Quote: Mild Rover "Mein Kampf and racist mindsets - I was noting a pretty extreme disparity in our experiences, and the frequency with which we have each encountered each of those things. However, I accept your last point and that my convenient binary shorthand is not meaningful to you. I suspect other posters/readers will be able to relate, despite the deliberate lack of granularity.
I wasn’t triggered. I was just wondering if you were trying - it is something you have admitted to enjoying previously. And it did tick enough of those boxes to make me genuinely wonder.
My opinions are based on me buying into rhetoric and yours are based on facts, you believe? Well, that’s not really a tenable position. Facts are facts, but they’re meaningless without context and interpretation.
The whataboutery section - Even white lady dog walkers know there’s an issue with Police racism. Black people are often turned away, in all sorts of contexts. While there are no longer ‘white only’ job adverts, black candidates do face discrimination in the employment market. Studies have looked at responses to applications with typically black and white names, for example. Anti-discrimination legislation existing is better than it not, but it won’t be as effective as we’d like.
Black communities in the US started at a massive disadvantage, from slavery, through apartheid and redlining, to the more informal and slightly more subtle prejudices and barriers of the 21st century. At least the direction of travel is good, eh? Like anybody else, black people are responsible for their actions as individuals. However, differences in circumstances need to be acknowledged at a population level and they’re pretty extreme in this context.
Without getting too anthropological about it, why do you think issues/trends have arisen, for example, around absentee fathers in African American and some Afro-Caribbean communities, that are not seen in African communities to the same degree?'"
It's largely a culture thing, but before anyone blows up, it's not a black thing. If we're assuming many blacks come from deprived, poor neighbourhoods - you will see the same behaviour in similarly poor white neighbourhoods. Perhaps a lack of enthusiasm for education leading to either low-level jobs, no jobs and/or criminality. Single parents households. Drugs and drink part of everyday life. Low-level criminality also part of every day life. Drug peddlers and gangs making their money at the expense of those who can't afford it.
The only difference I see in black neighbourhoods is the glamourisation of gang culture, drugs and criminality in music and movies - not so prevalent in white culture although although that hilarious 'fake Jamaican' accent has spread from London and the Yardie gangs, and is now commonplace among street criminals across the country regardless of race - an example of mirroring what is perceived to be a desirable gang culture.
Why are many black US communities poor? Well, I looked at Compton as the most infamous example. Originally a middle-class white neighbourhood, wealthier middle class blacks began to move in. Racial friction in the 50's led to some 'white flight' although it remained still majority white. The Watts Riots (ironically triggered by a police arrest) destroyed large parts of the town and local industry and led to more 'white flight'. Resulting poverty and unemployment contributed to the formation of gangs, resulting in the Bloods vs Crips feud which only added to the violence and deprivation. The emergence of hard drugs in the 70's & 80's escalated things massively and things have never really improved, indeed black on black violence remains by far the biggest cause of death. I'm sure there's more to it but it's a quick synopsis and possibly not dissimilar to other black communities and lends itself to my previous post - how to break the cycle of communities held back far more by gang culture, drug use and criminality than by 'white oppression', although I'm not blind to incidents of white racism, including the police.
Anyway, I see today every historical monument is now under threat and more have been pulled down. The BBC broadcast several hours of the funeral of a violent career criminal and drug user and Labour chose to 'take a knee' in a fricking hilarious photo release. Media pressure is forcing everyone in this country to kneel figuratively and literally to a movement that promotes the destruction of...well everything by the looks of it. This last week has done more to blow up racial tension than Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon has ever done. Take a knee boys, the cameras are watching.
