> But Britain is not America.
Actually, the rest of the world is not the USA.
But it looks like too many people in theUSA are too thick to get it.
Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
121–130 of 394 posts
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#122Adele, 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.
As a Brit who visited Greece it shocked me how much of a political issue it is there. I kind of came to the conclusion that any slippery slope or historical argument is less relevant than "If they want them so badly and we don't really care, just hand them over"
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#123The 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…
> 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 orders of magnitude worse), including the somewhat more problematic countries in East Europe.
EDIT: for comparison in Italy in 2019 3 people were shot dead by police, without any ethnic implication, it means 1 fatal shooting every 20 millions of the population, or 0.05 every million, VS 31 every million.
To look at it in another way: you need to gather 20 million people in Italy so that one of them risk of being shot by the police, it only takes 33 thousands black men in US. It's 620 times more dangerous for a black man in US to encounter a policeman than it is in Italy.
EDIT 2: -1 after only 6 minutes.
It explains a lot about what's wrong in American culture...
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#124Adele, 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…
Exactly, compare the prison systems:
America’s is segregated by race. You can’t mix with the other race or borrow something from them, or even sit on their table.
In Britain the races mix, there’s no strict segregation, if there is any, it’s more segregated by town and county and areas.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#125Adele, 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. It is not a problem anywhere, actually. Some people just want to make it into one.
I think it can be and it's something to at least consider. But yes there are many examples where the criticism feels inconsidered and knee-jerk
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#126Earlier 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,…
> Probably money, but that doesn't exclude the obvious racism it created.
This! In history, a lot of racism has been created to justify wars, economical exploitation, slavery, creating political scapegoats and so on.
Demonizing an enemy is the most basic method to polarize people. This type of "psyops" was extremely common during WW2.
People often don't really want to look at the root of racial, ethnic, political discrimination because it has to do with economic and political power.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#127This annoys me a lot as well. Especially when people here in the Netherlands protest against "police violence", which is a thing that barely even exists in our country.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#128>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…
But why is it so common in the BLM movement to rally behind violent criminals on the receiving end of justifiable responses? Are you seriously trying to assert that ending someone's life is a justifiable response to them shoplifting or trespassing? No doubt these are crimes, and the people doing them should not have been doing them, but the suggestion that the inevitable outcome is someone dying is completely ridicul…
Fortunately in the US, 99.998% of police encounters don't result in a death.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#129Earlier 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…
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.
Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens
#130The 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…
>In general I lament the americanization of worldwide media, as if America is some kind of paragon of behaviour that everyone should emulate, and whatever social phenomenon is happening there it must be valid elsewhere. That's simply not true. Well said! I would wager that this has become true in almost all countries and the effects are very insidious. Many real problems are often obfuscated and sidelined by the late…
> Many real problems are often obfuscated and sidelined by the latest media export from the US which has no or at best marginal relevance in their local countries.
Or in their local counties (in the US).