a better place but miles behind where it should be.
If the UK were dissolved, it would help us to see the British Empire objectively as a historical phenomenon rather than something we have a knee-jerk tendency to defend.
The British Empire is the biggest straw man out there. Nobody venerates it uncritically or wants it back. Our conduct in places like India is indefensible and shameful. Africa too.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
A good point, but it does raise the next thought, how does one know? Maybe they like being in a colour-neutral forum. Edit: not that I would know or presume.
How do people on here think they know everyone's "colour".
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
Those opinion polls are bad for the Conservatives. Someone on here, I think it was the bluest of the blue, suggested that the whole Cummings story was a media storm in a teacup and that it was totally overblown. How wrong can you be?
I thought that the crossover might take 3 months. At this rate it will be within another month. That is a staggering seismic shift from the polls of the last few months when Johnson's tories regularly led by 20%, even by 26% as recently as the 20th April.
In all my years of watching politics I have never seen such a dramatic, sudden shift. Not even Black Wednesday.
And, for the record, I know plenty of people who are still talking about it, with anger and incredulity.
As own goals go, the Cummings saga beats everything.
Strange how quiet BluestBlue has gone since last night!
Perhaps getting a programming upgrade? I have heard that the new Troll v3.14 ™ software is very good and can give more nuanced responses
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Out of 457 friends and acquantainces on facebook, turns out I only know a grand total of 3 black people !
I had this conversation yesterday, a particularly vociferous BLM "friend" on facebook has 2 black "friends" on facebook out of 1100. And he occasionally says "all of my black friends".
Perhaps that's the reality, I know dozens of black/Asian people but I'm not sure how many of them are friends. Maybe 6?
You have inspired me to do a racial audit of my FB friends. 25% are BME.
Scottish independence rising as a political force rather than being destroyed by devolution is a matter of public record, and as is the increase in migration (notably by no transitional limits on new EU member states), with the desire to rub the right's face in diversity thereby revealed through leaks.
If you meant I was either too ambiguous or broad brush over the culture war comment then fair enough, that could've been more precise.
Your comment, "Labour's hiking of migration to rub the right's face in" is arrant nonsense.
It's softhead conspiracy theory nonsense to believe this was the driver of New Labour's immigration policy. It was merely a potential side benefit. The driver was the economy.
I'll give you a similar example from the other side to prove my objectivity (although this ought to be beyond doubt by now).
Thatcher selling off council houses. The reason for it was exactly as she said - because she believed owning your own home met a fundamental human aspiration. You get some of the more foamy people on the left saying she did it for cynical partisan benefit - to "rub the left's nose" in a bunch of new Tory voters (the nostrum being home owners vote Tory and council tenants vote Labour). Again, conspiracy theory tosh. That was just a side benefit.
Thatcher's housing policy was driven by a perceived need for more home ownership. Labour's immigration policy was driven by a perceived need for more workers.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
The one in Leicester was pretty diverse, if young.
Why is it that you want to delegitimise the protests this way? What is it about recognising structural racism that disturbs you?
I suppose because I'm not sure Britain is structurally racist. How can it be when some of the most powerful people in our country are immigrants of colour?
Or are you suggesting Sunak and Patel are the beneficiaries of tokenism?
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
Thanks Alastair for such a clear eyed summary of the British opium trade between India and China. For Scots like me who think the Union is long past its usefulness, it is a hard fact that Scots like Jardine and Matheson were right at the centre of the hard drugs trade and central to Hong Kong's commercial success. Scotland and England need to acknowledge this enormous historical plunder, which is the imperial legacy, before we can move on. Scotland is littered with stately homes which were built by homecoming colonial "traders" laundering their fortunes. The whole enterprise was built on the idea that black lives do not matter. We have forgotten this but much of the world has not.
Scottish independence rising as a political force rather than being destroyed by devolution is a matter of public record, and as is the increase in migration (notably by no transitional limits on new EU member states), with the desire to rub the right's face in diversity thereby revealed through leaks.
If you meant I was either too ambiguous or broad brush over the culture war comment then fair enough, that could've been more precise.
Your comment, "Labour's hiking of migration to rub the right's face in" is arrant nonsense.
It's softhead conspiracy theory nonsense to believe this was the driver of New Labour's immigration policy. It was merely a potential side benefit. The driver was the economy.
I'll give you a similar example from the other side to prove my objectivity (although this ought to be beyond doubt by now).
Thatcher selling off council houses. The reason for it was exactly as she said - because she believed owning your own home met a fundamental human aspiration. You get some of the more foamy people on the left saying she did it for cynical partisan benefit - to "rub the left's nose" in a new bunch of new Tory voters (the nostrum being home owners vote Tory and council tenants vote Labour). Again, conspiracy theory tosh. That was just a side benefit.
Thatcher's housing policy was driven by a perceived need for more home ownership. Labour's immigration policy was driven by a perceived need for more workers.
And only one of those policies has succeeded on these yardsticks (hint: not Thatcher's).
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
The one in Leicester was pretty diverse, if young.
Why is it that you want to delegitimise the protests this way? What is it about recognising structural racism that disturbs you?
I suppose because I'm not sure Britain is structurally racist. How can it be when some of the most powerful people in our country are immigrants of colour?
Or are you suggesting Sunak and Patel are the beneficiaries of tokenism?
