'The march of wokeism is an all-pervasive new oppression'

[Nearly Sane]

At least according to Trevor Phillips. (Note this has a token which should allow those without access to The Times to read it.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dfbee358-2045-11eb-8696-f5d5fcef88fd?shareToken=9be61b045dbc0ec8f604e7391c643c80

[Aruntraveller]

The best takeaway from this was in the remarks column at the end:

Woke has become such an umbrella term that it's almost meaningless.

It's quite possible to have different views on a number of the issues mentioned.

The label of woke is lazy and simplistic.

[SweetPea]

Well, it's a sad state of affairs when white men are made to feel ashamed to be white. It's the old pendulum swing.

Marc Sidwell has a book out: The Long March, discussing the same subject. Here he is reading the first chapter:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L96XKAnydo&feature=emb_logo

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

I could definitely relate to these 2 sections in the article:

"Personally I find the appeal of this brand of ethno-masochism hard to fathom, but then I’m not white."

"This view ignores the inconvenient truth that people of Indian origin in this country (and in the US) outsmart the white majority educationally, outshine them professionally and outearn them by more than 15 per cent. The notion of white privilege would be baffling to the families of white boys who have fallen to the bottom of education attainment league tables, and who are staring at a lifetime of sweeping the streets occupied by their affluent Indian-heritage classmates."

ETA: It might not be PC to admit, but I can actually remember my grandmother saying the last line (above) to me during the 70s when I was about 5 or 6 years old and two slightly older boys from school spat in my face for being brown, when they passed me on the street. My grandmother lived with us, had come to Britain maybe 5 years before, her spoken English was ok but not great and I think she left school after O'Levels but even she could see in the 1970s that education beat white privilege.

[Udayana]

I can't be bothered. Isn't it time he got a real job?
       

[jeremyp]

At least according to Trevor Phillips. (Note this has a token which should allow those without access to The Times to read it.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dfbee358-2045-11eb-8696-f5d5fcef88fd?shareToken=9be61b045dbc0ec8f604e7391c643c80

Who'd have thought I agreed with Trevor Phillips about something.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

This thread got me to thinking about how the racism narrative works in the US. I looked up some stats, which appear to show that you are more likely to be a victim of homicide from an attack by a member of your own race rather than another race. So based on the stats below, is the fear of inter-racial attacks manufactured by the media - especially the fear black people supposedly have about violence from white people or is it a widespread belief that just happens to not be supported by evidence or are there stats that counter these stats?

Bureau of Justice statistics show that the majority of violent crime are committed by people who are same race as their victims. 57 % of crimes involving white victims were committed by white perpetrators while only 15% committed by blacks and 11% by Hispanics. 63% of crimes involving black victims were committed by black perpetrators, while 11% committed by whites, 6.6% by Hispanics. National Crime victim survey in 2000 reported similar - 73% white violent crime victims were attacked by whites, and 80% of black victims attacked by blacks. This idea that one race has to walk around fearing death at the hands of another race isn’t what the statistics show as homicide especially is more likely to happen at the hands of your own race.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/white-supremacists-favorite-myths-about-black-crime-rates-take-another-hit-bjs-study

Bureau of Justice stats 2018 survey - 593,598 inter-racial violent victimisations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites in 2017. Blacks committed 537,204 (90%) and whites committed 56,394 (less than 10%).

As there are a lot more white people in the US than black people, that could explain why the majority of victims were white but I was more interested in it seeming to not support the black people have to fear violence from white people narrative in the US.

Violent crime against Black Americans has dropped 43% over the past 14 years, and they are now less likely to be victims of violent crime than White or Hispanic people, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/2/blacks-now-less-likely-be-violent-crime-victims-wh/

 

[Nearly Sane]

Is there a narrative of black people fearing being attacked by white people in the US?

[Harrowby Hall]

Is there a narrative of black people fearing being attacked by white people in the US?

There would appear to be a narrative of black people being killed by white police officers in the US.

[Nearly Sane]

There would appear to be a narrative of black people being killed by white police officers in the US.

Agree - but that isn't the same thing  and wouldn't be covered by the stats that Gabriela put up. I think though that jeremyp did put up some stats on that on the George Floyd thread.

[jeremyp]

Agree - but that isn't the same thing  and wouldn't be covered by the stats that Gabriela put up. I think though that jeremyp did put up some stats on that on the George Floyd thread.

Can't remember if I did but I think the gist is that, if you have an encounter with the police in the USA, the colour of your skin does not make much difference to your chance of being murdered by them. However, black people are significantly more likely to have an encounter with the police in the first place.

It occurs to me that even that might not mean the police are systemically racist. It could be that black people are poorer than white people on average and therefore more likely to own a car with defects like broken tail lights. That may, in itself be caused by racism, but not necessarily of the police.

