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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

#231

Post by apexalpha »

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…

"Cultural appropriation doesnt seem to be a problem anywhere else but the USA."

This is usually referred to as cultural exchange or sharing of culture.

The fact that cultures shouldn't be shared is indeed a new phenomenon, one that I personally don't agree with.

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

#232

Post by Macha »

henrikschroder wrote: post #207
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.

Also how long has the proportion of junior doctors been 6%? If the ratio 15-20 years ago was closer to 3-4%, and medicine is a slow field to progress through, then there's your answer.

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

#233

Post by Macha »

choward wrote: post #154

Who is this addressed to? From the article it seems addressed to British people using social media to share American specific viewpoints. But the comments here make it seem like it's Americans doing the imposing of views.

For europeans, working in the tech industry increases people's exposure to Americans and American points of view significantly. So I think it's likely true in general that as the author represents, this is is mostly people making the change in their own country, people on this forum are going to have disproportionately more experience with it coming from the US because of their greater dealings with the US. Hence most of the discussion here being about US-imposed incidents.

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

#234

Post by thiht »

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…

Yeah, because cultural appropriation is not a thing. It doesn't make any sense.

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

#235

Post by apexalpha »

The average black American in the United States can trace his ancestry further back than the average white American. Most black Americans are descended from enslaved Africans. Their forebears suffered through the segregation and racial terror of the Jim Crow era. The majority of black people in the United Kingdom, by contrast, are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Though many of them have certainly had harrowing experiences with injustice or discrimination, they do not have the same history of racist disadvantage.

This is a key bit here that also applies to the Netherlands. Most, if not all, black (and Moroccan, Turkish etc) Dutch people are either immigrants or children of immigrants.

This sheds a whole different light on statistics, imho. If you move a big chunck of Dutch people to Turkey it would not be weird if their kids wouldn't be CEO's, high level politicians or so. That's just not how that works, especially when your parents were lower educated, and in many cases can't (couldn't) read any Latin based language.

Yet the debate here around racism "borrows" arguments form the US, where black people have been living for 400 years sometimes and STILL aren't even close to representation in the 'top' layer of society.

Just like in the UK, Dutch media is bloody obsessed with the US.

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

#236

Post by 3np »

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.

Kind of like the article; I'm not saying other countries don't have systemic issues, just that they aren't equivalent to the issues in the US.

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

#237

Post by Udik »

doctor_eval wrote: post #206
Udik wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 develop…

> Facts taken out of context can obviously be racist.

A fact is a statement about reality. It can induce racism, but cannot be racist in itself. Facts are scientific, and science is not political.

> More crime than who?

Of non-Aboriginal people.

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

Maybe or maybe not. That is beside the point. If you compare incarceration rates of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people you have already decided that that is the division of the population you want to reason about. You cannot argue that the reason group A has higher incarceration rates of group B is because of racism, and when someone else proposes crime rates as an explanation, suddenly you switch to different population subdivisions: by economic opportunities, by health issues, etc.

The question about incarceration is: are Aboriginals more likely to be incarcerated for the same crimes than non-Aboriginals?

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

#238

Post by mr_toad »

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?

It takes a long time for demographic shifts to work their way through a population. Senior medical staff are more likely to be white, male, and old. But in a few decades that’s going to look very different.

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

#240

Post by yokaze »

viraptor wrote: post #166
yokaze wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 20 years of living there, I have not only not interacted, but not seen a single black person. And I expect that would be the same case for majority of people. Any racism would likely be more personal or based off silly stereotypes rather than systemic. I don't follow. How can you make such judgement, if you "not only not interacted, but not seed a single black person"? > Any racism would likely be more personal…

Because to have systemic racism, by definition you have to observe something happening on a large scale. There is no scale there. There are isolated interactions mostly. It could be widespread racism, or a small number of racist people. The n is too small to tell.

> Because to have systemic racism, by definition you have to observe something happening on a large scale.

Systemic only means "relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part".

If you and practical most people in Poland (or a lot of other countries) have never seen or talked to a black person, that is related to the system. The way you and others have formed an opinion about foreign people, or people of different faith, or sexual orientation, that is inherent to the system in Poland.

Now, the question is, what is the experience of those likely few black people in Poland interacting with other people? Do they experience in most interactions negative prejudice, or are they only experiencing it in isolated cases, or even not at all?

The way I see it, the learning we should take from the US is, that as a member of the majority, one should avoid having a prejudice of how that experience will be. Because our n of those experiences will indeed be too small to tell. And if those people are telling us that their experience is bad, not to reject it as the exception (a few bad apples).

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