As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Seems like UKIP living up to their reputation of the party of fruitcakes , loonies and closet racists....Leader appears to tick all 3 boxes.
In an online CV posted last summer, Mr Vachha listed an extensive list of hobbies which included computer programming, 'Nazi Germany', growing 'ultra-hot' chillies, travelling int he Himalayas and the 'Belgian Congo holocaust'.
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
Oh no !!!!
Here is the Guardian article too. It is a gem. It's like an episode of Brass Eye has become reality.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
In the German slaughter houses it does not seem to have limited itself to just 20%
Also, I am hoping most normal people aren't total bell ends and if they do sit in a place where somebody has covid they would like to be contacted so they can get tested.
Swipe a credit/debit card in a machine - does a test transaction...
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Well now we're into thought police territory. Nothing good ever comes of stuff like this.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
I can very much see both points of view on this one.
I followed the Kaepernick protest from Day 1 (I like the NFL and support his former team), and have supported him in what he is doing from the start. I saw people trying to pretend it was something it wasn't, him adjusting it to address those concerns, and the adjustments doing no good. Within a year he was out of the league, and no reasonable person thinks this was because of his decline in play. Kneeling for the anthem was also banned.
The reason for this outcome was feared loss of revenue from boycotts by the right. The inverse of this would be correctly described by the right as giving in to the mob. The phrase "political correctness" would also find its way into the discussion, if a right-wing protester were treated like that. It was shameful.
Given the horror of what happened to George Floyd, on top of all the other horrors which were met with token disapproval, I don't see how any reasonable person can disagree with a revival of the protest, at least in the US. The UK equivalent (e.g. Stop and Search) has not been well articulated. Nevertheless, if I were a footballer, I would be kneeling, even if nobody else was.
However, there has been a nasty undercurrent through it all from the start. I saw people who were sincerely, if irrationally, offended by Kaepernick's actions - viewing them as an insult to their dead loved ones - being instantly labelled as racists and subjected to hate. If I intervened to try to remove the misunderstanding, I merely got targeted by the same hate (only by the purported anti-racists, never by the offended bereaved relative).
This element has grown, and is a significant part of the movement. That doesn't make BLM a cult, any more than it makes the Conservatives an Islamophobic party or Labour an anti-Semitic party, but there's a case to be made that there are cultish elements within it. Those of us who support the goal of BLM have a responsibility to speak out against the hatred.
The stock response is, of course, to complain that people are only speaking out against their hate and not that of the far right thugs who protest against them. Besides this not being true (the opposite is closer to the truth), there's a logic to that course of action anyway. Among people I know, there's unanimity that the far right thugs are vile, so it hardly needs saying.
The question of what is or is not acceptable behaviour in the name of anti-racism is much less well defined (at least among people I know). Personally, my only problem with pulling down statues is that it's a distraction, and I can even empathise with the rioting in the US. But the vile behaviour that I descibed above, towards bereaved people who have a different opinion, crosses the line for me. I would be much firmer in speaking out against it now than I was then.
That's a fair analysis. I would go along with much of that. Woke is maybe not a cult per se, but there are aspects of cultishness mixed with a kind of ground zero, Red Guardy, revolutionary Maoism
I was discussing this very issue with my 20-something Corbynista wife just this morning, and she actually concurred with all that!
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
Oh no !!!!
Here is the Guardian article too. It is a gem. It's like an episode of Brass Eye has become reality.
That story's almost literally beyond belief - a group of rich modern-day performative Flagellants, seeking punishment for sins so abstruse they need to have others articulate them for them.
'“I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” she stutters, before finally giving up.'
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I don't think any reasonable person whos sees statistics on employment, crime etc. can honestly believe that deeply ingrained racism isn't there. Or if you're someone who goes by personal experience rather than evidence, next time you're on a bus, notice how the last seat to be filled is next to a black man.
What is true is that this racism is overwhelmingly subconscious, and the overwhelming majority of people in Britain sincerely believe that racism is wrong (against black people anyway - Islamophobia's another matter). I'm not so sure that this is true in America.
This is where I think BLM have got the wrong approach to the situation (here, not in America). Subconscious racism can only be tackled through calm discussion, and not one-way discussion in which one party submits to being educated. Aggressive language is extremely counter-productive. I suspect that we are going to see more overt racism, and no less subconscious racism, from the public than we would have done without BLM. On the other hand, there may be positive change as well, e.g. in the behaviour of the police.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
In the German slaughter houses it does not seem to have limited itself to just 20%
Although its not clear how many of those cases are symptomatic and are only being picked up by the testing. If there is a level of natural immunity, they may test positive today (very sensitive test) and not next week.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
Great analysis.
That does indeed seem to be the case.
With the caveat that the 20% figure keeps cropping up in densely populated environments - conurbations and cruise ships - and most likely doesn't apply in rural areas, where the proportion of those who've had the disease in the general population may need to be a lot lower before transmission becomes more difficult.
As you pointed out earlier, none of the stages of unlocking or the major events that have taken place since late March appear to have had any meaningful impact on the steady decline of the disease. Re-opening hospitality probably won't make any difference to the trend either. I'm surprised not to have heard more about museums and art galleries, and frankly I reckon we could get away with cinemas and theatres as well. Possibly even spectator sports, given how little difference all the recent political demos appear to have made to anything, although that might be a step too far even for bolder policymakers.
Mass spread of Covid, outside of hospital and care settings, seems to be related to a very specific and narrow range of activities and environments where ease of transmission appears to be the product of heavy exhalation, or people packed very tightly together like sardines, or both, *AND* all within an enclosed environment at that. Food processing plants, choirs, gyms, commuter trains (the latter quite possibly explaining why London got hit early and hard.)
So - continue to prohibit choral singing performances and hymn singing in churches; let gyms open but for weight training only; keep telling employers to have people work from home where possible; and implement frequent unannounced inspections of high risk workplaces. That, plus some continued use of a one metre distancing rule and judicious application of masking in selected scenarios, might well be sufficient to contain the virus.
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
Given how well behaved people were during the lockdown, I think you are worrying a little too much.
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
Oh no !!!!
Here is the Guardian article too. It is a gem. It's like an episode of Brass Eye has become reality.
That story's almost literally beyond belief - a group of rich modern-day performative Flagellants, seeking punishment for sins so abstruse they need to have others articulate them for them.
'“I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” she stutters, before finally giving up.'
The irony is that a lot of it sounds like the "white man's burden" talk of the 19th Century
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Well now we're into thought police territory. Nothing good ever comes of stuff like this.
My Ghanain ex, from years ago, preferred the company of unreconstructed Afrikaners to white liberals.
I found this a bit startling. Apparently conscious, functional racists were less unpleasant than the underlying racism she found among the.... progressives.
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
...but you are focusing on the ridiculous.
There can be "ridiculous" on both sides of any argument. Do you remember the late Conservative MP Terry Dicks on Nelson Mandela?
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
Given how well behaved people were during the lockdown, I think you are worrying a little too much.
The Peak District National Park and Bournemouth Beach say hi! Not to mention BLM protests in Trafalgar Square.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Well now we're into thought police territory. Nothing good ever comes of stuff like this.
My Ghanain ex, from years ago, preferred the company of unreconstructed Afrikaners to white liberals.
I found this a bit startling. Apparently conscious, functional racists were less unpleasant than the underlying racism she found among the.... progressives.
I've got the impression from some of your previous posts that you have a taste for throwing yourself into the vicinity of progressive types. Must have been distressing for her.
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
Given how well behaved people were during the lockdown, I think you are worrying a little too much.
The Peak District National Park and Bournemouth Beach say hi! Not to mention BLM protests in Trafalgar Square.
A very tiny minority, yes. What were the surveys showing, 90%+ compliance?
As someone who has been made to feel ashamed of the colour of my skin I find it quite galling that people who claim to be anti-racists are doing the very same to anyone else, black, white or brown.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
In the German slaughter houses it does not seem to have limited itself to just 20%
Yeah. The 20% thing could simply be that if you start restrictions when you’ve noticed the problem is significant, you’ll have had about 20% infected in your worst areas by the time you’ve pushed it back down.