Black people die proportionally more often than white people at the hands of the police, but the answer is not as simple as "racist police".  This is the problem with the so-called "woke" arguments: people leap at obvious and simplistic ideas without really thinking about whether they are really true.

[Aruntraveller]

Anecdote time.

Our friends in the US who I have previously spoken of, have a daughter who is currently engaged to a Black man, it is only now that my friend Maryann has appreciated the different attitude that the police have to the black community.

As an example her daughters boyfriend is stopped more than would seem necessary by the police - 4 times in the last 4 years. He is not poor, he is a teacher. And yet he still gets stopped more than his girlfriend who is also a teacher or indeed her brother who is a salesman of mobile homes. The brother and sister are both white of course.

In addition the boyfriend when stopped goes through a whole procedure he was taught to do by his parents. Tell the police you are reaching into the glove compartment to reach for your driving licence. Tell them you are opening the door even though the police have asked you to do that.

Whilst I acknowledge that these matters are seldom simple and lots of factors intersect to cause these societal issues, I would suggest that racism itself is not a simple issue and it would be unwise to play down it's impact in this particular instance.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Is there a narrative of black people fearing being attacked by white people in the US?

I'm not sure but was looking at the narrative of each race having to fear the other. I seem to remember in the run up to the elections lots of articles and a narrative of Trump's rhetoric causing an increase in white supremacy ideology and this potentially igniting a race war and black people feeling unsafe from white racists. I don't know if black people genuinely felt unsafe or if that was a few activists speaking for everyone else. It happens in the Muslim community - a few vocal activists about Islamophobia are taken to be representative of the thoughts and feelings of a community that is not known for agreeing on anything in relation to Islam - they can't even agree on something as simple as what is considered halal meat.

Here is an example of one such article but I seem to remember there were discussions about race wars.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-right-wing-extremists-1528527

There are Republicans (black and white) who argue that white and black people are under threat from violence from black people but when white people say it, it is considered racist. Can it be racist if a white person has that fear based on statistics but not racist if a black person has the same fear based on statistics?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Anecdote time.

Our friends in the US who I have previously spoken of, have a daughter who is currently engaged to a Black man, it is only now that my friend Maryann has appreciated the different attitude that the police have to the black community.

As an example her daughters boyfriend is stopped more than would seem necessary by the police - 4 times in the last 4 years. He is not poor, he is a teacher. And yet he still gets stopped more than his girlfriend who is also a teacher or indeed her brother who is a salesman of mobile homes. The brother and sister are both white of course.

In addition the boyfriend when stopped goes through a whole procedure he was taught to do by his parents. Tell the police you are reaching into the glove compartment to reach for your driving licence. Tell them you are opening the door even though the police have asked you to do that.

Whilst I acknowledge that these matters are seldom simple and lots of factors intersect to cause these societal issues, I would suggest that racism itself is not a simple issue and it would be unwise to play down it's impact in this particular instance.

I honestly don't know what I think about profiling. It is clearly harmful to society when people in power such as police racially profile based on the statistics that black people disproportionately commit violent crime. However, it is rational to profile based on statistics and if it is the police's job to try to solve/ prevent crime trying to act irrationally when it comes to stopping people is a hard thing to train yourself to do if your appraisal depends on results.

There is the often touted Jesse Jackson quote ""There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

If I hear footsteps when walking at night by myself and it's a man I am tense, if it's a woman I relax. I am profiling based on statistical probability. So while I wish profiling did not exist in an ideal world I don't know of any country in the world where people do not use profiling.

And speaking of statistics, I don't know of any country in the world where the government or legislature is representative of the ethnic diversity of its population. I am not even sure if that's achievable and if it doesn't exist anywhere, how do we know it's a good statistic to aim for and that there is something wrong in societies that haven't achieved it? There may be plenty wrong in societies but how do we know it's because we haven't achieved ethnic representation?  How do we know that if one day in the future if it happened somewhere in the world, that that society will be a better society than one where it hasn't happened? Presumably having a particular colour skin doesn't make you think a particular way. I certainly don't consider myself representative of people with brown skin, or people from any part of the Asian sub-continent but do consider myself representative of people of all skin colours who value education.

 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Which is easier for white people to talk about - the idea that statistically black criminals represent a threat of harm or this article about the threat of terrorism from white supremacists? Or are they both equally easy to discuss?

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18295358/fbi-white-nationalism-christchurch-usa-violence

The Trump Administration’s counterterrorism strategy, released in October 2018, warned that the United States faces a threat from individuals motivated by types of violent extremism other than radical Islam, “such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism.” In April 2018, federal authorities charged 57 members of white supremacist organizations with drug trafficking and kidnapping. As U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions remarked following the arrest, “Not only do white supremacist gangs subscribe to a repugnant, hateful ideology, they also engage in significant, organized and violent criminal activity.”

