Steve, letâs look at the problem in a different way. Letâs say that your OH heard you speaking in a low voice on the phone to someone.
She asks âwho were you speaking to?â You reply âOh nobodyâ.
She asks again âNo. Who were you speaking to?â You reply âItâs nothing. Nobody you knowâ
She asks again âWhy wonât you tell me who it was?â You answer âItâs not important. Forget it.âÂ
She asks again âIâd just like to know who it was, thatâs all. Just tell me. Why wonât you tell me?â
Are you beginning to feel angry?Â
But that isn't what happened - or at least from what I heard - according to Ms Felani - there was some initial misunderstanding.
Your example shows two people - one with info they don't want to pass on and another wanting that info. The question doesn't appear to be misunderstood - I'm just withholding info for whatever my reason may be.
You could adjust your script - you'd have to include what my wife meant by her question (ie does she think I'm talking to my lover, the gas board, my bank, my internet provider, my brother) and what she expected as a reply. From the LiW transcript the LiW was asking for a world location for Ms Fulani's immediate family origins.
What is my wife's question and what is she expecting as an answer?
Assuming that I think my wife is after an organistaion as Ms Felani appeared to, I could have said:
'The Bank'
...and then
'Someone at Eastbourne Branch'
...and then
'No idea what their name is'.
...BUT as soon as I realised why and what my wife was asking (maybe she had also phoned the bank about the same issue and had a name I could reference - so wanted to check who I was talking to) I would have said:
'Oh, I'm talking to a mananger - Ms Blah - at Eastbourne'
...that way it leads to a simple three way conversation doesn't it?
If you look a couple of paragraphs down the article, you see:
'...Ngozi Fulani, now 61, said her parents, who had moved to Britain from
Barbados as part of the Windrush generation, "embraced everybody" and
never allowed the "barriers we faced outside" to be brought into the
house in Kilburn, northwest London...'
How simple is that? How long did it take, once Ms Felani knew what the interrogator was after, for Ms Felani to impart that? Vastly shorter than the transcript with the LiW isn't it?
I think itâs a case of âit ainât what you do, itâs the way that you do itâ.Â
Younger generations perceive things differently. Â
The phrase âyour peopleâ sounds discriminatory to someone from a non-white British background ⊠it sounds too much like the pejorative âyou peopleâ which has been used since the 1950s to tell people to go back where they came from.Â
However to someone with an English Public School background âyour peopleâ is just another way of saying âyour familyâ, as in âare your people visiting to take you out this weekend?â Â
@steveTu said ...Going back to class Dove - Ms Fulani seemed to also object to the use of 'your people'. It must be me again - and I have limited knowledge of anything but lower class (and my shoe box), but isn't 'your people' also synonymous with 'your family' in upper class circles IE:
'what business are your people in?'
... You seem to have read my earlier post (quoted above) đČ
Any chance that someone who is a guest at Buckingham Palace might have been just a bit nervous, careful of not putting a foot wrong etc? Surely its the duty of the hosts, and a LiW is in that role, to make the guests feel comfortable and put them at their ease?Â
To do that they should have a degree of empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence ... as well as an awareness of current social mores and acceptable behaviour. Â
Some folk are obviously lacking in the required social skills.Â
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
volunteering information is not the same as having it demanded. You're looking at it all from your own point of view. It looks different if you grow up in a different context.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
âIt's still magic even if you know how it's done.âÂ
Surely the point is: she wouldn't have repeatedly asked a white person the same question.
Hmm..I'm not so sure she wouldn't. Ignorance, stupidity or even an over inflated sense of entitlement doesn't necessarily differentiate when it comes to skin colour, accent or even an appearance not considered the norm. She comes from a world where tolerance ( or intolerance) in all its forms was very different then compared to today...combine that with a class system that has always considered wealth gives you the right to be condescending and dismissive and the end result is people like this woman. Or she could just be a plain 'ole nasty piece of work? The Royal family, I suspect, has it's fair share.  Â
volunteering information is not the same as having it demanded. You're looking at it all from your own point of view. It looks different if you grow up in a different context.
That's an impossibilty for everyone then eh?I can't grow up in a different context - I can only imagine. I have to view the world through my coloured glasses - as do you - as does Ms Fulani. You are what you are. You cannot change your history. Your future yes, history no.