I’m more and more attracted to the idea that you need to link superspreaders together to get exponential growth. If you’ve got enough people infected, this is certainly going to happen (sufficient numbers that the average R is a decent spot to work with), while if you’ve got it down far enough, the superspreaders can only link by chance - and the odds are usually against it. Sort of like an engine not quite turning over, but when you get it to spark, it will run and keep going and revving up.
And we now know that outside makes it hard for the ‘rona to spread, which is useful for preventing opportunities for the virus to get lucky.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I don't think any reasonable person whos sees statistics on employment, crime etc. can honestly believe that deeply ingrained racism isn't there. Or if you're someone who goes by personal experience rather than evidence, next time you're on a bus, notice how the last seat to be filled is next to a black man.
What is true is that this racism is overwhelmingly subconscious, and the overwhelming majority of people in Britain sincerely believe that racism is wrong (against black people anyway - Islamophobia's another matter). I'm not so sure that this is true in America.
This is where I think BLM have got the wrong approach to the situation (here, not in America). Subconscious racism can only be tackled through calm discussion, and not one-way discussion in which one party submits to being educated. Aggressive language is extremely counter-productive. I suspect that we are going to see more overt racism, and no less subconscious racism, from the public than we would have done without BLM. On the other hand, there may be positive change as well, e.g. in the behaviour of the police.
Well there are statistics and statistics. and there are communities and communities
Look at schools. Asians are comfortably ahead of whites and blacks in performance in British schools. White boys do worst.
I think it was a labour MP who made the racist statement that Asian people are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the NHS. How dare those pesky Indians and Pakistanis do so well in medical examinations and get promoted by 'deeply racist' Britain!!
Those hard facts simply could not and would not be true in a country that where racism was deeply ingrained. We simply couldn't get those outcomes. It would be impossible.
You are dead wrong and demonstrably dead wrong.
What this is about really is the inability of one community to progress as it would like. It is blaming that underperformance on discrimination entirely. The community itself, its attitudes and practices, is completely beyond reproach.
Look at America and you see that that is far, far from the truth.
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Christ, this stuff (assuming that's not a spoof) is designed to turn people into reactionary right wingers rather than acheive anything progressive. And I suspect that's part of the point. So many people want to resolve problems, but you get this hard core on every side, who by dint of being more determined than anyone else end up driving things, who want as much division and anomisity as possible so they can be at the forefront of a battle.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The trouble with that, and indeed with the whole direction of much of the well-intentioned anti-discrimination initiatives and legislation, is that it pushes people into regarding racial identity as a key dividing issue in society. It seems to me that that just makes things worse - if every official form you fill in asks to for your racial identity, or if as you suggest you consciously consider racial identity in everything, including harmless social interactions, then your racial identity gradually is going to become firstly dividing and then divisive. I'm not at all convinced that this continual picking at the scab is the way to healing the wound.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
Weekend reporting
"Weekend Reporting" - could almost be an old Brian Walden show from the '80s
oh how one misses a good political interviewer. I never bothered me that he was an ex Labour MP,.
He would have had a claim at the time to being Labour's most right wing MP. Reg (the Fascist) Prentice would have been one of his closest competitors for the title.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
Given how well behaved people were during the lockdown, I think you are worrying a little too much.
The Peak District National Park and Bournemouth Beach say hi! Not to mention BLM protests in Trafalgar Square.
A very tiny minority, yes. What were the surveys showing, 90%+ compliance?
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
...but you are focusing on the ridiculous.
There can be "ridiculous" on both sides of any argument. Do you remember the late Conservative MP Terry Dicks on Nelson Mandela?
A focus on the ridiculous which is not representative would indeed be unfair. However, is this debate generally, in a national context, allowing for the acknowledgement of ridiculousness of some of the adherents? I hope so, because if we cannot note and indeed accept the ridiculous elements (like extreme violent elements) but not being representative and not detracting from the overall point, then what ends up happening is they end up being taken as representative and detract from the overall point, because they are not called out as ridiculous enough.
It's why even though its a bit unfair we expect leaders, left, right and centre, to call out lunies on their own side, else they are taken to endorse the lunies.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
Weekend reporting
"Weekend Reporting" - could almost be an old Brian Walden show from the '80s
oh how one misses a good political interviewer. I never bothered me that he was an ex Labour MP,.
He would have had a claim at the time to being Labour's most right wing MP. Reg (the Fascist) Prentice would have been one of his closest competitors for the title.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
Wasn't Walden alleged to be one of Mrs Thatcher's speech writers?
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
In the German slaughter houses it does not seem to have limited itself to just 20%
I am not saying 20% is the limit of those that can be infected, especially in particular high risk environments. I was saying that it seems like when start to hit this level of those that have been infected in a population that transmission appears to start to become much harder and it is fizzling out.
There is research suggesting 80% of cases come from 20% super spreading events. It might be that once you start to get a significant percentage of your population that have had it, the probability of a currently infected person capable of super spreading attends the correct type of event at the correct time is much reduced (especially if restriction on the most risky events are still in place).
The meat processing plants look to be a particularly high risk environment and people stand there 8-10hrs a day in them, so I presume it is maximal transmission opportunity.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
Weekend reporting
"Weekend Reporting" - could almost be an old Brian Walden show from the '80s
oh how one misses a good political interviewer. I never bothered me that he was an ex Labour MP,.
He would have had a claim at the time to being Labour's most right wing MP. Reg (the Fascist) Prentice would have been one of his closest competitors for the title.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
Brian Walden fronted Weekend World, of course; producer was Peter Mandelson.
Those designated as extremely vulnerable to the virus – either due to their age or because of serious health conditions – will be able to spend more time outside their homes.
From 6 July, they will be able to gather outdoors in a group of up to six people, including with family members not in their immediate household.
And from 1 August, the shielding guidance is to be relaxed entirely, meaning those affected will be able to visit shops and places of worship and even return to their workplaces if it is safe to do so.
----
Looks like 1st August is when the government think COVID first wave will be basically done.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I don't think any reasonable person whos sees statistics on employment, crime etc. can honestly believe that deeply ingrained racism isn't there. Or if you're someone who goes by personal experience rather than evidence, next time you're on a bus, notice how the last seat to be filled is next to a black man.
What is true is that this racism is overwhelmingly subconscious, and the overwhelming majority of people in Britain sincerely believe that racism is wrong (against black people anyway - Islamophobia's another matter). I'm not so sure that this is true in America.
This is where I think BLM have got the wrong approach to the situation (here, not in America). Subconscious racism can only be tackled through calm discussion, and not one-way discussion in which one party submits to being educated. Aggressive language is extremely counter-productive. I suspect that we are going to see more overt racism, and no less subconscious racism, from the public than we would have done without BLM. On the other hand, there may be positive change as well, e.g. in the behaviour of the police.
Well there are statistics and statistics. and there are communities and communities
Look at schools. Asians are comfortably ahead of whites and blacks in performance in British schools. White boys do worst.
I think it was a labour MP who made the racist statement that Asian people are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the NHS. How dare those pesky Indians and Pakistanis do so well in medical examinations and get promoted by 'deeply racist' Britain!!
Those hard facts simply could not and would not be true in a country that where racism was deeply ingrained. We simply couldn't get those outcomes. It would be impossible.
You are dead wrong and demonstrably dead wrong.
What this is about really is the inability of one community to progress as it would like. It is blaming that underperformance on discrimination entirely. The community itself, its attitudes and practices, is completely beyond reproach.
Look at America and you see that that is far, far from the truth.
This is very sad to read. You lead off with a noteworthy fact, "White boys do worst", and extrapolate it into all kinds of nonsense. It's self-evidently absurd to argue that a poor outcome for one group, on one measure, means that no other group can possibly be discriminated against. It's excatly kind of reasoning exhibited by the worst people in BLM.
Why not instead consider the reasons, including (possibly) discrimination, why white boys do worst? Why not advocate action to address the issue? Those are positive things to do. And there's a reasonable chance I'd agree. I care a lot about male suicide, for example.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
It is fascinating how it is fizzling out here...where as in the US, it is Corona PARTTTTTIEEEE time, especially in Southern states where it is warm.
Surely it's also fizzling out in the U.S. in states such as NY, NJ and Mass which were worst affected in the early days, before the virus spread to the mid-west and west coast. Plus their death rate is very much lower than ours.