[jeremyp]

Which is easier for white people to talk about - the idea that statistically black criminals represent a threat of harm or this article about the threat of terrorism from white supremacists? Or are they both equally easy to discuss?

I'm quite happy to discuss either. Is the first assertion true?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

The assertion is a short-hand for black men being over-represented in the stats for both perpetrators and victims of violent crime in the US. Which then leads to profiling in certain areas - police seem to stop more black men in those areas.

Interaction with armed police in the US can lead to a tragic outcome for those being stopped - black men are over-represented in the stats for people killed by the police and the stats for unarmed people killed by the police.

Also property values go down in those areas, small businesses might leave or not be replaced, which leads to loss of jobs. Parents may have to travel far to find work, which means they are not present to supervise their children to keep them safe and focused on their education.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

https://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html

An interesting look at some of the history of US education of children in poor neighbourhoods, specifically schools where low-income and minority students do in fact score well on standardized tests.

What is interesting is that poor children apparently travelled from all over the city to go to schools that required discipline and work and produced good results. The ones who did not want to study went to other schools that did not require hard work and therefore did not produce as good results. It seems to have been left to individual choice as to whether you valued an education enough to work for it - but the article seems to suggest that the outcome was determined more by that individual choice than by parental income, occupation or school access to funding. So he seems to be questioning the value of certain political interventions by the government in social issues such as education.

From Wikipedia - the author, Thomas Sowell, is an American economist and social theorist and is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

He describes himself as a libertarian. He has said that the hypothesis of systemic racism is untested in order to know whether to accept it as true or not. He is a Republican and did not want Biden to win the election as he thought Democratic policies would be bad for the US.

I suppose this is one of the conflicts between those who think governments should determine what is good for people and who advocate more government involvement in order to try to engineer equality, and those who advocate less government involvement and think people should decide for themselves whether to do what is "good" for them or not even if that leads to inequality for them and their families.

[ippy]

Anecdote time.

Our friends in the US who I have previously spoken of, have a daughter who is currently engaged to a Black man, it is only now that my friend Maryann has appreciated the different attitude that the police have to the black community.

As an example her daughters boyfriend is stopped more than would seem necessary by the police - 4 times in the last 4 years. He is not poor, he is a teacher. And yet he still gets stopped more than his girlfriend who is also a teacher or indeed her brother who is a salesman of mobile homes. The brother and sister are both white of course.

In addition the boyfriend when stopped goes through a whole procedure he was taught to do by his parents. Tell the police you are reaching into the glove compartment to reach for your driving licence. Tell them you are opening the door even though the police have asked you to do that.

Whilst I acknowledge that these matters are seldom simple and lots of factors intersect to cause these societal issues, I would suggest that racism itself is not a simple issue and it would be unwise to play down it's impact in this particular instance.

This colour thing worked in favour of my adopted mixed race son, he sold his car and somebody was seen driving his car after he had sold it and whoever it was had been detected driving without insurance.

They hadn't received the change of ownership slip at the D V L A, we then had two Policemen on our doorstep looking for my son, we don't think of him a anything else than he is, Fred, not his real name, his ID occurred to me and I said to these Policemen you do know he's mixed race the they immediately were able to apologise for bothering us and off they went.

I'd like to add, this football chap that lost his job for using racist terms, just taking, coloured when describing people, I'm only referring to his use of the word 'coloured', I've asked both of my sons about this and neither they or I can see anything racist in this term, I'll apologise in advance if I'm offending anybody in writing this.

If it is offensive to use coloured as a term to describe people with darker skins than most Europeans could somebody tell me why?

At the moment this one has gone right over my head and I want to use the right words in this area because the very last thing I would want to do is cause any offence.

My youngest son has just said to me it can be tone of voice when using any of these terms and he acts accordingly.

ippy.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

I have a memory of being in state Primary school, trying to fit in and make friends. I think I was about 7 and these 2 white slightly older girls befriended me and managed to persuade me to go to the school nurse alleging I had been punched in the stomach by another girl in their year - I can't remember for sure if I was supposed to allege racism but I think I was. It's shocking now thinking about how I went along with it and was persuaded to make a false allegation. 

The girl I was falsely accusing (and it may have been that I was supposed to accuse her and her friend) wasn't particularly nice and had made racist or mean comments, but she had not laid a finger on me.     

This was the 70s so the school nurse (who was actually the mother of one of the girls who had talked me into lying in her misguided attempt to get back at a mean girl) offered sympathy and was a nice lady but didn't take it any further as far as I know, thank goodness. Back then you actually needed some bruises or blood to be considered hurt rather than just feeling uncomfortable and sad, which was considered part of the normal rough and tumble of life. Though I hope if it had been taken further I would not have stuck to my lie, once I appreciated the consequences for the person being falsely accused by me. I hope I would not have been that callous and stupid and would have come to my senses. Though back then being racist wasn't seen as being particularly problematic so long as you did not actually go around beating people up.