If one of the Saudi princes moved to the States he would live a fantastic life, racism wouldnt really be an issue to him. If a Saudi labourer somehow got a green card, it would be completely different and racism would be a big part of his life.
Racism isnt a force that applies equally to everyone in a particular group, it co-exists with other parts of power, like wealth, education, gender, class.
Those opinion polls are bad for the Conservatives. Someone on here, I think it was the bluest of the blue, suggested that the whole Cummings story was a media storm in a teacup and that it was totally overblown. How wrong can you be?
I thought that the crossover might take 3 months. At this rate it will be within another month. That is a staggering seismic shift from the polls of the last few months when Johnson's tories regularly led by 20%, even by 26% as recently as the 20th April.
In all my years of watching politics I have never seen such a dramatic, sudden shift. Not even Black Wednesday.
And, for the record, I know plenty of people who are still talking about it, with anger and incredulity.
As own goals go, the Cummings saga beats everything.
Strange how quiet BluestBlue has gone since last night!
Maybe just having a lie-in. At one time I worked 5.5 days a week so my wife and I used to tell our (then) young children that on Sunday's we have a lie-in.
I think part of the British interest in Hong Kong was as a trading port for selling opium in return for Chinese tea. In South Africa of course most of the leaders pursuing Apartheid were Afrikaans of Dutch origin rather than British origin.
None of that excuses the crimes of the Empire but Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1999. Nobody is suggesting Hong Kong should return to British control, they just want China to respect the liberties and freedoms and democracy given to Hong Kongers under the 'one country, two systems' set out in the handover
Scottish independence rising as a political force rather than being destroyed by devolution is a matter of public record, and as is the increase in migration (notably by no transitional limits on new EU member states), with the desire to rub the right's face in diversity thereby revealed through leaks.
If you meant I was either too ambiguous or broad brush over the culture war comment then fair enough, that could've been more precise.
Your comment, "Labour's hiking of migration to rub the right's face in" is arrant nonsense.
It's softhead conspiracy theory nonsense to believe this was the driver of New Labour's immigration policy. It was merely a potential side benefit. The driver was the economy.
I'll give you a similar example from the other side to prove my objectivity (although this ought to be beyond doubt by now).
Thatcher selling off council houses. The reason for it was exactly as she said - because she believed owning your own home met a fundamental human aspiration. You get some of the more foamy people on the left saying she did it for cynical partisan benefit - to "rub the left's nose" in a bunch of new Tory voters (the nostrum being home owners vote Tory and council tenants vote Labour). Again, conspiracy theory tosh. That was just a side benefit.
Thatcher's housing policy was driven by a perceived need for more home ownership. Labour's immigration policy was driven by a perceived need for more workers.
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
Thatcher was right about home ownership. Blair was right about immigration. The problem was that not enough mitigation measures were put in place to limit the negative consequences of the policies.
I think part of the British interest in Hong Kong was as a trading port for selling opium in return for Chinese tea. In South Africa of course most of the leaders pursuing Apartheid were Afrikaans of Dutch origin rather than British origin.
None of that excuses the crimes of the Empire but Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1999. Nobody is suggesting Hong Kong should return to British control, they just want China to respect the liberties and freedoms and democracy given to Hong Kongers under the 'one country, two systems' set out in the handover
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Scottish independence rising as a political force rather than being destroyed by devolution is a matter of public record, and as is the increase in migration (notably by no transitional limits on new EU member states), with the desire to rub the right's face in diversity thereby revealed through leaks.
If you meant I was either too ambiguous or broad brush over the culture war comment then fair enough, that could've been more precise.
Your comment, "Labour's hiking of migration to rub the right's face in" is arrant nonsense.
It's softhead conspiracy theory nonsense to believe this was the driver of New Labour's immigration policy. It was merely a potential side benefit. The driver was the economy.
I'll give you a similar example from the other side to prove my objectivity (although this ought to be beyond doubt by now).
Thatcher selling off council houses. The reason for it was exactly as she said - because she believed owning your own home met a fundamental human aspiration. You get some of the more foamy people on the left saying she did it for cynical partisan benefit - to "rub the left's nose" in a new bunch of new Tory voters (the nostrum being home owners vote Tory and council tenants vote Labour). Again, conspiracy theory tosh. That was just a side benefit.
Thatcher's housing policy was driven by a perceived need for more home ownership. Labour's immigration policy was driven by a perceived need for more workers.
And only one of those policies has succeeded on these yardsticks (hint: not Thatcher's).
Are you sure? Home ownership rates only declined after Gordon "I will not let house prices get out of control" Brown was chancellor.
In terms of BAME above average deaths from Covid that is mainly a product of BAME people living in more densely populated urban areas than rural areas in the UK or being more likely to work in public transport or the NHS.
Africa and India actually have a far lower Covid death rate than the UK does
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
I've obviously not ignored the100+ a year Orange Walks in Glasgow enough. A couple more decades of blind eyes turned and deefies slung should sort it though.
Those opinion polls are bad for the Conservatives. Someone on here, I think it was the bluest of the blue, suggested that the whole Cummings story was a media storm in a teacup and that it was totally overblown. How wrong can you be?
I thought that the crossover might take 3 months. At this rate it will be within another month. That is a staggering seismic shift from the polls of the last few months when Johnson's tories regularly led by 20%, even by 26% as recently as the 20th April.
In all my years of watching politics I have never seen such a dramatic, sudden shift. Not even Black Wednesday.
