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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

#171

Post by lowdose »

simonklitj wrote: post #64
m1sta_ wrote: post #41

Earlier 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,…

Sixty years ago, Belgium set up a live display of people from Congo for the 1958 world fair.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/649600217/where-human-zoos-on...

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

#172

Post by numpad0 »

enriquto wrote: post #108
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. It is not a problem anywhere, actually. Some people just want to make it into one.

Yeah “cultural appropriation” criticism is often cultural purism.

In some cases the way “appropriated” culture is represented look embarrassing to those native in said culture, like people are wearing ethnic clothing without the trousers that go with it, or cooking food not in the way it should be done and ending up with horrible slurry, but that’s rare in recent years.

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

#173

Post by hef19898 »

StavrosK wrote: post #109
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…

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…

The systemic problem is the huge overlap of class (aka being poor) and race (aka being black) in the US. And that, along with general racist views, makes it such unique, and utterly racist, system. Ignoring that overlap means ignoring the root cause, for the US that is. in other countries, things are different.

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

#174

Post by Udik »

gambiting wrote: post #6

The 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…

The funniest thing to me is the discourse about "white privilege" when it's transplanted into countries where basically everyone used to be white. How can that be a privilege to be the same as everyone else? But people will repeat just anything as long as it's fashionable.

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

#175

Post by coldtea »

zimablue wrote: post #122
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

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"

>it shocked me how much of a political issue it is there

Not that much at all. Perhaps you encoutered it at all because you're a Brit and so got into related discussions. It's not like people talk about it that much there.

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

#176

Post by doctor_eval »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #110
justinclift wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think was the OP was saying is that indigenous people are more likely to commit crimes because of the circumstances that are put upon them by the system, and that they also lack access to better legal representation for the same reason, and are therefore more likely to be convicted of crimes. Really, it's due to economic circumstance (I bet poor white people are convicted of more crimes than rich white people). It…

I'd like to think that's what the OP was saying, but that's not remotely what the OP actually said.

Also, they called me a moron, which (accurate or not) is not cool.

> The system is set up in such a way that it assumes indigenous people want to and/or should confirm to white European ideas of what is "normal" as well

I suspect that the system does not assume that aboriginal people want or should be European; rather, it doesn't think about aboriginal people at all.

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

#177

Post by vixen99 »

meiraleal wrote: post #45
jl6 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain did more to end slavery than to start it (though it did also benefit greatly from it in between).

That's probably what makes you feel better, but nope, your kingdom was built through exploitation, killing and looting.

You forgot to mention rape. I'm told that 1 in 200 people on this planet can claim genetic heritage with Ghenghis Khan. That happened via rape together with the 'exploitation, killing and conquest' but no one in their right mind wishes to visit this mind-numbing inglorious fact on his descendants and not just because that would be impossible. Who knows? Maybe you and I are one of those descendants. Familiarity with world history will tell you that there are no groups of superior beings anywhere who abstained from the activities mentioned. Some won and some lost. The latter, not for the want of trying.

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

#178

Post by henrikschroder »

The one thing I took away from seeing all the BLM protests in Europe this summer, and all the discussions among my friends and family back home about it is that Europeans in general do not understand how incredibly racist the US was, and still is.

At one point in the 1800's, slave labour contributed over half of the US GDP, and to protect that economy, to protect that business, the states who benefited the most from it were completely drenched in absolutely brutal amounts of racist propaganda.

The slave economy of the US necessitated the institutionalised racism, because that was the only way you could get ordinary people to put up with the practice. And Europe has never experienced anything like that, so for the average European, there are no frames of reference, no shared history, nothing.

Sure, there's been slave economies in Europe, but the last ones were a thousand years ago. Sure, there's racism in Europe, plenty of it, but it looks completely different, and it's never been as hyperfocused on skin colour like racism in the US is. Racism in Europe is more about ethnocentrism, and some of the worst atrocities in the continent's history have been committed by super white people against other super white people.

Another thing that Europeans do not understand is how the police works in the US. Where I'm from, the police consists of two national organisations, 700 years of history, and an origin as the city watch, making sure cities in the middle ages didn't catch on fire.

Whereas in the US, the police consists of some 16000 decentralised wildly different organisations, federal, state, county, local, all with a much shorter history, wildly different histories, wildly different scopes of law enforcement. But most importantly, some of those local police organisations were explicitly founded to enforce slave laws, to enforce racial segregation, to enforce Jim Crow laws, and they were founded by the local KKK leaders.

The situation is completely different, the history is completely different, the racial divides are completely different. And then people try to import the US discourse on racism, and nothing fits, nothing makes sense, but people still don't want to be seen as racists, so they try to make it fit, try to agree, and it's all just weird.

You can stand in solidarity with BLM no matter where you live, that's fine, but if you're European, please stop there. Don't try to deal with uniquely US issues in your own country, because I promise you, they don't exist. You have other issues to deal with.

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

#179

Post by coldtea »

krzyk wrote: post #132
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…

Well, the "problem" is that there are not many different races in Poland, so it is hard to judge how racist we are. The most racist thing you can see here is people staring at blacks or Asians. Because it is quite unique thing to see. Just like when I was in South Korea and my wife was asked to pose in a picture of young Korean girl. Similar thing happened 50 years ago, when my mother-in-law asked a black fellow to p…

>Well, the "problem" is that there are not many different races in Poland, so it is hard to judge how racist we are.

Well, the Poles didn't bring in slaves from Africa and had them working at their planations and so on for centuries though, so there's also that...

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

#180

Post by somerandobrit »

zimablue wrote: post #122
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

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"

I’ve never heard of this being an issue and I’ve visited Greece several times and have Greek coworkers.
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