Where my older daughter is at university in the Midlands, she says casual racism was everywhere amongst the other students in terms of jokes and comments and she thought it was maybe just her London private school bubble where white people tied themselves in knots worrying about racism. Also all the comments she hears are not then repeated online with demands for justice as the people making them are not public figures or officials.

Maybe Clarke would have got away with the "coloured" comment but he also made some other comments that apparently is problematic for someone with too little melanin or who is not a member of some minority group to say in public.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Indians-so-racist-when-it-comes-to-darker-skinned-people

[Udayana]

VG,

Sorry, can't really get what question you are trying to answer or where you are trying to get to. Not sure crime statistics can help with it: but it is certainly possible for the use of stats to lead to self-fulfilling forecasts.
 

[ippy]

I have a memory of being in state Primary school, trying to fit in and make friends. I think I was about 7 and these 2 white slightly older girls befriended me and managed to persuade me to go to the school nurse alleging I had been punched in the stomach by another girl in their year - I can't remember for sure if I was supposed to allege racism but I think I was. It's shocking now thinking about how I went along with it and was persuaded to make a false allegation. 

The girl I was falsely accusing (and it may have been that I was supposed to accuse her and her friend) wasn't particularly nice and had made racist or mean comments, but she had not laid a finger on me.     

This was the 70s so the school nurse (who was actually the mother of one of the girls who had talked me into lying in her misguided attempt to get back at a mean girl) offered sympathy and was a nice lady but didn't take it any further as far as I know, thank goodness. Back then you actually needed some bruises or blood to be considered hurt rather than just feeling uncomfortable and sad, which was considered part of the normal rough and tumble of life. Though I hope if it had been taken further I would not have stuck to my lie, once I appreciated the consequences for the person being falsely accused by me. I hope I would not have been that callous and stupid and would have come to my senses. Though back then being racist wasn't seen as being particularly problematic so long as you did not actually go around beating people up.

Where my older daughter is at university in the Midlands, she says casual racism was everywhere amongst the other students in terms of jokes and comments and she thought it was maybe just her London private school bubble where white people tied themselves in knots worrying about racism. Also all the comments she hears are not then repeated online with demands for justice as the people making them are not public figures or officials.

Maybe Clarke would have got away with the "coloured" comment but he also made some other comments that apparently is problematic for someone with too little melanin or who is not a member of some minority group to say in public.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Indians-so-racist-when-it-comes-to-darker-skinned-people

I understand all of the rest of that chaps comments were out of order and I agree with the decision made by the authorities, it's just the reference specifically to the word coloured being used, I heard a recording of him using that word, coloured, in a pretty neutral tone of voice, other than the tone of voice that can be used, I would like to know how describing a group or a single person as coloured is offensive for at the moment I can not see it?

Once again I've no wish, nor do I have intent to offend, I'm just asking the question?   

ippy.

[Udayana]

I understand all of the rest of that chaps comments were out of order and I agree with the decision made by the authorities, it's just the reference specifically to the word coloured being used, I heard a recording of him using that word, coloured, in a pretty neutral tone of voice, other than the tone of voice that can be used, I would like to know how describing a group or a single person as coloured is offensive for at the moment I can not see it?

Once again I've no wish, nor do I have intent to offend, I'm just asking the question?   

ippy.

In my opinion, it is not offensive in itself, but objections have more to do with how it is used. eg: that someone's skin colour can be taken to mean that they are a different kind of human that can or must be treated differently to "normal" people.

The use of such words is subject to fashion too so, as NS mentioned earlier, "coloured", was replaced by "people of colour" and so on, some of which are in fashion, some not, and some taken as being deliberately offensive.

Racism is about the assumption of characteristics or behaviour of people according to some racial or ethnic classification rather than the use of one word or other - except where the words are used to imply and support those assumptions.
 

[ekim]

I understand all of the rest of that chaps comments were out of order and I agree with the decision made by the authorities, it's just the reference specifically to the word coloured being used, I heard a recording of him using that word, coloured, in a pretty neutral tone of voice, other than the tone of voice that can be used, I would like to know how describing a group or a single person as coloured is offensive for at the moment I can not see it?

Once again I've no wish, nor do I have intent to offend, I'm just asking the question?   

ippy.

It might have something to do with its association with racial segregation in the  apartheid era in South Africa.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloureds

[ippy]

It might have something to do with its association with racial segregation in the  apartheid era in South Africa.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloureds

Now having discussed this with my family it seems we would all take the a similar view about the SA associations as the most likely culprit plus the American notices directing various racial groups, back of buses, not in this restaurant etc.

Even so my two boys don't see anything wrong with the use of coloured and have no particular hang ups with the term, again whatever term used it's the tone of delivery that usually informs them either way.

ippy.