Yes, the NYC it has fizzled out. But many of the states who appeared to have done very well on the West Coast (and it was there just as early as NY), now being hit really hard.
As I have said before, it is as if you hit 20% of your population having got it and then transmission becomes so much harder it fizzles out even when people breaking lockdown e.g. NYC / London.
In the German slaughter houses it does not seem to have limited itself to just 20%
I am not saying 20% is the limit of those that can be infected, especially in particular high risk environments. I was saying that it seems like when start to hit this level of those that have been infected in a population that transmission appears to start to become much harder and it is fizzling out.
There is research suggesting 80% of cases come from 20% super spreading events. It might be that once you start to get a significant percentage of your population that have had it, the probability of a currently infected person capable of super spreading attends the correct type of event at the correct time is much reduced (especially if restriction on the most risky events are still in place).
The meat processing plants look to be a particularly high risk environment and people stand there 8-10hrs a day in them, so I presume it is maximal transmission opportunity.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
That sounds like a mid-seventeenth century puritan calling out sin in other people. You'll make yourself as popular as mid-seventeenth century puritans became.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The trouble with that, and indeed with the whole direction of much of the well-intentioned anti-discrimination initiatives and legislation, is that it pushes people into regarding racial identity as a key dividing issue in society. It seems to me that that just makes things worse - if every official form you fill in asks to for your racial identity, or if as you suggest you consciously consider racial identity in everything, including harmless social interactions, then your racial identity gradually is going to become firstly dividing and then divisive. I'm not at all convinced that this continual picking at the scab is the way to healing the wound.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
No, I mean the opposite. Forms and masses of bureaucracy don't solve anything. I'm talking about a very quiet, no red tape revolution whereby people on a purely voluntary basis shed their racism - become "woke" if you like - and prejudice thus disappears from everyday life, meaning it disappears in time from society. We will be cleansed of it. And I'm furthermore saying we have to recognise that racism does exist in most of us in order for such a cleansing to have a chance of happening. I don't even think it will that painful once we get rolling. Could be quite pleasant, in fact. It's overcoming the initial resistance which is proving fraught. But it's worth it, I believe.
Just reading comments from Christopher Steele, re: Trump and Russia, and Mrs May and Johnson turning a blind eye to it.
If Trump loses in November and he can't infact pardon himself in advance, he may well see his twilight years in a federal penitentiary. Interesting times.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
Weekend reporting
"Weekend Reporting" - could almost be an old Brian Walden show from the '80s
oh how one misses a good political interviewer. I never bothered me that he was an ex Labour MP,.
He would have had a claim at the time to being Labour's most right wing MP. Reg (the Fascist) Prentice would have been one of his closest competitors for the title.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
Brian Walden fronted Weekend World, of course; producer was Peter Mandelson.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Mandelson link. He has been a busy boy on PB today!
Just reading comments from Christopher Steele, re: Trump and Russia, and Mrs May and Johnson turning a blind eye to it.
If Trump loses in November and he can't infact pardon himself in advance, he may well see his twilight years in a federal penitentiary. Interesting times.
That is, incidentally, another good reason for him not to step aside, for Pence or anybody. I'm not sure pardoning himself works, and doubt he wants to test the theory.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The trouble with that, and indeed with the whole direction of much of the well-intentioned anti-discrimination initiatives and legislation, is that it pushes people into regarding racial identity as a key dividing issue in society. It seems to me that that just makes things worse - if every official form you fill in asks to for your racial identity, or if as you suggest you consciously consider racial identity in everything, including harmless social interactions, then your racial identity gradually is going to become firstly dividing and then divisive. I'm not at all convinced that this continual picking at the scab is the way to healing the wound.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
Glad someone else has said it - no doubt much better than I could.
The Strange Case of the Silent Hounds in the Springtime.
Weekend reporting
"Weekend Reporting" - could almost be an old Brian Walden show from the '80s
oh how one misses a good political interviewer. I never bothered me that he was an ex Labour MP,.
He would have had a claim at the time to being Labour's most right wing MP. Reg (the Fascist) Prentice would have been one of his closest competitors for the title.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
Wasn't Walden alleged to be one of Mrs Thatcher's speech writers?
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I don't think any reasonable person whos sees statistics on employment, crime etc. can honestly believe that deeply ingrained racism isn't there. Or if you're someone who goes by personal experience rather than evidence, next time you're on a bus, notice how the last seat to be filled is next to a black man.
What is true is that this racism is overwhelmingly subconscious, and the overwhelming majority of people in Britain sincerely believe that racism is wrong (against black people anyway - Islamophobia's another matter). I'm not so sure that this is true in America.
This is where I think BLM have got the wrong approach to the situation (here, not in America). Subconscious racism can only be tackled through calm discussion, and not one-way discussion in which one party submits to being educated. Aggressive language is extremely counter-productive. I suspect that we are going to see more overt racism, and no less subconscious racism, from the public than we would have done without BLM. On the other hand, there may be positive change as well, e.g. in the behaviour of the police.
Well there are statistics and statistics. and there are communities and communities
Look at schools. Asians are comfortably ahead of whites and blacks in performance in British schools. White boys do worst.
I think it was a labour MP who made the racist statement that Asian people are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the NHS. How dare those pesky Indians and Pakistanis do so well in medical examinations and get promoted by 'deeply racist' Britain!!
Those hard facts simply could not and would not be true in a country that where racism was deeply ingrained. We simply couldn't get those outcomes. It would be impossible.
You are dead wrong and demonstrably dead wrong.
What this is about really is the inability of one community to progress as it would like. It is blaming that underperformance on discrimination entirely. The community itself, its attitudes and practices, is completely beyond reproach.
Look at America and you see that that is far, far from the truth.
This is very sad to read. You lead off with a noteworthy fact, "White boys do worst", and extrapolate it into all kinds of nonsense. It's self-evidently absurd to argue that a poor outcome for one group, on one measure, means that no other group can possibly be discriminated against. It's excatly kind of reasoning exhibited by the worst people in BLM.
Why not instead consider the reasons, including (possibly) discrimination, why white boys do worst? Why not advocate action to address the issue? Those are positive things to do. And there's a reasonable chance I'd agree. I care a lot about male suicide, for example.
I have spent all afternoon citing hard evidence against the proposition made by you and others that racism in Britain is deeply ingrained. Hard evidence. Numbers. details.
YOu have countered with nothing. Not a single number. Just a pile of completely unsubstantiated nonsense about people not sitting next to each other on buses.
YOu have demonstrably lost this argument. Your entire movement is based on a subjective observation of society as you see it.
It is a movement that doesn't have a single democratic representative. A fact (and it is a FACT) that suggests its an observation shared by few.
As someone who has been made to feel ashamed of the colour of my skin I find it quite galling that people who claim to be anti-racists are doing the very same to anyone else, black, white or brown.
To be fair, some people are trying to re-write the definition of minority:
- If you are successful, you aren't a Proper Minority. - So Hindu Indians, Chinese, West Africans etc (who are all middle class) aren't Proper Minorities. - Since they are successful in education etc, this can only be by Acting White. - Since they are Acting White, they are white. - Since they are white, they can't be discriminated against. - But they need to be. - Since their success is just more White Privilege.
Just reading comments from Christopher Steele, re: Trump and Russia, and Mrs May and Johnson turning a blind eye to it.
If Trump loses in November and he can't infact pardon himself in advance, he may well see his twilight years in a federal penitentiary. Interesting times.
That is, incidentally, another good reason for him not to step aside, for Pence or anybody. I'm not sure pardoning himself works, and doubt he wants to test the theory.
All his dealings with everyone have been just perfect, so what would he need to pardon himself for?
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
That sounds like a mid-seventeenth century puritan calling out sin in other people. You'll make yourself as popular as mid-seventeenth century puritans became.
You're misreading it as something with a "burn the witches" feel to it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To fight racism you need to change hearts & minds such that people (i) recognize it and (ii) truly wish to change things to eliminate it and (iii) accept that one of those things to be changed is themselves.
But most people won't do that, because most people are not idiots and want thngs like contact tracing to work.
You don't have to worry about the sensible majority, its the stupid minority that will cause problems.