And, for the record, I know plenty of people who are still talking about it, with anger and incredulity.
As own goals go, the Cummings saga beats everything.
Strange how quiet BluestBlue has gone since last night!
Perhaps getting a programming upgrade? I have heard that the new Troll v3.14 ™ software is very good and can give more nuanced responses
After the gloating after the YouGov 10 point lead (which incidentally now looks like at outlier) BluestBlue will be back to the old "polls don't matter, we won, suck it up losers" line of in-depth analysis shortlists.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
Though not anything like when I was a boy, thank goodness. Only the neanderthals left and natural selection will eventually take them out.
To go against my own advice not to focus on problems, let's focus on problematic issues for a minute.
Let us say that an outcome if the protests are successful is that police forces are measured on how many (or few) black individuals they stop - as I type this I am in utter disbelief that this could be 'a thing', and that an officer of the law would be urged by their superiors not to act on their suspicions, but it seems depressingly likely.
This means perpetrators of crime who are black, have an advantage over their white counterparts, and where it is taken to extremes, can operate above the law. This artificially inflates criminality in this community - how many of us would turn to crime if there was no punishment?
This is genuine grist to the mill of right wing social media, who can point to real injustice on the part of the police. Even the right-thinking amongst us would get a gnawing suspicion that this widespread criminality was somehow 'cultural'.
Where that would end, I don't know, but I don't think it ends very nicely. Anyone who doesn't think this story is realistic, needs to look at the grooming gangs of Bradford etc.
But their suspicions are biased by human nature, hundreds of academically controlled tests can prove trivially that humans have subconscious racial profiling.
So what you are really saying is lets carry on with policing biased with subconscious racial profiling.
I wonder if it will now be followed by a bunch of almost exclusively male pale & stale posters seeking in their different ways - some by absurdly reductive simplification, some by convoluted whataboutery, some by outright head-in-sand denial - to downplay or deny the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism?
I'd want 1.01 on Betfair before I lumped on that possibility.
Nice example of the toxic nature of the debate, which makes it hard for lots of people to join in.
I just watched the BBC press review where they were talking about staff shortages in the NHS. How completely misinformed are they ? For info Winchester hospital is down to 2 Covid patients.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
There's plenty of people in the US and the UK who until recently have never had to deal with not getting their way, politically or socially. When it happened, they have not coped well.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Do you think there should be a 'cull' to even things up?
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
Bev, I would add that there is enough crap in UK to be looked at without worrying about things on other side of the world. Lots of people too busy trying to make it through the month to be worrying about far away things. It is left to the rich hand wringing woke halfwits with too much time and money on their hands to take it up as their latest save the planet cause. They cannot jet across the world at present so need things to distract them, just a pity they are very picky about what they protest about , ie selling bombs to Saudi's so they can obliterate Yemeni children is not as popular as some other topics.
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
Is there much point in the UK leading on the Uighurs? On balance, I dont think there is in the present global climate, there was previously in the early 2000s but without international consensus and strong multi national organisations. How many people know the names of Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki Moon but are unable to tell you the current head of the UN?
The pragmatic way to aid minorities treated badly in the world is to first strengthen our planets multi national organisations which are under attack from the nationalist right.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Out of 457 friends and acquantainces on facebook, turns out I only know a grand total of 3 black people !
Whilst I have known and worked with many Asians I have only ever worked with three of black origin.
Unless you are in charge of hiring, that is hardly your fault.
I work in one of the most diverse employers in one of Britain's most diverse cities, and have done so for 30 years.
Even so, I get my eyes opened every now and again, including a conversation that I had with a Leicester born friend of Antiguan origin. I asked her about the Windrush scandal, and she told me several stories about family and friends of hers who had been deported, or refused re entry after travelling to visit. It was an educative experience.
I had an interesting conversation with her recently about her Church. She is a Moravian, and I wondered what the link to Bohemia was. My own ancestors include some Presbyterian Abolitionist Activists, but it gradually dawned on me that they lost interest in West Indians after abolition, while the Moravian missionaries did not. The difference between theory and practice, I suppose.
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
True.
But much as I deplore the killing of George Floyd I do not feel the need to protest about it here. There are plenty of people taking action in the US, the police officers have now been charged etc as a result of those protests in the US and nothing said here will affect this one iota. It feels self-indulgent.
The issue of Covid-19 and its impact on ethnic minorities is a real issue here, which does need to be looked properly and addressed. I can’t help feeling that having a lot of people packed together shouting themselves hoarse has the potential to make that issue a whole lot worse. The stupid comment by Dawn Butler that people who put themselves at risk by behaving in such a silly way should not be held responsible for their actions makes one despair.
Those opinion polls are bad for the Conservatives. Someone on here, I think it was the bluest of the blue, suggested that the whole Cummings story was a media storm in a teacup and that it was totally overblown. How wrong can you be?
I thought that the crossover might take 3 months. At this rate it will be within another month. That is a staggering seismic shift from the polls of the last few months when Johnson's tories regularly led by 20%, even by 26% as recently as the 20th April.
In all my years of watching politics I have never seen such a dramatic, sudden shift. Not even Black Wednesday.
And, for the record, I know plenty of people who are still talking about it, with anger and incredulity.
As own goals go, the Cummings saga beats everything.
Strange how quiet BluestBlue has gone since last night!
