Well, if we stop talking, we'll never sort things out. I find this article just as prejudiced and blind as the white people it criticizes. I am not defensive, not insensitive and not unimaginative. I recognise a problem and I want to sort it out but I don't expect miracles overnight and I am sure that angry denials on either side are counterproductive. Change is hard. It comes slowly. We all need to bear that in mind.
That's sort of missing the point of the article. I recognise the tendencies the author points out to be honest, including in myself. You see similar responses in men when feminists bring up issues that go beyond obvious and direct discrimination of women. (I can definitely hold my hand up for doing that, as well!)
It's an unfortunate human tendency and everyone is a little bit prone to it at times. "If I accept this argument then it's an implied criticism of me, and I might have to challenge some of my assumptions, and that might be uncomfortable or even lead to me having to change my behaviour. Therefore I will simply not listen to what you are saying!"
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
No, emphatically, I have NOT missed the point. I cannot say whether I am guilty of the responses suggested but I know that if I am, refusing to talk about them won't help. I am very accustomed to examining my conscience and I do not back away from or deny my faults but if I don't know they are there, I cannot correct them.
It was reported that Marcus Rashford's mural was defaced with racist graffiti and that the police were treating it as a racist crime. Most of the media seem to be presenting it in this way but I haven't been able to find any evidence of racist words being used to deface it. Maybe I'm wrong? Is one idiot with a spray can evidence of systematic racism in English football or in England as a whole? The Tour de France has a team of workers who spend their days covering up graffiti https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/how-the-tour-de-france-disguises-the-phallic-artwork-on-its-route/ Foreign media especially is presenting the situation to be worse than it is and I've seen a lot of posts from Americans who thought the whole crowd were chanting racist insults rather than the true number. The media is describing a 'torrent of racist abuse' via social media but doesn't back that up with any kind of evidence of numbers. Only a very few outlets seem to cite that Twitter deleted around 1000 messages that were deemed to be against their TOS. Out of over 18 million UK twitter accounts does that seem like a torrent of racist abuse? I imagine there was a lot more abuse than that but you can't say it's racist just because the target was black.
Marcus Rashford’s mural was defaced and the police are treating it as a hate crime - as racist graffiti.
I find it very strange that you invest your energy into questioning whether the graffiti was racist.
Just so we're clear by the way; You literally asked me to look for evidence that the media were exaggerating the amount of racism involved in this current situation. I've provided evidence and you're shouting me down again for being too white to understand.
I'm curious how you feel that this attitude helps the debate in any way? You've been twisting my words and trying to turn me from someone who is supporting stamping out racism into someone who is as bad as the racists.
In my opinion, implying racism in all situations that involve abuse of BAME people waters down the true acts of racism and leads more towards the experiences talked about in the opinion piece you quoted. If the words written on the mural were written on a white person's picture it would just be petty vandalism. If the person who wrote them on Rashford's mural was black then it's just petty vandalism. Calling it racist because Rashford is black doesn't make it true. Rashford is a hero in the eyes of the majority of British people right now. The country is so proud of him and he doesn't deserve abuse of any kind, but one person spray painting a penis and some swear words onto his mural is not symbolic of systemic racism, it's evidence that the vandal is a moron and nothing more.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The article @Mariam_86 links to is fascinating (I have read it several times previously) but it's important to understand the context in which it's written ... the background of the writer and the exasperation which gave rise to it.
If you read the first few sentences of the article Mariam linked to you will see this
"... Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. ..." In my readings of the article I believe that in the title of the piece the writer has used the phrase 'white people' knowingly ... just as, time after time people of colour are referred to/seen as a single entity, with one view, one experience, one character, one history etc etc etc ...
Some 'white people' have responded to the article as if it was referring to them personally ... because that's what it feels like, doesn't it? An instance of the shoe on the other foot for once perhaps?
Humans tend to learn from their own experience ... seeing the racism in other people's experiences is much harder, until it gets closer to home.
I see racism in the UK from a particular point of view ... that of an educated rural middle class white woman from a farming family, with children who have married partners from different ethnicities and in once case a different religion too. Back then, like many people, I too thought that, with the exception of a few nasty right wing extremists, the race problem in the UK was more or less sorted out ......... and then the experiences of my son in law and daughter in law and their families became part of my experience too ... and I tried to make sense of it ... and then began to understand its deep rootedness in Great Britain ... and what has become more and more apparent to me is that racism is deeply embedded in both sides of the class issue ... and because of that it is exhibited differently by people from different classes and different educations.
I remember reading somewhere many years ago that the Queen Mother 'treated the duke and the dustman as if* they were both the same.' ....... What that says about the QM is one thing ... but consider what it says about the writer! (*my italics)
Racism isn't just the vile abuse that our footballers experience ... other people ... my daughter and step-grand daughter and her father experience this too ... and while no one I know would ever say or write such things, unless they stand up and say 'it's unacceptable and I am prepared to lend my voice to try to put an end to it', then they are saying it's acceptable.
You wouldn't stand by and do nothing if someone was beating a dog in the street ... the support for rescue battery chickens, rescue dogs from the Middle East, rescue this that and the other are part of British culture .............. but when my daughter and her stepdaughter are abused in the street people turn their heads and look away ...
The article makes a lot of valid points .... Jonathan Swift put it more succinctly ... "There's none so blind as those who will not see."