Over the years I have had to sign off many, many Hazardous Waste Consignment notes, which are a legal document reported to the Environment Agency/Sepa and Natural Resources Wales. They were purported to be consigned by Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Hilarious...not!
No ID, no drinkie...
Good luck with that that in some down town after hours lock-in joint
You almost sound as if you want this to fail
Certainly not. If people behave themselves its a great idea. I am just not sure enough will.
Given how well behaved people were during the lockdown, I think you are worrying a little too much.
The Peak District National Park and Bournemouth Beach say hi! Not to mention BLM protests in Trafalgar Square.
A very tiny minority, yes. What were the surveys showing, 90%+ compliance?
But Long Lensing groups made people look like they were close together!!! (Panic!!!!!!!)
Well, here's a tough decision for a literary agency to take. Do they want to continue to represent Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, or stick with J. K. Rowling? It's that kind of difficult conundrum which requires true management skill.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
I can very much see both points of view on this one.
I followed the Kaepernick protest from Day 1 (I like the NFL and support his former team), and have supported him in what he is doing from the start. I saw people trying to pretend it was something it wasn't, him adjusting it to address those concerns, and the adjustments doing no good. Within a year he was out of the league, and no reasonable person thinks this was because of his decline in play. Kneeling for the anthem was also banned.
The reason for this outcome was feared loss of revenue from boycotts by the right. The inverse of this would be correctly described by the right as giving in to the mob. The phrase "political correctness" would also find its way into the discussion, if a right-wing protester were treated like that. It was shameful.
Given the horror of what happened to George Floyd, on top of all the other horrors which were met with token disapproval, I don't see how any reasonable person can disagree with a revival of the protest, at least in the US. The UK equivalent (e.g. Stop and Search) has not been well articulated. Nevertheless, if I were a footballer, I would be kneeling, even if nobody else was.
However, there has been a nasty undercurrent through it all from the start. I saw people who were sincerely, if irrationally, offended by Kaepernick's actions - viewing them as an insult to their dead loved ones - being instantly labelled as racists and subjected to hate. If I intervened to try to remove the misunderstanding, I merely got targeted by the same hate (only by the purported anti-racists, never by the offended bereaved relative).
This element has grown, and is a significant part of the movement. That doesn't make BLM a cult, any more than it makes the Conservatives an Islamophobic party or Labour an anti-Semitic party, but there's a case to be made that there are cultish elements within it. Those of us who support the goal of BLM have a responsibility to speak out against the hatred.
The stock response is, of course, to complain that people are only speaking out against their hate and not that of the far right thugs who protest against them. Besides this not being true (the opposite is closer to the truth), there's a logic to that course of action anyway. Among people I know, there's unanimity that the far right thugs are vile, so it hardly needs saying.
The question of what is or is not acceptable behaviour in the name of anti-racism is much less well defined (at least among people I know). Personally, my only problem with pulling down statues is that it's a distraction, and I can even empathise with the rioting in the US. But the vile behaviour that I descibed above, towards bereaved people who have a different opinion, crosses the line for me. I would be much firmer in speaking out against it now than I was then.
That's a fair analysis. I would go along with much of that. Woke is maybe not a cult per se, but there are aspects of cultishness mixed with a kind of ground zero, Red Guardy, revolutionary Maoism
I was discussing this very issue with my 20-something Corbynista wife just this morning, and she actually concurred with all that!
"...But there are aspects of cultishness mixed with a kind of ground zero, Red Guardy, revolutionary Maoism."
Sure, but apart from that, what do you think of them, Eadric?
Well, here's a tough decision for a literary agency to take. Do they want to continue to represent Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, or stick with J. K. Rowling? It's that kind of difficult conundrum which requires true management skill.
"A spokeswoman said it would always champion diverse voices and believe in freedom of speech for all but it was not willing to have staff “re-educated” to meet the demands of a small group of clients."
Well, here's a tough decision for a literary agency to take. Do they want to continue to represent Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, or stick with J. K. Rowling? It's that kind of difficult conundrum which requires true management skill.
Those designated as extremely vulnerable to the virus – either due to their age or because of serious health conditions – will be able to spend more time outside their homes.
From 6 July, they will be able to gather outdoors in a group of up to six people, including with family members not in their immediate household.
And from 1 August, the shielding guidance is to be relaxed entirely, meaning those affected will be able to visit shops and places of worship and even return to their workplaces if it is safe to do so.
----
Looks like 1st August is when the government think COVID first wave will be basically done.
I have a work colleague who's going stir crazy stuck at home during all this because she's shielding, and is thus restricted to remote work on paperwork duties. Our employer has been very good at finding her things that she can do at home, but ultimately we are laboratory workers and we need to be in our workplace to be fully functional, hence the fact that I and the rest of our colleagues have been in work throughout the entire crisis.
Being able to come back will therefore be an enormous relief to her: we hear, quite understandably, a great deal about the vulnerability of shielders and their fear, but the toll on people's mental health from being locked away shouldn't be underestimated either.
Community transmission in this part of the world appears to be very low (nobody I know has had Covid) and our employer takes the virus seriously. Moreover, more by accident than design, the room in which myself and the aforementioned shielder normally work together could almost have been custom-built with the two metre rule in mind. So I think there's every reason to suppose that it's sufficiently safe for her to come back in August.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The trouble with that, and indeed with the whole direction of much of the well-intentioned anti-discrimination initiatives and legislation, is that it pushes people into regarding racial identity as a key dividing issue in society. It seems to me that that just makes things worse - if every official form you fill in asks to for your racial identity, or if as you suggest you consciously consider racial identity in everything, including harmless social interactions, then your racial identity gradually is going to become firstly dividing and then divisive. I'm not at all convinced that this continual picking at the scab is the way to healing the wound.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
No, I mean the opposite. Forms and masses of bureaucracy don't solve anything. I'm talking about a very quiet, no red tape revolution whereby people on a purely voluntary basis shed their racism - become "woke" if you like - and prejudice thus disappears from everyday life, meaning it disappears in time from society. We will be cleansed of it. And I'm furthermore saying we have to recognise that racism does exist in most of us in order for such a cleansing to have a chance of happening. I don't even think it will that painful once we get rolling. Could be quite pleasant, in fact. It's overcoming the initial resistance which is proving fraught. But it's worth it, I believe.
That's a really good comment. I don't like the associations of the word "cleanse", but aside from that, it's exactly what I think needs to happen.
My concern is that most people are not open to this, and what's happening right now is making them less open. What's needed is discussion, at the level of individual social interactions, between people who acknowldge each other as equals, each with opinions and experiences that are worthy of sharing. Seeing the viscious cycle between the "white people should just shut up and listen" attitude, and the dismissiveness that is widespread among white people, I don't see much cause for optimism.
Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, has said some coronavirus restrictions would be reimposed in Lisbon to help control outbreaks.
Costa said measures to be introduced from Tuesday included a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 people and orders for cafes and shops to close at 8pm in the capital.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the s That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
That sounds like a mid-seventeenth century puritan calling out sin in other people. You'll make yourself as popular as mid-seventeenth century puritans became.
You're misreading it as something with a "burn the witches" feel to it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To fight racism you need to change hearts & minds such that people (i) recognize it and (ii) truly wish to change things to eliminate it and (iii) accept that one of those things to be changed is themselves.
That's what I'm saying.
Not so much "burn the witch" as chop down the maypole, frown at those who wish to play cards/practise worldly dancing etc.
I would defy anybody to deny that they have ever told or laughed at a racist joke, (I certainly have) and nor am I going to start calling out people who do so.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Well now we're into thought police territory. Nothing good ever comes of stuff like this.
My Ghanain ex, from years ago, preferred the company of unreconstructed Afrikaners to white liberals.
I found this a bit startling. Apparently conscious, functional racists were less unpleasant than the underlying racism she found among the.... progressives.
I've got the impression from some of your previous posts that you have a taste for throwing yourself into the vicinity of progressive types. Must have been distressing for her.
It provides hours of endless fun, yanking their legs.
She thought my pranks hilarious - her recounting of them to various friends was a party piece. One time in Accra, she had the whole room in stitches - that was the MP and the ground nut scheme....
