General News Thread

(11-06-2020 14:24 )lovebabes56 Wrote:  What are they suggesting? and how many signatures?

"The fact that these cliffs are called "white" stands as a racially-insensitive reminder of white privilege and white dominance in a country where many people are Black or Minority Ethnic. Why should marginalized people have to utter the name of the race that oppresses them in order to refer to a geological feature?"

196 signatures so far.

The white cliffs of dover are called that because the are white.... i guess we could call them the light grey cliffs of dover lol

(11-06-2020 13:13 )southsidestu Wrote:  My point about Gone with the Wind is that it is emblematic of the tribalism of the culture wars. How many people who are angered about Colston, GOTW, Little Britain etc had never heard of him or had never/only once or twice watched them? You see this represented in all forms of tribalism. The long history of sectarian violence in Glasgow between Protestants & Catholics, how many times has someone been jumped just for wearing one of the Old Firm's strips?

I remember an interview with a black man who worked to deradicalize members of The KKK and the first thing he always asked them was "How can you hate me when you don't even know me?"

Statues are not erected to teach us about individuals, they come with a small biography at best that never points out their flaws because they are made precisely to honour them. Nobody says this guy was a bad man, quick lets put up statue so everyone knows about it. Colston was a slave trader, he enslaved 100K people, 20K of them died because of the squalid conditions his ships provided because he viewed them as inferior. What are we trying to preserve by putting up a statue in his honour? What do we lose about our history by removing it? He isn't taught in schools, he doesn't have books, tv & films made about him, he did not have a drastic impact on our history he wasn't Henry VIII, Robert the Bruce or Nye Bevan, he was just a bloke that got rich off slavery.

How can they defend his statue when they didn't even know him?

What importance does he have other than the existence/removal of his statue makes him a member of your tribe in the culture wars?

My take on the Colston statue is that the outrage over the taking down of it isn’t that it was taken down as most people in Bristol think that it should be removed, the outrage is about how it was removed by mob rule & breaking the law.

Calling something inanimate white, when it/they are white, is hardly racist or a sign of insensitivity. I mean, c'mon.
Let's focus on things that are naturally white in colour and are named as such, and ignore legitimate, real issues that impact lives

(11-06-2020 15:25 )goatman222 Wrote:  The white cliffs of dover are called that because the are white.... i guess we could call them the light grey cliffs of dover lol

it was writtern by a yank who had never been to dover at the time there are not even bluebirds in england


should have been called the will be blue tits over the white cliffs of dover

Colston was a Slave trader and I have no problem with his statue being lawfully removed. I support the idea of many that removing a statue does not change history and that a better way is to contextualise his acts with a proper explanation of his life. I lived in Bristol for a while and to be honest must have walked past the statue hundreds of time without paying any attention to it. Oh and when he died he left his wealth to the City of Bristol so do you also pull down the almshouses for the poor that his money paid for or Colston Hall?

You can’t change history - you need to explain explain explain and educate people so that the tragedy is not forgotten or repeated.

(11-06-2020 15:50 )Rammyrascal Wrote:  My take on the Colston statue is that the outrage over the taking down of it isn’t that it was taken down as most people in Bristol think that it should be removed, the outrage is about how it was removed by mob rule & breaking the law.

I'm not 100% sure about that to be honest, no doubt some people are angered about the way in which it was moved but looking at social media where you see posts looking at other statues such as Cecil Rhodes people are angry & outraged at them being removed altogether. The most common argument used is "it's part of our history, you can't just erase it" that is not an argument about how something is removed its an argument against removing it in the first place.

For what it's worth you may be surprised to know I am somewhat agnostic towards the removal of these statues. I certainly don't support the honouring of slave traders or people who carried out ethnic cleansing campaigns it's just that statues are symbols & so the removal of them will merely be symbolic. I would much rather that The UK, The US & other colonial powers made an effort to educate their population on their horrors & subsequent racism like Germany has with Nazism & Rwanda is trying to do with the genocide.

In terms of film & TV I think HBO max has got the right idea, in that it has removed it temporarily in order to put up something about racism to give it context. These streaming services use algorithms to recommend your next viewing it would be good if they added programmes that detailed the history of racism, stereotyping, blackface in tv & film & whenever you watched something like Gone with the Wind or a show that uses blackface the algorithm would recommend it to you.

It may also surprise you to know that I don't get offended & outraged by comedy myself, I watch a lot of Dave Chappelle, what I don't understand is why causing offence is so necessary? Of course freedom of speech should be defended but why are we so intent in making hurting someone a virtue of that freedom? There are people around the world in prison or their graves for attempting free speech & yet we cry foul because we can't insult someone.

(11-06-2020 13:32 )goatman222 Wrote:  ^I must say southside your posts are very well worded and thought out unlike mine lol
I agree with all of this post

p.s thank you for your kind words

I just wonder if there would there have been all this news coverage about George Floyd if he got murdered 2 months ago during the peak of the Coronavirus and would there have been all these protests?

Perhaps you could argue its the right time for the news to highlight racism so strongly when a lot of people are watching the news more than they ever have including me, the problem is you then get bandwagon jumpers and idiots who think they can take the law into their own hands when it suits them, whilst people like me only go to work and Tesco's

Racism is very wrong, but sadly its nothing new, if we get a 2nd and 3rd wave of corona the media will be to blame for causing all the protests, don't tell me people have only just had enough of racism in 2020 during a pandemic, George Floyd wasn't a popular celebrity was he, why is he getting special treatment? countless other black people have been murdered and were just a footnote in the news in recent years

Oh and btw i really cannot believe that people are so offended by white actors playing black characters in Little Britain and Bo selecta, i have a mixed race brother and sister and they found those shows funny

I see Dele Alli only got a one match ban for mocking an Asian person who had covid, if he was white he would have probably been given a five match ban and there would have been uproar, its a bit like when Women seem to get off lightly when they abuse/hit Men