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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

#191

Post by hotz »

pftburger wrote: post #88

The article briskly skips over the indisputable fact that Britain’s colonial expansion enslaved, tortured and exterminated people of color everywhere on this planet for longer than a the US has existed in its current form. It attempts to delegitimize the people in the ex-colonies claim to the wealth generated during their exploration using the currently drawn geopolitical boundaries. For most of the people labeled as…

Just to add, they also had white Afrikaans women and children in concentration camps in the Boer wars of South Africa.

We can only learn from history and be better for it. People in general should stop crying about events that happened a hundred years or more ago. That's no way to live your life.

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

#192

Post by lowdose »

LockAndLol wrote: post #164

Yes, thank you for this opinion piece. I do believe however that we non-Americans are also to blame. We consume American media like there's no tomorrow and don't support our local media even barely enough. The great advantage America has for spreading their culture is its single official language. It's able to echo within the country, gain a large following and then spread outside of its borders. Europe has done noth…

We should all switch to English in Europe.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #158
matthewmacleod wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perception that in the US "black and white people live different lives and mixing is frowned upon" seems like it's been heavily influenced by some less-than-honest talking points. The idea that the UK is an oasis of racial harmony versus a segregationist USA is pretty far from the truth.

Not that far I'd say. While the British have their nazis and everything in moderation, at least they're not generally 24/7 preoccupied with race. (They are however preoccupied with class a lot).

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by dspillett »

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…

The issue is people being offended on behalf of others (which is itself not a bad thing: we should be conscious of where we might be using culturally significant signals inappropriately, or otherwise causing offence) but being hyper-sensitive and seeing offence where it doesn't really exist in the groups that they think they are standing up for.

> pre-occupied with continuing a culture of segregation

I think were "cultural appropriation" is being called hyper-sensitively, it is more an over-active sense of guilt-by-association[†] than any desire to segregate. This very much exists in the UK as well, though it isn't as pronounced as it seems to be in the US.

Finding the right balance point can be difficult. The dividing lines between cultural appreciation, cultural mixing, cultural appropriation, and cultural subjugation, while sometimes obvious & clear are often much more subjective.

[†] association with the past racist history of the nation and/or the many still current problems

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

#196

Post by threatofrain »

vergessenmir wrote: post #18

I'm not sure that american views are being imposed on US (I'm in the UK). Rather they are being adopted by us without criticism. This makes conversation about race a confused jumbled incoherent mess. The bigger problem as I see it is more class-oriented than race centric. This should be a discussion on social mobility, which in my opinion is the best in the western world for minority communities. The race discourse i…

That's because race and class aren't disentangled concepts in the US, and that's not likely to be the ground reality in the next 20 years either. One might make predictions about the mobility of the American poor, and one might rightly make a separate profile of predictions for black America. What is black America 2030? Optimistic?

There are many cities still with covenants restricting home ownership to non-Blacks, and while unenforceable today, it contributes to a story of an everlasting racial smell.

A nation ought not only speak the message of racial harmony, as China does with regards to black immigrants and citizens, but the truth must be evident on the ground for the people to see, and the air ought be pleasant to smell.

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

#197

Post by mcherm »

doctor_eval wrote: post #148
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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". :)

And... how was the food?

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

#198

Post by morelisp »

gambiting wrote: post #10
Kednicma wrote: post #3

In addition to the entirety of the author's examples and experiences, we need to recall that the UK/British view of race is heavily influenced by the fact that skin color is not the only way in which folks in the UK experience racial discrimination. For centuries, the Scottish and Irish natives have been variously oppressed by the British, creating a racial context which is distinct from one wholly concerned with ski…

Americans also conveniently forget that Irish people have been discriminated against there nearly as badly as black people, despite being the whitest shade of white. From the outside perspective, it seems like that kind of discrimination just doesn't fit the narrative so of course isn't mentioned.

> Americans also conveniently forget that Irish people have been discriminated against there

OK.

> nearly as badly as black people

Nah, fuck off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth

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

#199

Post by jkingsbery »

ChrisRR wrote: post #143
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 m…

> Americans seem to have this weird view

Some Americans, anyway. Growing up in the US, I was always taught the US was "the great melting pot." But I agree, it doesn't seem like it lately.

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

#200

Post by projektfu »

HowFarFallen wrote: post #26

>I have privilege as a White person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice about it … I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery). I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson). I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#Jonathan Ferrell and #RenishaMcBride). I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark). I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards). I can play loud mu…

I can only recommend that you listen to the third season of the Buried Truths podcast if you have that opinion of the Ahmaud Arbery case.
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