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
The trouble with that, and indeed with the whole direction of much of the well-intentioned anti-discrimination initiatives and legislation, is that it pushes people into regarding racial identity as a key dividing issue in society. It seems to me that that just makes things worse - if every official form you fill in asks to for your racial identity, or if as you suggest you consciously consider racial identity in everything, including harmless social interactions, then your racial identity gradually is going to become firstly dividing and then divisive. I'm not at all convinced that this continual picking at the scab is the way to healing the wound.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
No, I mean the opposite. Forms and masses of bureaucracy don't solve anything. I'm talking about a very quiet, no red tape revolution whereby people on a purely voluntary basis shed their racism - become "woke" if you like - and prejudice thus disappears from everyday life, meaning it disappears in time from society. We will be cleansed of it. And I'm furthermore saying we have to recognise that racism does exist in most of us in order for such a cleansing to have a chance of happening. I don't even think it will that painful once we get rolling. Could be quite pleasant, in fact. It's overcoming the initial resistance which is proving fraught. But it's worth it, I believe.
That's a really good comment. I don't like the associations of the word "cleanse", but aside from that, it's exactly what I think needs to happen.
My concern is that most people are not open to this, and what's happening right now is making them less open. What's needed is discussion, at the level of individual social interactions, between people who acknowldge each other as equals, each with opinions and experiences that are worthy of sharing. Seeing the viscious cycle between the "white people should just shut up and listen" attitude, and the dismissiveness that is widespread among white people, I don't see much cause for optimism.
Same here. It doesnt feel like a cathartic period leading to growth all around to me. It feels like people getting angrier and more entrenched, and the most likely outcome beyond a few good examples is a lot more focus on race, in a bad way.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
But racism does exist and it's a problem. I'm simply putting forward my proposal for solving the problem. Which is for people to drop the "Oh FFS, whatever next?" type response to Woke and instead to become Woke themselves. Or at least be a little open minded about the idea and give it a shot. I fear there will be little progress made from here otherwise. Or (more likely) the progress will come but it will take much longer.
Just reading comments from Christopher Steele, re: Trump and Russia, and Mrs May and Johnson turning a blind eye to it.
If Trump loses in November and he can't infact pardon himself in advance, he may well see his twilight years in a federal penitentiary. Interesting times.
That is, incidentally, another good reason for him not to step aside, for Pence or anybody. I'm not sure pardoning himself works, and doubt he wants to test the theory.
All his dealings with everyone have been just perfect, so what would he need to pardon himself for?
Biased media, witch-hunts, fake news, crooked judiciary....you know the kind of thing. Fact he's been the greatest President ever wouldn't necessarily save him.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
But racism does exist and it's a problem. I'm simply putting forward my proposal for solving the problem. Which is for people to drop the "Oh FFS, whatever next?" type response to Woke and instead to become Woke themselves. Or at least be a little open minded about the idea and give it a shot. I fear there will be little progress made from here otherwise. Or (more likely) the progress will come but it will take much longer.
The only way progress will be made is for the opposite of what you want to see happen, to happen.
The perfect storm for a toe-curling racially insensitive situation to happen is for the black individual to be thinking 'this white person is going to be racist', and for the white person to be thinking 'Oh fuck, this black person is going to think I'm racist'. Some stupidity is almost bound to happen under those circumstances. The way for this situation not to happen, and for a positive interaction to take place, is for neither party to be thinking about racism, for neither to be acutely aware either of their colour or the colour of the individual they are interacting with, and for both to find common ground on something else.
The talk at the moment just increases division between white and black. It is toxically divisive. And it feeds the issue it claims to be trying to resolve.
As someone who has been made to feel ashamed of the colour of my skin I find it quite galling that people who claim to be anti-racists are doing the very same to anyone else, black, white or brown.
A white person being aware that they personally are not free of racism does not mean they are ashamed of being white. This does not follow at all.
Boris still looks absolutely dreadful. I don't mean the messy hair, I mean he looks 10 years older and as if he hasn't slept for a month.
New baby effect?
Nope he has always looked like that, it is just that the scales are beginning to fall from peoples' eyes and they are seeing the real, fundamentally unsuitable, package of deceit and lies that is the person of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
Sensible Republicans - of which there are some - should write off the 2016 presidential election and instead should work on two things:
1. Ensuring the Trump Taint does as little damage as possible to the down-ticket elections, especially the Senate races, and
2. Thinking long and hard about how the party can recover from disaster of nominating Trump in the first place. He's toxified the brand to a degree which is even greater than was obvious in 2016. It's not going to be easy to reverse that.
Back in the real world, GOP senators are doing worse than Trump in many recent state polls.
That's not at all surprising. A lot of Trump supporters are suspicious of their GOP Senators, and will not automatically vote for them.
The whole reason Trump is president is because the "sensible Republicans" as Nabavi calls them are more toxic than he is. The idea you get rid of Trump and people will vote for GOP senators is for the birds.
It probably doesn't do a huge amount with his base though, who have been suspicious of the Republican establishment. I think attacks like The Lincoln Project just reinforce that narrative for his supporters.
Ps interesting polling from Michigan - new poll out has Biden only 1 point ahead. That is 2 polls recently with a +1/+2% lead for the Dems in Michigan whereas others have had double digit leads
I thought their 2018 senate polling was strictly mediocre .
Ok, finished the article. What a load of do-hikey. They predicted a 10 point win for Cruz in Texas, he won by 2.5. They predicted a Republican win in Nevada and Arizona. Both Dem wins.
Their 2018 polling was not great.
They were the only pollster to correctly predict Trump would win Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016 and also the only pollster to correctly predict DeSantis would win Florida in 2018
Well, here's a tough decision for a literary agency to take. Do they want to continue to represent Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, or stick with J. K. Rowling? It's that kind of difficult conundrum which requires true management skill.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
But racism does exist and it's a problem. I'm simply putting forward my proposal for solving the problem. Which is for people to drop the "Oh FFS, whatever next?" type response to Woke and instead to become Woke themselves. Or at least be a little open minded about the idea and give it a shot. I fear there will be little progress made from here otherwise. Or (more likely) the progress will come but it will take much longer.
The only way progress will be made is for the opposite of what you want to see happen, to happen.
The perfect storm for a toe-curling racially insensitive situation to happen is for the black individual to be thinking 'this white person is going to be racist', and for the white person to be thinking 'Oh fuck, this black person is going to think I'm racist'. Some stupidity is almost bound to happen under those circumstances. The way for this situation not to happen, and for a positive interaction to take place, is for neither party to be thinking about racism, for neither to be acutely aware either of their colour or the colour of the individual they are interacting with, and for both to find common ground on something else.
The talk at the moment just increases division between white and black. It is toxically divisive. And it feeds the issue it claims to be trying to resolve.
While I dont think people should or can just not be thinking about racism to address it, I do think hyper sensitive, hyper aware focuses on racial matters feeds rather than resolves the issue.
Self reflection is one thing, constant self examination of thoughts and actions in search of subconscious biases and racism (and it would be subconscious since most people agree racism is bad) seems bound to result in acting differently toward people of different characteristics even when no racism existed.
Wasnt there some story years back not enough eye contact being a micro aggression, which seemed like it would end up with a lot of people being stared at because of their race by people trying to avoid said micro aggression? I hope I'm remembering a parody.
R in England is hovering just under 1. Possibly the super clusters? R in London is 0.69, comfortably under. Number of cases are slowly coming down but not very quickly.
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
We want to counter woke because it makes assumptions that aren't based on fact.
You have produced little to no evidence to actually show 'deeply ingrained' racism in our society. 50 years ago you would have had a strong case. No you have a very weak case.
There is also a stack of evidence against you. Discrimination is illegal in law, race hate speech is illegal in law. Some of the most powerful positions in our society are held by people from ethnic minorities with the total and full consent of the British people.
Deeply ingrained racism just isn;t there any more.
I'm talking about in people rather than encoded in law.
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Well now we're into thought police territory. Nothing good ever comes of stuff like this.
No! YOU will be doing the policing. I can't do it for you. No-one can but you. Your mind is your man-cave.
But I would encourage you to make a start if at all possible. Because I sense there's lots of ground to cover in your case.