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I just find it interesting that in this discussion white people are deciding if its better, worse, etc and when the minority voices speak they are getting disagreement and quite ironically, the majority getting offended for the existence of racism. Personally I think I'd take the opinion of the lived experience over wishful thinking.
Well, I grew up in the 'No blacks, no Irish and no dogs' era. Every face, doctor, teacher, politician, vicar, boss , TV and radio presenter, actor, comedian. They were white and mostly male. My neighbour had a little terrier called what is now the n word. I didn't mean to tell people who experience prejudice how it feels but surely it is better now? Am I incapable of observation because I am white? And please, let's hear it from those who are not white. We need to know what they experience and we can't if they won't speak.
There is much more diversity on tv nowadays, that's very true ... but every time a black person gets a high profile job there's someone, somewhere alleging that it's down to 'political correctness' ... the BBC ticking the diversity box or whatever ... that person couldn't possible have achieved that position unless they were part of a quota ... you just have to read the Daily Mail and the readers' comments following articles about the appointment of a black judge or whatever, and then remember that it is the highest selling newspaper in this country.
As my black son in law says ... the racists are just much better at hiding it nowadays, except in places where they feel safe to reveal their true nature ... and football and the internet are two of those places.
I really don't think the majority of people in the UK are racist ... but some people are 'cup half full' folk by nature and they really don't believe there is so much racism here, because they don't feel it and see it themselves. That's part of the problem.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Just so we're clear by the way; You literally asked me to look for evidence that the media were exaggerating the amount of racism involved in this current situation. I've provided evidence and you're shouting me down again for being too white to understand.
I'm curious how you feel that this attitude helps the debate in any way? You've been twisting my words and trying to turn me from someone who is supporting stamping out racism into someone who is as bad as the racists.
I reread my post a few times to check whether I had indeed shouted you down or twisted your words in any way or made any personal accusations against you being a racist.
I don’t believe I have done any of the above.
You provided me with what you believe is evidence of exaggeration in the media coverage of what has happened.
In response, I noted that your approach is defensive and that I find it strange that you would chose to question the issue to begin with.
I decided I do not want to engage any longer in this discussion and I then linked to an article - which I personally found enlightening - and which I was reminded of by the defensive tone of many comments on this forum.
Posts
It's an unfortunate human tendency and everyone is a little bit prone to it at times. "If I accept this argument then it's an implied criticism of me, and I might have to challenge some of my assumptions, and that might be uncomfortable or even lead to me having to change my behaviour. Therefore I will simply not listen to what you are saying!"
This article helps me to understand where the writer is coming from
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/21/reni-eddo-lodge-uk-book-charts-debate-racism-game-some-dont-want-to-play and why she wrote it, initially on her blog.
If you read the first few sentences of the article Mariam linked to you will see this
"... Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. ..." In my readings of the article I believe that in the title of the piece the writer has used the phrase 'white people' knowingly ... just as, time after time people of colour are referred to/seen as a single entity, with one view, one experience, one character, one history etc etc etc ...
Some 'white people' have responded to the article as if it was referring to them personally ... because that's what it feels like, doesn't it? An instance of the shoe on the other foot for once perhaps?
Humans tend to learn from their own experience ... seeing the racism in other people's experiences is much harder, until it gets closer to home.
I see racism in the UK from a particular point of view ... that of an educated rural middle class white woman from a farming family, with children who have married partners from different ethnicities and in once case a different religion too. Back then, like many people, I too thought that, with the exception of a few nasty right wing extremists, the race problem in the UK was more or less sorted out ......... and then the experiences of my son in law and daughter in law and their families became part of my experience too ... and I tried to make sense of it ... and then began to understand its deep rootedness in Great Britain ... and what has become more and more apparent to me is that racism is deeply embedded in both sides of the class issue ... and because of that it is exhibited differently by people from different classes and different educations.
I remember reading somewhere many years ago that the Queen Mother 'treated the duke and the dustman as if* they were both the same.' ....... What that says about the QM is one thing ... but consider what it says about the writer! (*my italics)
Racism isn't just the vile abuse that our footballers experience ... other people ... my daughter and step-grand daughter and her father experience this too ... and while no one I know would ever say or write such things, unless they stand up and say 'it's unacceptable and I am prepared to lend my voice to try to put an end to it', then they are saying it's acceptable.
You wouldn't stand by and do nothing if someone was beating a dog in the street ... the support for rescue battery chickens, rescue dogs from the Middle East, rescue this that and the other are part of British culture .............. but when my daughter and her stepdaughter are abused in the street people turn their heads and look away ...
The article makes a lot of valid points .... Jonathan Swift put it more succinctly ... "There's none so blind as those who will not see."
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I didn't mean to tell people who experience prejudice how it feels but surely it is better now? Am I incapable of observation because I am white? And please, let's hear it from those who are not white. We need to know what they experience and we can't if they won't speak.
As my black son in law says ... the racists are just much better at hiding it nowadays, except in places where they feel safe to reveal their true nature ... and football and the internet are two of those places.
I really don't think the majority of people in the UK are racist ... but some people are 'cup half full' folk by nature and they really don't believe there is so much racism here, because they don't feel it and see it themselves. That's part of the problem.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/kick_out_racism_uk_loc/?cgXqUdb
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.