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Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
271–280 of 394 posts
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#272Earlier 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
I don't really care who owns it, I'd just like it to be in a place where I can easily enjoy it.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The melting pot metaphor was replaced by a salad bowl, wasn't it? Assimilation (which is the melting pot) is now considered a crime against humanity and the whole "separate but equal" is the new hotness.
It was, and that's not altogether bad. A melting pot implies homogeneity and the loss of one's identity and history. A salad bowl is a pleasant mixing of everything, with each component still retaining its identity - a carrot is still a carrot, a radish is still a radish, and so forth. The irony is if I want to celebrate the zest of a radish then I'm told I'm being insensitive and appropriating the radish culture. As is so often the case we end up moving neither forward nor backward but sideways.
In the end I like the salad bowl metaphor because it scales well globally. We're a single human race, all different, yet all the same. It's appropriate to celebrate one another's histories so long as we're mindful of our collective future.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#274As Rammstein said: We're all living in America.
Did you know that Rammstein is named after Ramstein, the biggest US military base in Germany?
They're actually named that because of the air show crash at Ramstein involving the Italian Frecce Trcolori, not because of the base itself.
70 people were killed and over 300 wounded so it was a controversial & intentionally shocking name.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Statistics can absolutely be both racist and inaccurate, because you can choose which numbers to highlight, or how to slice and dice your data. Simpson's Paradox is a perfect example of how you can bucket data to show a trend that is the opposite of reality.
A statistic is a calculation. Are you saying that the result of a calculation can be racist? It can be produced with a racist intent, or it can be interpreted as such. You can talk of the result of the calculation in a racist way, or derive racist conclusions from it. But per se, it cannot be racist. And you cannot decide to ignore the result of a calculation because you don't agree with the discussion or the questio…
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Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a foreigner, I am perplexed too. This seems to me a class problem rather than a race problem, and ignoring the white victims and framing it as a race problem only misdirects from the actual issue. The problem is that the rich rule the US and the poor are left to feed off the scraps, and pitting poor whites against poor blacks only benefits the elite that wants everyone to be too busy fighting each other to notice…
There's a theory that this focus on identity politics is encouraged by elites, as a way of distracting people from class politics. I'm not convinced it's true, in that it's a deliberate strategy, but i imagine they're pretty pleased that it's happening.
Exactly agreed, I don't think this level of cooperation/manipulation is very likely or easy, but it's certainly very convenient for the elite.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
A common example would be profiting from cultural developments or ideas from cultures that had been historically looked down upon or disadvantaged by your own, particularly when doing so in a disrespectful manner. For example – a white European artist designing fabrics and prints with traditionally African patterns, without acknowledging the contribution or involving members of that community, would sit uneasily with…
> A common example would be profiting from cultural developments or ideas from cultures that had been historically looked down upon or disadvantaged by your own, particularly when doing so in a disrespectful manner. I have two problems with your constraint "from cultures that had been historically looked down upon". How far back do we have to look? This might seem obvious between Europe and African countries. But if…
On top of that, what is the proper way to acknowledge contribution? "CC-BY-SA Africa and Finland"?
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#278The 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…
> 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…
Yeah, I don't know about Poland specifically, but the black players in the England football (soccer) team quite often get racially abused in Eastern Europe/Balkans.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of Brits would like the British Museum to give the marbles back too! <3
I don't really care who owns it, I'd just like it to be in a place where I can easily enjoy it.
Well the effort is to move them from the British Museum to the Acropolis museum, so I guess "easily" depends on where you're located.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#280Adele, 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.
North Macedonia/FYROM claiming ancient Greek/Macedonian heritage was (and still is I think, even after the recent events) a big issue though, no?