As someone who has been made to feel ashamed of the colour of my skin I find it quite galling that people who claim to be anti-racists are doing the very same to anyone else, black, white or brown.
A white person being aware that they personally are not free of racism does not mean they are ashamed of being white. This does not follow at all.
Yes, accusing all white women of upholding white supremacy isn't trying to shame them at all. Clearly.
Your fellow travellers have jumped off into the deep end.
Boris still looks absolutely dreadful. I don't mean the messy hair, I mean he looks 10 years older and as if he hasn't slept for a month.
New baby effect?
Nope he has always looked like that, it is just that the scales are beginning to fall from peoples' eyes and they are seeing the real, fundamentally unsuitable, package of deceit and lies that is the person of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
Er, no, since people who like or hate him are able to judge how he looks regardless of his personality or leadership qualities. By your logic people would be incapable of acknowledging if a political opponent was physically attractive or a political hero homely.
As someone who has been made to feel ashamed of the colour of my skin I find it quite galling that people who claim to be anti-racists are doing the very same to anyone else, black, white or brown.
A white person being aware that they personally are not free of racism does not mean they are ashamed of being white. This does not follow at all.
Out of interest would a white person saying or believing they are free of racism be racist, or simply wrong?
The desire to portray anti-racism as a "cult" indicates to me how deep seated racism is.
Are you saying it's impossible to have a movement that argues for members of all ethnic groups to treat one another with respect and dignity without having to subscribe to all the monument-destruction, 'White Fragility', foot-washing, language-rewriting, Marxism, cultishness, inherited guilt, reparations-for-ancient-sins bollocks?
Because the former would get close to 99% public support, and could achieve real, tangible progress. It's the latter accretions that turn a good, even inspirational movement into a sinister culture war that otherwise fair-minded people will be driven to resist.
I'm saying that racism is deeply ingrained and one of the main reasons people are so energized to smear and demonize "woke", to mis-characterize and weaponize it as an insult - or just very happily go along with those that do - is because they know this is the case and they are queasy about facing it. Which is a shame because the uncomfortable experience of facing it could, if done in the right way, accelerate us towards the colour blind future that most of us want to see realized one day.
I can very much see both points of view on this one.
I followed the Kaepernick protest from Day 1 (I like the NFL and support his former team), and have supported him in what he is doing from the start. I saw people trying to pretend it was something it wasn't, him adjusting it to address those concerns, and the adjustments doing no good. Within a year he was out of the league, and no reasonable person thinks this was because of his decline in play. Kneeling for the anthem was also banned.
The reason for this outcome was feared loss of revenue from boycotts by the right. The inverse of this would be correctly described by the right as giving in to the mob. The phrase "political correctness" would also find its way into the discussion, if a right-wing protester were treated like that. It was shameful.
Given the horror of what happened to George Floyd, on top of all the other horrors which were met with token disapproval, I don't see how any reasonable person can disagree with a revival of the protest, at least in the US. The UK equivalent (e.g. Stop and Search) has not been well articulated. Nevertheless, if I were a footballer, I would be kneeling, even if nobody else was.
However, there has been a nasty undercurrent through it all from the start. I saw people who were sincerely, if irrationally, offended by Kaepernick's actions - viewing them as an insult to their dead loved ones - being instantly labelled as racists and subjected to hate. If I intervened to try to remove the misunderstanding, I merely got targeted by the same hate (only by the purported anti-racists, never by the offended bereaved relative).
This element has grown, and is a significant part of the movement. That doesn't make BLM a cult, any more than it makes the Conservatives an Islamophobic party or Labour an anti-Semitic party, but there's a case to be made that there are cultish elements within it. Those of us who support the goal of BLM have a responsibility to speak out against the hatred.
The stock response is, of course, to complain that people are only speaking out against their hate and not that of the far right thugs who protest against them. Besides this not being true (the opposite is closer to the truth), there's a logic to that course of action anyway. Among people I know, there's unanimity that the far right thugs are vile, so it hardly needs saying.
The question of what is or is not acceptable behaviour in the name of anti-racism is much less well defined (at least among people I know). Personally, my only problem with pulling down statues is that it's a distraction, and I can even empathise with the rioting in the US. But the vile behaviour that I descibed above, towards bereaved people who have a different opinion, crosses the line for me. I would be much firmer in speaking out against it now than I was then.
Great post.
I can see more than one side to this too. It's complex.
But it's the Woke case that most needs making on here - the caricature of it is wrong and imo supplies fuel to nasty racists - so that is what for my sins I'm doing.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
But racism does exist and it's a problem. I'm simply putting forward my proposal for solving the problem. Which is for people to drop the "Oh FFS, whatever next?" type response to Woke and instead to become Woke themselves. Or at least be a little open minded about the idea and give it a shot. I fear there will be little progress made from here otherwise. Or (more likely) the progress will come but it will take much longer.
The only way progress will be made is for the opposite of what you want to see happen, to happen.
The perfect storm for a toe-curling racially insensitive situation to happen is for the black individual to be thinking 'this white person is going to be racist', and for the white person to be thinking 'Oh fuck, this black person is going to think I'm racist'. Some stupidity is almost bound to happen under those circumstances. The way for this situation not to happen, and for a positive interaction to take place, is for neither party to be thinking about racism, for neither to be acutely aware either of their colour or the colour of the individual they are interacting with, and for both to find common ground on something else.
The talk at the moment just increases division between white and black. It is toxically divisive. And it feeds the issue it claims to be trying to resolve.
While I dont think people should or can just not be thinking about racism to address it, I do think hyper sensitive, hyper aware focuses on racial matters feeds rather than resolves the issue.
Self reflection is one thing, constant self examination of thoughts and actions in search of subconscious biases and racism (and it would be subconscious since most people agree racism is bad) seems bound to result in acting differently toward people of different characteristics even when no racism existed.
Wasnt there some story years back not enough eye contact being a micro aggression, which seemed like it would end up with a lot of people being stared at because of their race by people trying to avoid said micro aggression? I hope I'm remembering a parody.
We can never 'stop' thinking about something - to try and do that would make one end up thinking about it more. But we can move the focus to other things - to common ground, and off the issue that is causing the conflict. All the bloggers, activists, lobbyists, educators that make a living from this issue - do you think they want these issues to be eliminated? What would they do for a living?
As the essay describes, it displays all the major characteristics of a cult, the only difference is that Wokeness is so much bigger than most cults, and therefore much more dangerous.
In particular, Wokeness uses a concept - White Fragility - to reel people into the guilt by making them feel painfully guilty and inadequate, a crisis which can only be solved by joining the cult, accepting all its nostrums, and thereby gaining redemption. Which is what all successful cults do.
ie White Fragility means you, as a white person, are racist. This racism, your racism, is systemic and invisible and does not have to be proved, it just exists. If you admit you are racist then of course you are evil, and the only way to save yourself is joining the Woke, and admitting sin. If you deny you are racist that is because you have White Fragility, and cannot see that you are racist, which makes you even MORE racist. So, again, you have to join the Woke to save yourself.
It's fiendishly clever and seriously disturbing.
Chapo Trap House recently critiqued White Fragility from a leftist materialist perspective. They focus on the background of the author as somebody who is paid by large corporations to come and give implicit bias training, which (they claim) the evidence shows is ineffective, and say the true reason for it is to reduce the corporation's liability, and to potentially provide ammunition if they want to fire people. They talk about how the book is essentially a sales pitch to affluent liberals to keep paying for courses like the author's as a kind of temporary absolution- a bitter medicine that you know works because it's painful, but ultimately doesn't actually do anything to help minorities. They say that on the contrary, real anti-racist work that actually helps people should feel good.
I found it a lot more convincing than your hysteria.
That's interesting. Hadn't come across that.
You are not too enamoured with "affluent white liberals", I sense.
All puts me in mind of this. I saw an article in The Guardian (where else !!!) about it.
Can you define 'facing it'? Because I have no problem whatsoever talking about things like innate and societal bias where the evidence is clear and the solutions demanded are reasonable and practical. I love history - the darker the better, in most cases - so let's get all of it out there in the public eye, although again it can't be told just from one single perspective, whether that's woke or unwoke.
