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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

#201

Post by rkangel »

romanoderoma wrote: post #123
esperent wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While racism is a problem in Poland, it's not a systematic racism like in the US Are you sure about that? I haven't spent much time in Poland, but I've spent quite a bit of time in the baltic states and systemic racism absolutely is a problem there. It's just (mostly) against Jews and Roma rather than black people. I fully expect this is the case in Poland too. EDIT: yes,as I thought. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik…

> systemic racism absolutely is a problem there But it's not the same thing and it happens on a completely different scale. Systemic racism in US means that "the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 31 fatal shootings per million of the population as of August 2020." Which is completely out of scale for European standards (at least 3 order…

Oversimplification, but Western Europe basically doesn't have a problem with police violence. That (very important) aspect of what's going on in the US just doesn't translate to a police force with very different culture and much better accountability.

It's great that we don't have that problem (people not being shot is a good thing), but that doesn't mean we don't have racism.

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

#202

Post by twic »

StavrosK wrote: post #98
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 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.

We'll swap them for the magic sphere: https://labrujulaverde.com/en/2019/05/the-intriguing-magic-s...

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

fastball wrote: post #131
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. Isn't that the same argument people use in the US to justify why more Black Americans are incarcerated / killed by cops? If that is actually your stance, I'm confused as to how you see Australia as fundamentally different from the US.

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by ahartmetz »

luckylion wrote: post #90
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…

I believe the author didn't mean to say that the US imposes the views, but that the UK media and elites do. The same is true in Germany to a large degree, and it's equally weird. Americanization of everything is a good description, I think. Of course it's very important what happens in the US, it's the heart of the empire after all. But it's given so much weight that I sometimes feel like our media are covering US do…

US politics is good soap opera material. The thinking person's celebrity gossip.

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

#205

Post by Macha »

Tainnor wrote: post #27
3np wrote: post #4

I have a strong feeling (though no data to back it up) that this holds at least as much for debate and polarisation around feminism, gender equality, trans rights and LGBT(Q+) issues.

To some extent maybe, but in some sense LGBTQ issues are a bit more universal, because LGBTQ people exist and have grown up in every country (they just have different visibility and different rights etc.), whereas with racism/xenophobia every country has their own, different pattern of immigration, social inequalities, etc.

Also because many of the issues that race presents in the US (historically marginalised/discriminated against groups having poor opportunities leading to poor outcomes leading to poor opportunities for their descendents) are present in those countries as class problems without the racial undertones.

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

#206

Post by doctor_eval »

Udik wrote: post #186
justinclift wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a fact. How can a fact be racist?

Facts taken out of context can obviously be racist.

> Aboriginal people just commit more crime

More crime than who?

More crime than "Normal" people?

Or, More crime than all other groups with the same economic opportunieis?

More crime than groups with the same health issues? More crime than other people who go blind from trachoma and trichiasis despite it no longer being a public health problem in any other developed country in the world? [0]

More crime than other people who have had their children systematically stolen?

More crime than other people who have been racially abused in public, while playing a game of football?

I mean, come on, you're a smart cookie. You can't accept a claim that "aboriginal people commit more crime" unless you compare it to some equivalent group. Aboriginal and non-aboriginal people are not remotely equivalent, because aboriginal people have been systematically denied the freedom, health outcomes and economic opportunities available to almost any other group in Australia.

[0] https://healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/learn/health-topics/eye-hea...

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

#207

Post by henrikschroder »

DanBC wrote: post #79

A mostly good article. > There has, for example, been a lot of concern about the underrepresentation of black Britons in professions like the arts and publishing. But why would you choose to go into theater or journalism—rather than law, medicine or finance—if you are a talented child of ambitious but not well off immigrants? A really weird point. There's plenty of concern about under-representation of black people i…

> We can see that 6.2% of junior doctors are black, but only 3.5% of consultants are black. Where did all those juniors go?

If 3% of the population is black, then having 3.5% of consultants being black means they're still overrepresented! Regression to the mean is the most likely explanation.

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

#208

Post by lucideer »

rkangel wrote: post #201
romanoderoma wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> systemic racism absolutely is a problem there But it's not the same thing and it happens on a completely different scale. Systemic racism in US means that "the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 31 fatal shootings per million of the population as of August 2020." Which is completely out of scale for European standards (at least 3 order…

Oversimplification, but Western Europe basically doesn't have a problem with police violence. That (very important) aspect of what's going on in the US just doesn't translate to a police force with very different culture and much better accountability. It's great that we don't have that problem (people not being shot is a good thing), but that doesn't mean we don't have racism.

If you're talking about scale, then yes police violence in Western Europe isn't comparable to the US. Saying there's no problem seems like almost wilful ignorance though.

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

#209

Post by oedmarap »

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…

I'm from the Caribbean and I can attest to this. We're always baffled at the neuroticism of America's obsession with identity politics and tribalism, especially as it relates to race and culture.

In my country for example we have six distinct races/ethnicities, from indigenous to post-colonial. When either has a celebration or period of cultural remembrance, we openly dress, cook, and celebrate in the same manner. The concept of "cultural appropriation" is nothing but hubris in our minds.

Perhaps we're more fundamentally bonded due to our shared "fragmented" heritage, as V.S. Naipaul frequently expounded upon. Perhaps we're just not victims of inept ideological monoliths that are perpetrated by a radical left and radical right as it is in the US (along with the forced illusion of binary if not zero-sum choices).

Either way, we understand that racism is inescapable in some small measure but we try our best not to elevate it above reason and certainly not above national unity (or pride for that matter). Caribbean people are both welcoming of foreign cultures and curious in our exploration of the same. We wouldn't, couldn't, have it any other way.

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

#210

Post by lucideer »

WhyNott wrote: post #105
lucideer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While racism is a problem in Poland, it's not a systematic racism I absolutely agree that transplanting US talking points wholesale into non-US frames of reference is something that's often done blindly and never really applies. But the reason for this is that the issue is nuanced and has a lot of local context that needs consideration in its own right. It shouldn't be used as an excuse to dismiss the existence of…

There is a specific reason to say it: 98% of polish population belong to a single ethic group, and even of the remaining 2% the vast majority are what most people would consider to be "white". Non-white people tend to be very rare even in metropolitan areas (maybe to a lesser extent in Warsaw), and they are usually either students or high-income people moving to Poland for professional or relationship reasons. In gen…

Your final paragraph is what I would think of.

Your opening paragraph seems to commit the same mistake the original commenter was lamenting: you're defining racism purely through a US lens and asking if the same is present in Poland. The framing of that question isn't valid.

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