I wonder how many people have typed replies to this thread and then taken a deep breath and deleted them before posting? Any chance we can move this discussion to another thread so we can get on with the everyday business of being grumpy about mediocre stuff? I had some good suggestions for the thread title but I deleted them
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Any chance that someone who is a guest at Buckingham Palace might have been just a bit nervous, careful of not putting a foot wrong etc? Surely its the duty of the hosts, and a LiW is in that role, to make the guests feel comfortable and put them at their ease?Â
To do that they should have a degree of empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence ... as well as an awareness of current social mores and acceptable behaviour. Â
Some folk are obviously lacking in the required social skills.Â
Of course she may have been nervous - excited, elated - any range of emotions. So may the LiW - how many actors - even after years on stage get stage fright? Do LiWs always have an active part in these things? I haven't a scooby.
I go back to it Dove - take the first two questions and answers as a misunderstanding. Then take out the bit surrounding 'your people' and what do you have left?
IF, IF, IF the question had been better put couldn't the conversation have gone:
'Where are you from?' - LiW putting anyone at ease - asking the preson to talk aboiut themselves
...would that have been racist? I bet that hjas occurred a million times at all sorts of Royal and non-royal gatherings around the world.
 Isn't what is being discussed here hindsight? Ms Fulani I think misunderstood that opener - hence her understandable reply to questions 1 and 2.
To see a conversation laid out in black and white and without knowing what the intent was makes it impossible to judge. All I say - and still say, is that asking where someone is from isn't racist.
Is the LiW racist? No idea.
Is asking someone where they're from racist?- even if the question is repeated as you think the person questioned hasn't understood the question. I don't think so. You could apply all the terms in your second paragraph to the question(s) ie - lacking in empathy, lacking in emotional intelligence - but racist?
First, my TV, bought years back, but still Smart, got to the point where its Operating System (yes, a TV with an OS) was no longer supported.
Then my smart speaker that I sing along to in the shower (a good waterproof smart speaker that my kids got me) stopped supporting the app that meant it played internet radio.
Now my kitchen and bedroom 'smart' radios have been telling me they won't be able to play the current BBC radio streams after 2023 because of changes to the BBC streams.
I suppose it's no different from moving from 405 to 625 lines or from analogue to digital on the TV, or from MW to FM on the radios. But it does seem a bit frustrating as these devices aren't (in my 'I don't like putting 'stuff' into landfill) that old.
Further to my previous post ... Context is everything. If the person doing the questioning had been someone's elderly and slightly batty aunt sitting on a sofa with a cuppa and a biscuit, I'm sure Ms Fulani would've felt quite differently about the style and content of the questioning.Â
She was being interrogated by someone representing the Royal Family.
Further to my previous post ... Context is everything. If the person doing the questioning had been someone's elderly and slightly batty aunt sitting on a sofa with a cuppa and a biscuit, I'm sure Ms Fulani would've felt quite differently about the style and content of the questioning.Â
She was being interrogated by someone representing the Royal Family.
The difference in context is massive. Â
Edited to say - I don't know how my commented ended up in this format but the section in italics below is my bit.
The difference in context may be massive, but the intent may be precisely the same. The same question is repeatedly asked because the answer being received isn't reponding to what the questioner believes they are asking.
For example "Where are you from?" The response could be a town, an organisation, a country..... Which was the questioner asking for?
Posts
Yes - but did Ms Fulani?
To do that they should have a degree of empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence ... as well as an awareness of current social mores and acceptable behaviour. Â
Some folk are obviously lacking in the required social skills.Â
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
âIt's still magic even if you know how it's done.âÂ
She comes from a world where tolerance ( or intolerance) in all its forms was very different then compared to today...combine that with a class system that has always considered wealth gives you the right to be condescending and dismissive and the end result is people like this woman.Â
Or she could just be a plain 'ole nasty piece of work? The Royal family, I suspect, has it's fair share.  Â
That's an impossibilty for everyone then eh?I can't grow up in a different context - I can only imagine. I have to view the world through my coloured glasses - as do you - as does Ms Fulani. You are what you are. You cannot change your history. Your future yes, history no.