That's what I understand by 'facing it'. I'm very far from convinced that that's what most people on the woke side mean by it. I genuinely don't even know if they have an official list of demands, who wrote it, what validity it has, etc.
OK, ready? One s-o-c para -
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
You don't appear to realise that life gives us evidence for anything we believe. If you were a heavy survivalist conspiracy theorist, believe me, you would see evidence of the approaching end times in your daily life. If you believed Germany was out to take over the world a third time, you would see evidence of it everywhere in your daily life. If you're left wing, you see evidence, hard evidence, of the right wing destroying and undermining the public services that your side has worked so hard to build, every day. If you're right wing, you see evidence of the remorseless progress of the blob, strangling innovation and productivity and absorbing more power to itself, every day. And if you believe that people are racist, you will gather evidence of it, some real, some misconstrued, all the time. It's a perception. Whatever we can or cannot do about racism, what we cannot do is be responsible for, or to, people's own perceptions.
But racism does exist and it's a problem. I'm simply putting forward my proposal for solving the problem. Which is for people to drop the "Oh FFS, whatever next?" type response to Woke and instead to become Woke themselves. Or at least be a little open minded about the idea and give it a shot. I fear there will be little progress made from here otherwise. Or (more likely) the progress will come but it will take much longer.
The only way progress will be made is for the opposite of what you want to see happen, to happen.
The perfect storm for a toe-curling racially insensitive situation to happen is for the black individual to be thinking 'this white person is going to be racist', and for the white person to be thinking 'Oh fuck, this black person is going to think I'm racist'. Some stupidity is almost bound to happen under those circumstances. The way for this situation not to happen, and for a positive interaction to take place, is for neither party to be thinking about racism, for neither to be acutely aware either of their colour or the colour of the individual they are interacting with, and for both to find common ground on something else.
The talk at the moment just increases division between white and black. It is toxically divisive. And it feeds the issue it claims to be trying to resolve.
While I dont think people should or can just not be thinking about racism to address it, I do think hyper sensitive, hyper aware focuses on racial matters feeds rather than resolves the issue.
Self reflection is one thing, constant self examination of thoughts and actions in search of subconscious biases and racism (and it would be subconscious since most people agree racism is bad) seems bound to result in acting differently toward people of different characteristics even when no racism existed.
Wasnt there some story years back not enough eye contact being a micro aggression, which seemed like it would end up with a lot of people being stared at because of their race by people trying to avoid said micro aggression? I hope I'm remembering a parody.
We can never 'stop' thinking about something - to try and do that would make one end up thinking about it more. But we can move the focus to other things - to common ground, and off the issue that is causing the conflict. All the bloggers, activists, lobbyists, educators that make a living from this issue - do you think they want these issues to be eliminated? What would they do for a living?
I think most do. But those who are the most aggressive and divisive dont, otherwise they are very counter productive
All I want is the discipline of objective historical inquiry taught at schools (free of the politics, please), for the facts to be faithfully relayed, and for the truth to be pursued wherever it might lie.
Sensible Republicans - of which there are some - should write off the 2016 presidential election and instead should work on two things:
1. Ensuring the Trump Taint does as little damage as possible to the down-ticket elections, especially the Senate races, and
2. Thinking long and hard about how the party can recover from disaster of nominating Trump in the first place. He's toxified the brand to a degree which is even greater than was obvious in 2016. It's not going to be easy to reverse that.
Back in the real world, GOP senators are doing worse than Trump in many recent state polls.
That's not at all surprising. A lot of Trump supporters are suspicious of their GOP Senators, and will not automatically vote for them.
The whole reason Trump is president is because the "sensible Republicans" as Nabavi calls them are more toxic than he is. The idea you get rid of Trump and people will vote for GOP senators is for the birds.
It probably doesn't do a huge amount with his base though, who have been suspicious of the Republican establishment. I think attacks like The Lincoln Project just reinforce that narrative for his supporters.
Ps interesting polling from Michigan - new poll out has Biden only 1 point ahead. That is 2 polls recently with a +1/+2% lead for the Dems in Michigan whereas others have had double digit leads
I thought their 2018 senate polling was strictly mediocre .
Ok, finished the article. What a load of do-hikey. They predicted a 10 point win for Cruz in Texas, he won by 2.5. They predicted a Republican win in Nevada and Arizona. Both Dem wins.
Their 2018 polling was not great.
They were the only pollster to correctly predict Trump would win Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016 and also the only pollster to correctly predict DeSantis would win Florida in 2018
Yeah no pollster gets them all right, and there weren't really any better pollsters over all the contests in 2018.
I do like their philosophy of keeping polls short to not scare off people who aren't obsessives. I've been through all the latest polls and I do wonder about how representative are the people willing to answer the multitude of questions asked by some pollsters. We'll see how well they do this time round.
Comments
'Dear white women:
You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage. The dinners are a starting point. A place to start thinking through how you actively uphold white supremacy every minute of every day.
What you do after you leave the dinner is up to you.
Sincerely,
Regina Jackson & Saira Rao'
Definitely not a cult or brainwashing, nooo....
Here is the Guardian article too. It is a gem. It's like an episode of Brass Eye has become reality.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/race-to-dinner-party-racism-women
How prevalent is it in people? Not a provable proposition but I am of the opinion it is very prevalent, albeit perhaps less so in the young.
Of course if you ask 10 random people if they are free of racism, 9 will say they are. But this (imo) is because (i) racism is a difficult thing to admit to and (ii) many people who are not free of racism are genuinely able to convince themselves that they are.
My sense is that the 9/1 split should in truth be the other way - i.e. only around 10% of people are free of racism.
I'm certainly not. And btw I became conscious of this way before "woke" became a thing or a word.
Anybody who aids and abets genocide is deserving of far worse than she will ever get.
'“I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” she stutters, before finally giving up.'
What is true is that this racism is overwhelmingly subconscious, and the overwhelming majority of people in Britain sincerely believe that racism is wrong (against black people anyway - Islamophobia's another matter). I'm not so sure that this is true in America.
This is where I think BLM have got the wrong approach to the situation (here, not in America). Subconscious racism can only be tackled through calm discussion, and not one-way discussion in which one party submits to being educated. Aggressive language is extremely counter-productive. I suspect that we are going to see more overt racism, and no less subconscious racism, from the public than we would have done without BLM. On the other hand, there may be positive change as well, e.g. in the behaviour of the police.
As you pointed out earlier, none of the stages of unlocking or the major events that have taken place since late March appear to have had any meaningful impact on the steady decline of the disease. Re-opening hospitality probably won't make any difference to the trend either. I'm surprised not to have heard more about museums and art galleries, and frankly I reckon we could get away with cinemas and theatres as well. Possibly even spectator sports, given how little difference all the recent political demos appear to have made to anything, although that might be a step too far even for bolder policymakers.
Mass spread of Covid, outside of hospital and care settings, seems to be related to a very specific and narrow range of activities and environments where ease of transmission appears to be the product of heavy exhalation, or people packed very tightly together like sardines, or both, *AND* all within an enclosed environment at that. Food processing plants, choirs, gyms, commuter trains (the latter quite possibly explaining why London got hit early and hard.)
So - continue to prohibit choral singing performances and hymn singing in churches; let gyms open but for weight training only; keep telling employers to have people work from home where possible; and implement frequent unannounced inspections of high risk workplaces. That, plus some continued use of a one metre distancing rule and judicious application of masking in selected scenarios, might well be sufficient to contain the virus.
This bit's good:
'we have lawyer Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu who deemed it appropriate to liken Munira to not only a holocaust denier'
How dare someone involved in denying the Bosnian genocide be accused of holocaust denial?
Edit: 'woke left' count 8.
All it would have needed to do was increase the interest rate it was offering to pay.
I found this a bit startling. Apparently conscious, functional racists were less unpleasant than the underlying racism she found among the.... progressives.
There can be "ridiculous" on both sides of any argument. Do you remember the late Conservative MP Terry Dicks on Nelson Mandela?
