“The sooner we start focusing more on the material side of things the better.” I heartily agree. But if you are going to focus on the material side of things only as it applies to lack and brown people you will be making a big mistake. There is another large marginalised group in Britain for whom nobody seems to be rooting, working class white boys. Help for one disadvantaged group on the basis of the colour of their skin will not lead to a more equal and racially harmonious Britain, quite the contrary.
Kevin this is an excellent point about white working class boys. There was a wholly disingenuous article in the times this morning about Afro-caribbean boys doing worse at school than white working class. Whilst I accept is true, the fact that British- African schoolboys do better than both aforementioned demographics pulls the rug out from the whole racist white man argument.
Yes, and white working class girls as well IMO, and, by definition – it is partly the result of social class relations being the fundamental issue to be addressed.
The thing of the Working Classes is over the last hundred years the get-up-and-go working class people, the ones who work hard and smart, well they moved up. This left the other ones in place, and took their genes with them.
Some are trapped in a culture of self destruction, but most are just not up to it for many factors, my guess is intelligence would be a large one. It would seem, that is IF the Government looked for answers rather than making facts fit their agenda, that they would do a study on who fails, and why, by collecting statistics like drug use, single mothers, criminal behavior in parents and the children, and IQ. In the vary rare study of IQ in US Prisons – well guess what they find?
But in this, insane, Liberal, world where only OPPORTUNITY determines outcome, rather than ability, it is essentially a crime to look into this, although nothing could be more obvious.
I would love to see this Woke principal be applied to creating professional sports teams.
Admittedly I grew up in Australia, not the UK, but at my sink comprehensive school the teachers told us we’d never get anywhere. In fact one refused to teach the entire English literature curriculum because working class kids would never need to know it.
When I went to the careers advisor and said that I wanted to go to university I was laughed at! I did get to uni eventually, as a part-time, mature age student after I was married.
What a load of , the get up and go didn’t leave but the jobs did, and then employers that didn’t leave found it cheaper to hire foreigners. Let’s not forget the minority employers who discriminate against whites seeking work
Good point. Eddison said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
What is ignored is that in the UK, the education system is a watered down university training scheme. Historically, people could leave school at 14 years of age and enter an apprenticeship,where academic and prcatical skills were taught . The Tripartite Aspects of Schools in the 1944 Butler Education Act were never introduced and practical skills have been removed.
Teachers have vast ranges in intellectual abilities but tend to lack adventurous and pioneering spirits and so do not earn the respect of many tough children. If a teacher had practical experience outside of the classroom- engineering, combat, industry, forestry, farming, commercial fishing and brought this top the classroom, they would enthuse many more. A teacher explaining the problems of designing and constructing an offshore oil platform in rough seas would enthuse many boys.
Well the ‘get-up-and-go’ working class people did have the benefit of being lifted up by the Grammar School system selectively creaming off the ‘smart genes’ as you would have it; and post-war, they ( er, *we*) had the additional benefit of a University system that funded their (er, *our*) higher education. Don’t kid yourself that this was motivated working class determinism. When it suited the politico-economic system to keep people down for hundreds of yours, they did so very effectively. Lifting up the ‘get-up-and-go’ types served as an additional tool to divide and conquer the feudal-peasant-working classes.
That get-up-and-go class had no benefit of the Unions that ameliorated their fathers, grandfathrs and great-grandfathers conditions: my father was a life-long union member and official, and he got-up-and-did a lot in the way of social organization. I was a member of a Union for only about 3 years of my 40 year career, though I have the advanced degrees he never had the opportunity to have, but that his generation gave me the opportunity to acquire.
I am certainly not “better” than my father because of my education. Indeed, in may ways my life has been less socially responsible than his. Boomers like me need to keep aware that our descendants only prosper in the large because of our collective fostering of a socially equal and financially equitable system.
I don’t think unity and nice things are a lot of these people’s goals…the author of this piece cites Marx and talks about white people surrendering their wealth and THAT is their real goal…never mind that communism doesn’t and hasn’t worked or that tying this attempt to race is only going to make the whole racism thing worse when this attempt doesn’t work either
Brian Villanueva
3 years ago
“As many have pointed out, that isn’t to say that white people cannot be the target of racism.”
Actually, Kendi, DiAngelo and other celebrated “anti-racists” say EXACTLY this. It follows logically from their re-definition of racism. If racism can only exist due to power imbalances, minorities can never be racist, since they are oppressed and therefore not capable of holding power over whites.
According to Kendi, should a black person actually be in a position to hold power over whites, their behavior still can’t be racist, since when they discriminate against whites, it’s in pursuit of an anti-racist outcome. Their discrimination is against systemic whiteness, which, as an oppressor ideology, must be opposed. And no, I’m really not making this stuff up — read the books. It’s really there.
So whites discriminating against blacks is racist; blacks discriminating against whites is anti-racist. At least in England and America. I’ve never heard Kendi address whether the same rules apply in black-majority cultures like S. Africa.
After the explosion of CRT onto the public radar in 2020, it’s pretty astounding that an article like this could be unaware of these basic tenets of modern “anti-racist” philosophy.
This article applies far too much logic and ethical rationality to these positions. It’s not about racism or sexism or able-ism or thin-ism and it never has been. Its about power. Full stop. College-educated, upper-middle-class (mostly white) elites want to convince the rest of us that their obvious class advantages are irrelevant — what matters is their skin color, their sexual partners, or (for those who can’t claim to be a minority themselves) their virtue signaling on behalf of other oppressed groups.
Also Kendi is actually extremely materialist in his proposals. His proposal is for a government department that sits above all others in terms of rank and power concerning itself entirely with judging economic and political acts on their racially equitable outcomes.