Perhaps getting a programming upgrade? I have heard that the new Troll v3.14 ™ software is very good and can give more nuanced responses
After the gloating after the YouGov 10 point lead (which incidentally now looks like at outlier) BluestBlue will be back to the old "polls don't matter, we won, suck it up losers" line of in-depth analysis shortlists.
We shall see. I tend not to engage with the more fanatical PB Tories since whatever anyone says to them appears to be utterly irrelevant to the reply.
I have this feeling that if Party Policy was to publicly flog leading activists they would be on here telling us how they were looking forward to a day in the fresh air and good flogging increases blood pressure and clears the arteries, jolly good for one's health....
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Do you think there should be a 'cull' to even things up?
Or some blokes could start re-alligning their gender. Let's have a big fight about the pb.com loos....
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
I've obviously not ignored the100+ a year Orange Walks in Glasgow enough. A couple more decades of blind eyes turned and deefies slung should sort it though.
Your solution when Catholics and Protestants had been killing each other in their hundreds within living memory would have been to focus on it more. What actually happened was that people's focus shifted, toward making the most of the new opportunities that the 18th century offered. The vestiges that still exist can be troubling (although uniforms and symbols only have the power that we ascribe to them), but again, even they will pass as focus shifts. And quite frankly, no, you haven't ignored it enough.
I hope that Northern Ireland remains within the UK, and my best hope for it, now that its immediate political future will be as a halfway house between UK and EU, is that it sees a new influx of commerce, and this becomes more important than its sectarian divisions.
If the UK were dissolved, it would help us to see the British Empire objectively as a historical phenomenon rather than something we have a knee-jerk tendency to defend.
The British Empire is the biggest straw man out there. Nobody venerates it uncritically or wants it back. Our conduct in places like India is indefensible and shameful. Africa too.
Actually over 25% of British voters would still like an Empire, including 40% of Leave voters.
In terms of BAME above average deaths from Covid that is mainly a product of BAME people living in more densely populated urban areas than rural areas in the UK or being more likely to work in public transport or the NHS.
You may well be right, I suspect so too, but we might know so if your government had put any effort at all into its review of the matter, which took several weeks to merely identify the same data that led to the review happening in the first place.
How could they possibly have done a review without looking into factors like where people live, or what jobs they hold?
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
I've obviously not ignored the100+ a year Orange Walks in Glasgow enough. A couple more decades of blind eyes turned and deefies slung should sort it though.
Your solution when Catholics and Protestants had been killing each other in their hundreds within living memory would have been to focus on it more. What actually happened was that people's focus shifted, toward making the most of the new opportunities that the 18th century offered. The vestiges that still exist can be troubling (although uniforms and symbols only have the power that we ascribe to them), but again, even they will pass as focus shifts. And quite frankly, no, you haven't ignored it enough.
I hope that Northern Ireland remains within the UK, and my best hope for it, now that its immediate political future will be as a halfway house between UK and EU, is that it sees a new influx of commerce, and this becomes more important than its sectarian divisions.
Like Scotland it is a certainty that it will go , only a case of when.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Of course it massively impacts the discussions, I sometimes read mumsnet for a different perspective, and it is completely different.
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
Is there much point in the UK leading on the Uighurs? On balance, I dont think there is in the present global climate, there was previously in the early 2000s but without international consensus and strong multi national organisations. How many people know the names of Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki Moon but are unable to tell you the current head of the UN?
The pragmatic way to aid minorities treated badly in the world is to first strengthen our planets multi national organisations which are under attack from the nationalist right.
I’m not sure that is necessarily going to work. The British did raise the Uighur issue at the UN and only 22 countries supported it. Many other countries, including Muslim countries and those in bed with China, did not. UN human rights bodies are stuffed full of countries which wouldn’t know the concept of human rights if it bit them in the arse - Syria, Saudi Arabia etc.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
There's plenty of people in the US and the UK who until recently have never had to deal with not getting their way, politically or socially. When it happened, they have not coped well.
Having seen approximately 30 years of non-Conservative governments in the last 75 years your comment is beyond parody.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
The one in Leicester was pretty diverse, if young.
Why is it that you want to delegitimise the protests this way? What is it about recognising structural racism that disturbs you?
I suppose because I'm not sure Britain is structurally racist. How can it be when some of the most powerful people in our country are immigrants of colour?
Or are you suggesting Sunak and Patel are the beneficiaries of tokenism?
They are exceptions not the norm, it’s interesting that successful conservative politicians of color are praised whilst their equivalents in the Labour Party are derided and often abused.
I wonder if it will now be followed by a bunch of almost exclusively male pale & stale posters seeking in their different ways - some by absurdly reductive simplification, some by convoluted whataboutery, some by outright head-in-sand denial - to downplay or deny the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism?
I'd want 1.01 on Betfair before I lumped on that possibility.
Another example of the sort of mindless brain-dead comments articles like this bring out.
Another idiot.
Mmm. And yet I was able to predict with uncanny accuracy that several posters would "seek to deny or downplay the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism" - and also how they would go about this (on the face of it impossible) task.
I see you went for the "convoluted whataboutery" option in your effort. Good call. It has a patina of respectability and diligence to it.
But how was I able to do this, do you think? And aren't you a teeny bit jealous?
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Do you think there should be a 'cull' to even things up?
Or some blokes could start re-alligning their gender. Let's have a big fight about the pb.com loos....
How many trans people have you actually met in your life? And gone out to dinner with or the pub?