Starts with facing it in yourself. Armed with this awareness, you begin to look at the world a little differently. For example, you start to notice when people of other ethnicities are treated just that iota less respectfully than they would be if they were white. And you call this out if it's others doing it. If it's you doing it, you stop. You notice stereotyping more. Again, if it's others you have a word. If it's you, you stop. These are just examples but you get the point. It's behavioural reform more than structural. We have the law right. We don't need to change the law. It's about culture and culture is the aggregated behaviour of individuals. We can do some "policy" things, sure we can, e.g. quotas in areas where it's appropriate and effective, this sort of thing, but that should not be the focus. Racism makes its presence felt in small ways manifested many many times in personal interactions. Therefore it should be fought the same way - by removing racism to the maximum extent possible from those interactions. We need (preferably) the whole of the population to "face it" in this sense - and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It won't be that hard, it's no big deal for most, but this is what we need. It is what Woke means. So to eradicate racism we need to become - quite literally - Woke Nation. We managed to become Leave Nation, didn't we, more's the pity, so wtf can't we now redeem ourselves and do this?
I’m more and more attracted to the idea that you need to link superspreaders together to get exponential growth. If you’ve got enough people infected, this is certainly going to happen (sufficient numbers that the average R is a decent spot to work with), while if you’ve got it down far enough, the superspreaders can only link by chance - and the odds are usually against it.
Sort of like an engine not quite turning over, but when you get it to spark, it will run and keep going and revving up.
And we now know that outside makes it hard for the ‘rona to spread, which is useful for preventing opportunities for the virus to get lucky.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1275072468709859328?s=20
Look at schools. Asians are comfortably ahead of whites and blacks in performance in British schools. White boys do worst.
I think it was a labour MP who made the racist statement that Asian people are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the NHS. How dare those pesky Indians and Pakistanis do so well in medical examinations and get promoted by 'deeply racist' Britain!!
Those hard facts simply could not and would not be true in a country that where racism was deeply ingrained. We simply couldn't get those outcomes. It would be impossible.
You are dead wrong and demonstrably dead wrong.
What this is about really is the inability of one community to progress as it would like. It is blaming that underperformance on discrimination entirely. The community itself, its attitudes and practices, is completely beyond reproach.
Look at America and you see that that is far, far from the truth.
Indeed, what you describe sounds awfully like gaslighting.
Incidentally, Walden was known in the biz as The Bookies Runner for his services to the layers. He would have loved PB.com!
It's why even though its a bit unfair we expect leaders, left, right and centre, to call out lunies on their own side, else they are taken to endorse the lunies.
There is research suggesting 80% of cases come from 20% super spreading events. It might be that once you start to get a significant percentage of your population that have had it, the probability of a currently infected person capable of super spreading attends the correct type of event at the correct time is much reduced (especially if restriction on the most risky events are still in place).
The meat processing plants look to be a particularly high risk environment and people stand there 8-10hrs a day in them, so I presume it is maximal transmission opportunity.
From 6 July, they will be able to gather outdoors in a group of up to six people, including with family members not in their immediate household.
And from 1 August, the shielding guidance is to be relaxed entirely, meaning those affected will be able to visit shops and places of worship and even return to their workplaces if it is safe to do so.
----
Looks like 1st August is when the government think COVID first wave will be basically done.
Why not instead consider the reasons, including (possibly) discrimination, why white boys do worst? Why not advocate action to address the issue? Those are positive things to do. And there's a reasonable chance I'd agree. I care a lot about male suicide, for example.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/revealed-meat-processing-plants-ideal-incubator-coronavirus/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8446643/Do-Covid-19-outbreaks-meat-plants-prove-Britain-face-second-wave-winter.html
Just reading comments from Christopher Steele, re: Trump and Russia, and Mrs May and Johnson turning a blind eye to it.
If Trump loses in November and he can't infact pardon himself in advance, he may well see his twilight years in a federal penitentiary. Interesting times.
YOu have countered with nothing. Not a single number. Just a pile of completely unsubstantiated nonsense about people not sitting next to each other on buses.
YOu have demonstrably lost this argument. Your entire movement is based on a subjective observation of society as you see it.
It is a movement that doesn't have a single democratic representative. A fact (and it is a FACT) that suggests its an observation shared by few.
- If you are successful, you aren't a Proper Minority.
- So Hindu Indians, Chinese, West Africans etc (who are all middle class) aren't Proper Minorities.
- Since they are successful in education etc, this can only be by Acting White.
- Since they are Acting White, they are white.
- Since they are white, they can't be discriminated against.
- But they need to be.
- Since their success is just more White Privilege.
To fight racism you need to change hearts & minds such that people (i) recognize it and (ii) truly wish to change things to eliminate it and (iii) accept that one of those things to be changed is themselves.
That's what I'm saying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/22/authors-quit-jk-rowling-agency-over-transgender-rights
Sure, but apart from that, what do you think of them, Eadric?
I believe this is PR speak for go f##k yourself.
Being able to come back will therefore be an enormous relief to her: we hear, quite understandably, a great deal about the vulnerability of shielders and their fear, but the toll on people's mental health from being locked away shouldn't be underestimated either.
Community transmission in this part of the world appears to be very low (nobody I know has had Covid) and our employer takes the virus seriously. Moreover, more by accident than design, the room in which myself and the aforementioned shielder normally work together could almost have been custom-built with the two metre rule in mind. So I think there's every reason to suppose that it's sufficiently safe for her to come back in August.
My concern is that most people are not open to this, and what's happening right now is making them less open. What's needed is discussion, at the level of individual social interactions, between people who acknowldge each other as equals, each with opinions and experiences that are worthy of sharing. Seeing the viscious cycle between the "white people should just shut up and listen" attitude, and the dismissiveness that is widespread among white people, I don't see much cause for optimism.
Costa said measures to be introduced from Tuesday included a restriction on gatherings of more than 10 people and orders for cafes and shops to close at 8pm in the capital.
I would defy anybody to deny that they have ever told or laughed at a racist joke, (I certainly have) and nor am I going to start calling out people who do so.
She thought my pranks hilarious - her recounting of them to various friends was a party piece. One time in Accra, she had the whole room in stitches - that was the MP and the ground nut scheme....
The perfect storm for a toe-curling racially insensitive situation to happen is for the black individual to be thinking 'this white person is going to be racist', and for the white person to be thinking 'Oh fuck, this black person is going to think I'm racist'. Some stupidity is almost bound to happen under those circumstances. The way for this situation not to happen, and for a positive interaction to take place, is for neither party to be thinking about racism, for neither to be acutely aware either of their colour or the colour of the individual they are interacting with, and for both to find common ground on something else.
The talk at the moment just increases division between white and black. It is toxically divisive. And it feeds the issue it claims to be trying to resolve.
Burn the White House again. Steal more spoons?*
*I went to school with someone who claimed that his family had a set of silver tea spoons from the sack of the White House.
We do it: "Are you insane? Who would be daft enough to do this?"
That was a tough call.
Self reflection is one thing, constant self examination of thoughts and actions in search of subconscious biases and racism (and it would be subconscious since most people agree racism is bad) seems bound to result in acting differently toward people of different characteristics even when no racism existed.
Wasnt there some story years back not enough eye contact being a micro aggression, which seemed like it would end up with a lot of people being stared at because of their race by people trying to avoid said micro aggression? I hope I'm remembering a parody.
R in London is 0.69, comfortably under.
Number of cases are slowly coming down but not very quickly.
But I would encourage you to make a start if at all possible. Because I sense there's lots of ground to cover in your case.
Is Donald Trump about to do the most stupid thing a US president could possibly do?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-most-stupid-thing-22232638
The Great Orange Wotsit's fat little finger is hovering over the nuclear button, and he may be about to press it...
Your fellow travellers have jumped off into the deep end.
I can see more than one side to this too. It's complex.
But it's the Woke case that most needs making on here - the caricature of it is wrong and imo supplies fuel to nasty racists - so that is what for my sins I'm doing.
I thought our response to Salisbury pretty robust - Steele comes across as someone peeved governments have not taken his every word as gospel.
No, it is.
I don't agree with that either.
All I want is the discipline of objective historical inquiry taught at schools (free of the politics, please), for the facts to be faithfully relayed, and for the truth to be pursued wherever it might lie.
I do like their philosophy of keeping polls short to not scare off people who aren't obsessives. I've been through all the latest polls and I do wonder about how representative are the people willing to answer the multitude of questions asked by some pollsters. We'll see how well they do this time round.