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Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

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Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#141

Post by [deleted] »

justinclift wrote: post #86
waheoo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that isn't racist at all. Unfortunate, an injustice, a tragedy, a disaster, a systemic failure to integrate, yes. But racist? You're going to have to spell that one out for me. Aboriginal people just commit more crime. That isn't racist. Thats a symptom of a problem that predates most of us sitting here in our armchairs. Talk about the real problem not the symptom, but whatever you do, don't start calling all whi…

> Aboriginal people just commit more crime. That isn't racist. Er... that sounds incredibly racist?

[deleted]

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#142

Post by callamdelaney »

timruffles wrote: post #135
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Greek, I agree. Ancient Greek culture influences a lot of things, but I've never heard of any Greek being offended by any of it, we consider it homage/remixing. Except the Parthenon marbles, we want those back.

A lot of Brits would like the British Museum to give the marbles back too! <3

Not me

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#143

Post by ChrisRR »

drumhead wrote: post #62

Adele, the singer, was photographed at the Nottinghill Carnival (a massive Carribean street festival over the August bank holiday in London) with her hair in Bantu Knots and wearing a bikini top in the colours of the Jamaican flag. As soon as it was on twitter the you started getting tweets from Black Americans about cultural appropriation, but this was met in turn by fierce opposition from African and Carribean post…

Exactly, Americans seem to have this weird view that no-one's culture should mix. I think in the UK the view of most people is that mixing cultures is fine as long as it's respectful

I grew up in a multicultural town in the UK (also home to a lot of racism unfortunately) but we had a yearly (carribean I think) carnival with music and floats and costumes and food.

People would turn out in the thousands and it didn't matter your skin colour because you were there to join in the fun. It doesn't matter if you wore something that wasn't traditionally part of your culture, because you were doing so to join in the fun, not to belittle people

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#144

Post by raxxorrax »

m463 wrote: post #101
gambiting wrote: post #6

The problem exists elsewhere too, because of the extremely widespread proliferation of American media - I see the Polish media taking american talking points about race, sexuality, religion, and just transplanting them wholesale into the Polish frame of reference as if they were equally important here - more often than not, they simply aren't. While racism is a problem in Poland, it's not a systematic racism like in…

This has nothing to do with paragons or moral values. I think it's emergent behavior. If there is media that provides something people want, people will view it and be exposed to any message good or crappy within. I remember when I had a queue of 5 star documentary movies to watch. I still ended up watching the 2-star scifi movies ahead of them. Had nothing to do with value of the message delivered in the documentari…

I noticed this when internet comments for newspapers were still common, which I suggest bringing back actually.

But these divisive topics just got so much more engagement than far more important news and the media began to increase that type of content because of their precarious financial situation (Good luck earning a living wage with online news).

I remember one instance were there was an article about a important EU wide policy decision. It had around 25 comments. Next was some article about pop culture and gender. It had over 1000 comments. At one point it becomes self-reinforcing when people want to know why others comment that much...

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#145

Post by jtbayly »

simonklitj wrote: post #64
m1sta_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they conquering because of race or something else?

Probably money, but that doesn't exclude the obvious racism it created. In Denmark, we had Africans in cages displayed in the Tivoli amusement park in central Copenhagen, so people could look at the spectacle that was the black person ( https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2017-03-31-de-sendte-bud-efte... , in Danish). While this was not the intent of our colonization and slavery-business, it inevitably caused it, imo. Or,…

Money was the main reason for American plantation slavery, too.

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#147

Post by zimablue »

snakeboy wrote: post #87
varispeed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that Poland has quite draconian drug laws. Such laws are what institutionalised racism is based on in the US - it comes from the premise that people from disadvantaged background will be more likely to be involved in drugs than other groups - this is of course not true, as person living on handouts is just as likely to take drugs as a rich person working in banking sector. It's what law enforcement is being fo…

I imagine the statistics are hard to get accurately (a rich person who never gets arrested isn't going to be counted as a drug user unless the study is done via survey), but is it really true that a poor person is just as likely to take drugs as a rich person? Intuitively it doesn't seem quite right, and it's hard to be rich if you are addicted to something truly destructive.

It's also hard to bootstrap a cocaine habit if you're strapped for cash.

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#148

Post by doctor_eval »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #96
drumhead wrote: post #62

Adele, the singer, was photographed at the Nottinghill Carnival (a massive Carribean street festival over the August bank holiday in London) with her hair in Bantu Knots and wearing a bikini top in the colours of the Jamaican flag. As soon as it was on twitter the you started getting tweets from Black Americans about cultural appropriation, but this was met in turn by fierce opposition from African and Carribean post…

As a British person with Caribbean family background, I found the reaction to this from the internet so strange. In Britain it's normal that the different cultures here mix. Shops selling Baltic bread, next to shops selling jerk chicken, across the road from a traditional English pub. People of all colours and backgrounds frequenting all of them. From an outside perspective, people in the USA seem very pre-occupied w…

In an attempt to lighten the mood a little, I would just like to relate a quick story about a restaurant I saw while visiting Liverpool many years ago. It was called, "Jamaican me Hungry". :)

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#149

Post by theshrike79 »

tobr wrote: post #129
gambiting wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the key word here is " it's not a systematic racism like in the US " - I'm not(obviously) trying to say that racism doesn't exist in Poland - it does and it's a problem. Just that the entire country isn't built on racist behaviour like US is/was, it's not systematic as in the country as it exists now(and largely how it existed in the post WW1 shape too) wasn't built with racist institutions and principles. Aga…

There seems to be confusion about “systemic” vs “systematic” here. Systematic racism would imply a system that is designed to achieve racism. The more common term is systemic racism, which implies racism more or less as a “side effect” of a structure or system that arguably has a different, benign purpose.

I'd argue that the American system was systematically build to be systemic :)

There are laws in the US that, on the surface, seem to be benign, but upon closer inspection are specifically and systematically created to target a certain racial group disproportionately.

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#150

Post by StavrosK »

timruffles wrote: post #135
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Greek, I agree. Ancient Greek culture influences a lot of things, but I've never heard of any Greek being offended by any of it, we consider it homage/remixing. Except the Parthenon marbles, we want those back.

A lot of Brits would like the British Museum to give the marbles back too! <3

<3
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