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
I've obviously not ignored the100+ a year Orange Walks in Glasgow enough. A couple more decades of blind eyes turned and deefies slung should sort it though.
Your solution when Catholics and Protestants had been killing each other in their hundreds within living memory would have been to focus on it more. What actually happened was that people's focus shifted, toward making the most of the new opportunities that the 18th century offered. The vestiges that still exist can be troubling (although uniforms and symbols only have the power that we ascribe to them), but again, even they will pass as focus shifts. And quite frankly, no, you haven't ignored it enough.
I hope that Northern Ireland remains within the UK, and my best hope for it, now that its immediate political future will be as a halfway house between UK and EU, is that it sees a new influx of commerce, and this becomes more important than its sectarian divisions.
Like Scotland it is a certainty that it will go , only a case of when.
Far from it, only 29% of Northern Irish voters want a United Ireland now
To go against my own advice not to focus on problems, let's focus on problematic issues for a minute.
Let us say that an outcome if the protests are successful is that police forces are measured on how many (or few) black individuals they stop - as I type this I am in utter disbelief that this could be 'a thing', and that an officer of the law would be urged by their superiors not to act on their suspicions, but it seems depressingly likely.
This means perpetrators of crime who are black, have an advantage over their white counterparts, and where it is taken to extremes, can operate above the law. This artificially inflates criminality in this community - how many of us would turn to crime if there was no punishment?
This is genuine grist to the mill of right wing social media, who can point to real injustice on the part of the police. Even the right-thinking amongst us would get a gnawing suspicion that this widespread criminality was somehow 'cultural'.
Where that would end, I don't know, but I don't think it ends very nicely. Anyone who doesn't think this story is realistic, needs to look at the grooming gangs of Bradford etc.
But their suspicions are biased by human nature, hundreds of academically controlled tests can prove trivially that humans have subconscious racial profiling.
So what you are really saying is lets carry on with policing biased with subconscious racial profiling.
I'm not convinced this is significant in the case of police. I suspect that an *extremely* small minority are actively racist, and the remainder are going on past experiences informing their judgement. I'm open to it however.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
To pick up your point I've just watched a video of protestors shaming Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not defunding the police and lettng anarchy loose on the streets of his city.
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
There's plenty of people in the US and the UK who until recently have never had to deal with not getting their way, politically or socially. When it happened, they have not coped well.
Having seen approximately 30 years of non-Conservative governments in the last 75 years your comment is beyond parody.
He is talking more about social liberals than economic liberals
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Do you think there should be a 'cull' to even things up?
No. I just note it. I am sure you can all work out for yourselves that maybe, just maybe, this might mean that you have a particular perspective on topics and, just possibly, less understanding of the female perspective, as exemplified by the joky reference by another poster to “PB loos”.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
It does for sure. But I think there are a few more women than you've named there.
Won't start listing in case I have some wrong but I think it's in double digits.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Yes, that is a very valid point, though of course we do not know everyone ethnicity.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
And Plato pbuh.
I do not know the ethnicity of most of the people posting on here. But the overwhelming majority are male. There are very very few women: me, @Beibheirli_C, @Mysticrose and @The_Apocalypse (though she has not been on for a while).
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Of course it massively impacts the discussions, I sometimes read mumsnet for a different perspective, and it is completely different.
I admire you. I tried it a few times and found it unbearable, like being trapped outside the school gates by a certain type of “Mummy”.
Interesting thread Mr Meeks - I agree that the Empire’s history is complex and poorly taught - and so too are some of the simplistic explanations of its crimes. Many independence movements created their own “national myths” of virtuous opposition to British venality. And there too, the history is far more complex than “Us good, them bad.” Any study of imperialism should surely take in not our own, but others.
Imperialism is certainly not just a white thing. Many of the powers that Europeans defeated were aggressively imperialistic in their own right.
The Japanese actions in China and South Korea up until the 1940s were definitely racist. And what are the actions of the CCP towards the Uighur Muslims today?
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
I agree with you strongly about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims. You will recall my header about it last December, on the back of a Panorama programme. But Uighurs do not have a voice here or anyone to speak up for them - any more than the poor Yazidis too - so we forget about them, if we ever think about them at all.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
Add a third reason - laziness. Why protest about it? Very few of us know Uighurs or Yazidis so there is no personal element for most people and they often have too many problems in their own life to worry about strangers they will never meet on the other side of the planet.
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
Is there much point in the UK leading on the Uighurs? On balance, I dont think there is in the present global climate, there was previously in the early 2000s but without international consensus and strong multi national organisations. How many people know the names of Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki Moon but are unable to tell you the current head of the UN?
The pragmatic way to aid minorities treated badly in the world is to first strengthen our planets multi national organisations which are under attack from the nationalist right.
I’m not sure that is necessarily going to work. The British did raise the Uighur issue at the UN and only 22 countries supported it. Many other countries, including Muslim countries and those in bed with China, did not. UN human rights bodies are stuffed full of countries which wouldn’t know the concept of human rights if it bit them in the arse - Syria, Saudi Arabia etc.
How do you think the British PM shouting about it is going to work? It certainly doesnt meet that test of "necessarily going to work" either.
Yes, the UN (and our other big multilateral bodies) are dysfunctional, divided and weak. I am suggesting working to strengthen them. The idea that a country of 65m people from the other side of the planet can tell another with 1400m people how to govern is quite strange. We need strength in numbers to make any difference.
It almost certainly wont work straight away, and will take generations to do so, but eventually there will be common global standards of decent government.
In terms of BAME above average deaths from Covid that is mainly a product of BAME people living in more densely populated urban areas than rural areas in the UK or being more likely to work in public transport or the NHS.
You may well be right, I suspect so too, but we might know so if your government had put any effort at all into its review of the matter, which took several weeks to merely identify the same data that led to the review happening in the first place.
How could they possibly have done a review without looking into factors like where people live, or what jobs they hold?
This aspect is certainly one of the topics which a public inquiry should address.
Mr. Above, I fear that's more optimistic than realistic.
Relative power is shifting China's way, and they have little regard for democracy or free will.
Hong Kong and Taiwan do show that a better way is possible, theoretically, but Hong Kong's about the be strangled and Taiwan may face a military threat in the near future.
Since 'whitesplaining' is clearly being frowned upon, here's some blacksplaining from Dr Martin Luther King: 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' Until we see skin colour as entirely incidental, we won't have learned this lesson. Sadly efforts to do so are hampered by well-meaning attempts like the one above to sympathise and understand, and perhaps somehow mitigate the circumstances, of not being white.
As for the atrocities of the past, which we can do little to change, we might do better to concentrate on the atrocities of now. In Nigeria for example, 600 black Christians have been killed since the beginning of 2020 - victims of persecution by Jihadist groups. I might be missing them, but I don't see the mass protests demanding we do something about this. The African continent is utterly forgotten in all this, and if I were a Nigerian Christian, I would be feeling quite angry about the whole BLM movement, which in Britain at any rate, is seems to be toxically self-indulgent and obsessed with trivialities.
My grandson’s black grandmother gets called a nigger in the street. She has been spat on, solely because of the colour of her skin. These are not trivialities.
Disgusting behaviour like that is not going to be affected one jot by divisive protests during the current lockdown. Indeed I suspect they give succour to racist groups.
The cohesiveness of society is strengthened when we focus on what we have in common, not our differences.
Black people in the UK experience prejudice that only they experience. We could all unite to understand that. This could help strengthen cohesion.
I would prefer to eradicate it, to render it utterly irrelevant, a silly relic of the past. And that is going to happen when we all turn our attention from it, toward other things, and move on from it. It can not be solved not by relentless focus on it, which can do no more than make people feel temporarily appeased.
You think you defeat racism by ignoring it.
That is certainly a take.
What other problems can you defeat by ignoring them? Fascism? Boulders rolling down hills? Gravity?
Sectarianism would be a good example. Daniel Defoe 'There is no Protestant or Catholic in a good bargain' - Sectarianism was all but eradicated in swathes of Britain and lessened where it still exists, because people became more interested in commerce.
Still alive and kicking in west of Scotland unfortunately.
So I understand.
I've obviously not ignored the100+ a year Orange Walks in Glasgow enough. A couple more decades of blind eyes turned and deefies slung should sort it though.
Your solution when Catholics and Protestants had been killing each other in their hundreds within living memory would have been to focus on it more. What actually happened was that people's focus shifted, toward making the most of the new opportunities that the 18th century offered. The vestiges that still exist can be troubling (although uniforms and symbols only have the power that we ascribe to them), but again, even they will pass as focus shifts. And quite frankly, no, you haven't ignored it enough.
I hope that Northern Ireland remains within the UK, and my best hope for it, now that its immediate political future will be as a halfway house between UK and EU, is that it sees a new influx of commerce, and this becomes more important than its sectarian divisions.
Like Scotland it is a certainty that it will go , only a case of when.
So you say Malcolm, but I disagree - and despite the quarrels we're beset with, I see a wonderful future ahead for our country.
One of the things I find revealing about PB discussions on racism is that it seems there aren't any black people posting here
Out of 457 friends and acquantainces on facebook, turns out I only know a grand total of 3 black people !
Whilst I have known and worked with many Asians I have only ever worked with three of black origin.
I was once engaged as a consultant by an Indian software house to manage a team here in the UK. They were from various Indian cities and we had a blast. Their favourite night out was at Harry Ramsdens or anywhere they could get their hands on traditional Fish 'n' Chips.
If the UK were dissolved, it would help us to see the British Empire objectively as a historical phenomenon rather than something we have a knee-jerk tendency to defend.
The British Empire is the biggest straw man out there. Nobody venerates it uncritically or wants it back. Our conduct in places like India is indefensible and shameful. Africa too.
Actually over 25% of British voters would still like an Empire, including 40% of Leave voters.
60% of Jamaicans think they'd be better off in the Empire, apparently.
I've heard Irishmen, Indians, Hong Kongers and even Americans say similar things, usually out of frustration at their current government. And I've talked to South Americans and Filipinos who wished they had been colonised by the British rather than the Spanish.
Comments
The "civilising mission" of the British Empire, such as it was to develop, educate and improve colonies, developed during the 19th Century as parliamentary democracy became established and debate more widespread - so you can't just pick a few points in time to establish your case. Hong Kong ended up becoming a place of refuge for many Chinese dissidents during the civil war and communist clampdowns that killed 40 million or more lives. So much so that common law and a free press is fiercely defended now by those of a Han ethnicity . I don't see how Britain is responsible for the CCP, but perhaps someone can enlighten me,
In South Africa, it was the Afrikaner ethnic National Party that imposed
apartheid and wouldn't give it up until the 1980s, and they were descendent
of Dutch colonists - not the British. And whilst the UK was responsible for the
USA up until 1776 (or 1783 and the peace treaty, if you will) the slave trade was abolished by the UK thereafter and after American independence, whereafter the US was solely responsible for its own affairs. There's examples of ignorance in this article here as well.
I'm not sure this slaveowner and streets thing is correct either - especially
given so many vandalised the statue of Abraham Lincoln in London (who abolished slavery) - because they didn't know who he was.
There are issues of disadvantage for black people (and I think it is worse for
black people, and not all ethnic minorities - Chinese and Indian people do far
better) and I don't like the football and rap thing either. But let's keep a sense of proportion.
I'm afraid this is as one-sided as those who profess that our history is entirely rosey, and there is no issue with policing or racism at allwhatosever, and badly let down by racist words like "whitesplaining",and I sense born of an own self-loathing of his own country.
A disappointing article.
Ms @The_Apocalypse is dual heritage I believe, but I havent seen her for a few weeks.
I say that as someone who quite likes Frank and I don't oppose his nomination. But either all party leaders should be able to nominate people outside their parties or none should.
I wonder if it will now be followed by a bunch of almost exclusively male pale & stale posters seeking in their different ways - some by absurdly reductive simplification, some by convoluted whataboutery, some by outright head-in-sand denial - to downplay or deny the enduring racist legacy of our colonialism?
I'd want 1.01 on Betfair before I lumped on that possibility.
It has also served to tease some of the "I'm not racist, but..." jockeys out too.
Your solution is doomed to failure for that reason, if we all do nothing consciously and pay it no attention, our biology will encourage us to treat different groups differently. To be serious about treating them the same we need to make adjustments, both to ourselves and to society.
I'd have more time for those who criticise something Britain did or didn't do (far too late, in their eyes) 200 years ago if they would also focus on the injustices and instances of real racism and slavery today.
There's something, ironically, very inward looking and self-obsessive about this movement as if it's what happens and has happened in Britain and the West alone that matters, and incidents everywhere else are excusable for "understandable reasons".
That protest looks pretty white to me (though the masking admittedly makes it more difficult to tell).
Are these protests being hi-jacked by comfortably off middle class white liberals who still can't believe America voted for Trump or Britain voted to leave the EU?
The points Alastair makes about what it is like to live in a world made and dominated by others could equally be made with just as much force by women, who have endured all sorts of injustices and violence and harassment and dismissal of their concerns, fears etc - and still do - from men, of all types. This is far wider than the Me Too Movement. Life is certainly better for women now than it was when I was growing up, as it is for ethnic minorities or gay people. But that is no reason to pretend that serious issues still do not exist and need to be addressed.
What worries me about the BLM movement is that I do not hear any practical proposals being put forward. Changing the name of a road or college or removing a statue strikes me as patronising. A gesture which does nothing to aid understanding of history and nothing practical to help those being discriminated against.
There's stuff like Billy Kay's BBC series 'Scotland's Black History' and this
https://www.nls.uk/collections/topics/slavery
Let us say that an outcome if the protests are successful is that police forces are measured on how many (or few) black individuals they stop - as I type this I am in utter disbelief that this could be 'a thing', and that an officer of the law would be urged by their superiors not to act on their suspicions, but it seems depressingly likely.
This means perpetrators of crime who are black, have an advantage over their white counterparts, and where it is taken to extremes, can operate above the law. This artificially inflates criminality in this community - how many of us would turn to crime if there was no punishment?
This is genuine grist to the mill of right wing social media, who can point to real injustice on the part of the police. Even the right-thinking amongst us would get a gnawing suspicion that this widespread criminality was somehow 'cultural'.
Where that would end, I don't know, but I don't think it ends very nicely. Anyone who doesn't think this story is realistic, needs to look at the grooming gangs of Bradford etc.
I am starting to get very concerned that the main real effect of these riots and protests will worsen race relations, not improve them.
This is because the language of racism (white people are culpable) is being used as a tool of anti-racism, including in this article.
I don't want a world where my 18-month daughter has to grow up feeling guilty and responsible, and perhaps worse, just because of the colour of her skin.
This will affect all of us so I will continue to call it out when people (lazily) adopt some language in a desperate attempt to demonstrate understanding and empathy.
Am I doing it right?
Perhaps that's the reality, I know dozens of black/Asian people but I'm not sure how many of them are friends. Maybe 6?
Was Rotherham Racist? Rochdale/Telford etc?
Was the verdict of the jury at the OJ Simpson murder trial racist?
The arguments of minority communities fail to gain traction partly because of the implicit assumption that is is all the fault of the white man - their community is perfect and does not need to be changed or reformed.
There is also the assumption that nothing has changed since the 1960s when that is a patently absurd assertion. Discrimination is a matter of law in Britain now, and hate speech illegal.
Idiot.
Having said that, I would be more impressed if the biggest cities in the former confederate states made the change.
Why is it that you want to delegitimise the protests this way? What is it about recognising structural racism that disturbs you?
It's entirely cosmetic, pointless and risks undermining the very serious issues it seeks to fix by making it a point of ridicule.
Another idiot.
Lots has changed since the 1960s, we are in a much better place in the UK, and the US is in a better place but miles behind where it should be.
None taken.
Just read the contents of some of the earlier posts.some of the comments are startlingly unpleasant and crass.
I think there are two main reasons, one good, one bad, for why the West beats itself up.
One - it has a culture at some deep level infused with Christian concepts of “guilt”. Couple that with a belief that it is or still should be “top dog” plus an inclination to deny moral agency to others, itself possibly a remnant of a racist belief that others are “lesser people”, and it is easy to see how the West can hold itself responsible for everything.
Added to that is an expectation that we should be better than we are, that we are falling below the high standards we set ourselves. This is particularly true for the US with the Declaration of Independence which sets an admirable standard and a gap between what it says and how the country has treated its black population.
The second is that we don’t protest about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs or other injustices perpetrated by Russians or other dictators because we are afraid, we wan’t to curry favour with them or we know they won’t care. It is a form of actual and moral cowardice. So we turn our ire on democratic leaders who are much more likely to listen or be shamed into changing their behaviour.
I'll give you a similar example from the other side to prove my objectivity (although this ought to be beyond doubt by now).
Thatcher selling off council houses. The reason for it was exactly as she said - because she believed owning your own home met a fundamental human aspiration. You get some of the more foamy people on the left saying she did it for cynical partisan benefit - to "rub the left's nose" in a bunch of new Tory voters (the nostrum being home owners vote Tory and council tenants vote Labour). Again, conspiracy theory tosh. That was just a side benefit.
Thatcher's housing policy was driven by a perceived need for more home ownership. Labour's immigration policy was driven by a perceived need for more workers.
Or are you suggesting Sunak and Patel are the beneficiaries of tokenism?
Racism isnt a force that applies equally to everyone in a particular group, it co-exists with other parts of power, like wealth, education, gender, class.
None of that excuses the crimes of the Empire but Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1999. Nobody is suggesting Hong Kong should return to British control, they just want China to respect the liberties and freedoms and democracy given to Hong Kongers under the 'one country, two systems' set out in the handover
I am not saying that is how it should be, but currently, that is how it is.
It is why we need govts to lead on such issues.
Curious. Maybe this affects the perspectives and discussions on here?
Africa and India actually have a far lower Covid death rate than the UK does
So what you are really saying is lets carry on with policing biased with subconscious racial profiling.
The pragmatic way to aid minorities treated badly in the world is to first strengthen our planets multi national organisations which are under attack from the nationalist right.
I work in one of the most diverse employers in one of Britain's most diverse cities, and have done so for 30 years.
Even so, I get my eyes opened every now and again, including a conversation that I had with a Leicester born friend of Antiguan origin. I asked her about the Windrush scandal, and she told me several stories about family and friends of hers who had been deported, or refused re entry after travelling to visit. It was an educative experience.
I had an interesting conversation with her recently about her Church. She is a Moravian, and I wondered what the link to Bohemia was. My own ancestors include some Presbyterian Abolitionist Activists, but it gradually dawned on me that they lost interest in West Indians after abolition, while the Moravian missionaries did not. The difference between theory and practice, I suppose.
But much as I deplore the killing of George Floyd I do not feel the need to protest about it here. There are plenty of people taking action in the US, the police officers have now been charged etc as a result of those protests in the US and nothing said here will affect this one iota. It feels self-indulgent.
The issue of Covid-19 and its impact on ethnic minorities is a real issue here, which does need to be looked properly and addressed. I can’t help feeling that having a lot of people packed together shouting themselves hoarse has the potential to make that issue a whole lot worse. The stupid comment by Dawn Butler that people who put themselves at risk by behaving in such a silly way should not be held responsible for their actions makes one despair.
I have this feeling that if Party Policy was to publicly flog leading activists they would be on here telling us how they were looking forward to a day in the fresh air and good flogging increases blood pressure and clears the arteries, jolly good for one's health....
I hope that Northern Ireland remains within the UK, and my best hope for it, now that its immediate political future will be as a halfway house between UK and EU, is that it sees a new influx of commerce, and this becomes more important than its sectarian divisions.
32% also think the Empire did more good overall.
A minority but a sizeable one
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-empire-colonialism-slavery-yougov-poll-nationalism-brexit-a9393486.html
How could they possibly have done a review without looking into factors like where people live, or what jobs they hold?
I see you went for the "convoluted whataboutery" option in your effort. Good call. It has a patina of respectability and diligence to it.
But how was I able to do this, do you think? And aren't you a teeny bit jealous?
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nireland-poll/poll-shows-northern-ireland-majority-against-united-ireland-idUKKBN20C0WF
Won't start listing in case I have some wrong but I think it's in double digits.
Yes, the UN (and our other big multilateral bodies) are dysfunctional, divided and weak. I am suggesting working to strengthen them. The idea that a country of 65m people from the other side of the planet can tell another with 1400m people how to govern is quite strange. We need strength in numbers to make any difference.
It almost certainly wont work straight away, and will take generations to do so, but eventually there will be common global standards of decent government.
"I think we should just ignore this and it will all go away"
Relative power is shifting China's way, and they have little regard for democracy or free will.
Hong Kong and Taiwan do show that a better way is possible, theoretically, but Hong Kong's about the be strangled and Taiwan may face a military threat in the near future.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13952592
I've heard Irishmen, Indians, Hong Kongers and even Americans say similar things, usually out of frustration at their current government. And I've talked to South Americans and Filipinos who wished they had been colonised by the British rather than the Spanish.