Where Remi really hits the nail on the head is regarding the middle class nature of this movement. This is what worries me most. It’s being brought into society at the policy level, via higher educational institutions, into the best practice of HR departments in corporates, education more broadly, and into the public sector (who in turn make diversity and inclusion goals part of procurement etc). It’s a huge bottom up shift in policy, with a massive introduction of a political ideology into the corporate workplace and public sector, that hasn’t been voted in by the electorate. As such it is going to be very very difficult to get rid of
As such it is going to be very very difficult to get rid of
Not least because, once the work of re-education has been done, there will be almost no one left to vote against it. Our faith has to be in such education either failing to stick – or on its rejection by the young.
“If racism can only exist due to power imbalances, minorities can never be racist, since they are oppressed and therefore not capable of holding power over whites” I wonder what the slaves taken from various European countries by the Ottoman traders would make of that “analysis”?
Whites weren’t just enslaved by the Ottoman Turks, but by Arabs and Africans. Millions in coastal areas of Britain, Ireland, France, Italy , etc were often enslaved after their villages were raided
An ancestor of mine was an ‘indentured fisherman’ in Aberdeen in the late 18th C. Effectively slavery. Absconders could be tracked and captured by the ‘police’ and returned to their employers. All involved were white.
and for 300 years, as long as the transatlantic slave trade… anglo-egyptian Treaty of August 4th 1877 prohibited the continued sale of white slaves in Egypt after August 3rd 1885, well after blacks gained freedom in the US.
During the Middle Ages Slavs were so widely used as slaves in both Europe and the Islamic world that the very word slave derived from the word for Slav not only in English but also in other European languages as well as in Arabic
For over 300 years, the coastlines of the south west of England were at the mercy of Barbary pirates (corsairs) from the coast of North Africa, based mainly in the ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Their number included not only North Africans but also English and Dutch privateers. Their aim was to capture slaves for the Arab slave markets in North Africa.
The Barbary pirates attacked and plundered not only those countries bordering the Mediterranean but as far north as the English Channel, Ireland, Scotland and Iceland, with the western coast of England almost being raided at will.
The reasoning behind the ‘unusual’ casting of the latest Ann Boleyn is that they wanted ‘to challenge the perception of the doomed queen…and what was taught in schools’. Media don’t seem so interested in finding out facts that contradict the current slavery story.
Kendi is so racist he wrote an op-ed in collegeraising the possibility that whitepeople “might be aliens” Racists to the point he would remove a person’s humanity just for being white…
Last edited 3 years ago by Natalija Svobodné
Jonathan Ellman
3 years ago
Middle class, or more precisely woke anti-racism is not really anti-racism. It is an appropriation of anti-racism for the purpose of demonstrating the moral superiority required for justifying elite status. Similarly with environmentalism. Environmentalism is flawed because of the wealth and status disparities between developed and developing nations. China, India and all are not going to stop developing to justify the elite status of wokeists. If environmentalists gave away ‘over half their collective wealth’ to developing nations they might genuinely make a claim for the moral high ground. Until then hypocrisy will be their overriding characteristic and their fatal flaw.
“…woke anti-racism is not really anti-racism” Of course it is not. It is the equivalent of those stupid Mao or Che posters that used to adorn students’ walls.
I disagree. To begin with, if you’re going to have classes, it’s the job of the upper classes to manage the political relations of the community, and to deal with what seem to be its problems. Tribalism, one form of which is racism, is now considered a problem. Contrary to a major assertion of the article above, racism and racist practice are mostly mediated by language; this is why racial slurs are so potent. In a capitalist polity, the upper classes would like to rule without trouble or serious opposition, so the academic system, the media, and the receptive young, perceiving the desires of the leading or ruling classes, are trying to deal with the problem they have been assigned. It’s more than an act, even if it’s somewhat naive. Indeed, that naiveté is encouraged to keep the problem from spilling over into class war.
The upper classes (if you mean the woke class) have no interest in dealing with problems, only with maintaining their status. I’m not sure why racist language is worse than racist acts that ensure certain races are assigned low social status and wealth.
Racist acts come from racist thoughts which are communicated by words. One isn’t ‘worse’ than another; they’re parts of a system of mutual reinforcement.
My experience of upper-class people, which is considerable, is that many of them are very concerned about maintaining their power, property, and status, just like the rest of us. Right now, what you seem to be calling ‘woke’ or at least performances thereof seems cheaper than the race and class war which would follow overt repression.
There are plenty of people who use what’s called racist language but never commit racist acts, especially of older generations. Language is so policed and so many language traps have been set to catch people out, that defining what is racist language is less important that catching someone out and scoring moral superiority points. Whereas racist acts are clearer to see.
If you believe that the current social hierarchy can be maintained and is desirable you have a point. I doubt it either can or should be. The days when a ruling elite in Britain was viable are over. There are national and international pressures that make this mode of government impossible, whether you think it’s desirable or not. Nationally, Brexit is a demand for democratic accountability that looks like intensifying. Internationally, the dynamic economies like South Korea, India and China are fostering vast populations of educated professionals. We are going to need a lot more than a handful of Old Etonians to compete.
The problem with this approach is it emulates apartheid, segregating people by race, grouping people by language and then applying rights based on those group memberships. It also gives a moral valence to skin colour black is good white is evil Jonathan Haidt (51:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E The ANC came to power on a promise of universalism, to abolish the racial groupings – they had also hoped to avoid the tribalism that it has now sadly sunk into and mired it into deep nepotism and corruption.
South africa has a lot we can learn from. the least of all being that when we fail to have universal policies, we fail completely. Policies based on immutable characteristics are a bad way to write policy.
Make policy for the poor, the old, those in need. That is universalism.
I disagree, “it’s the job of the upper classes to manage the political relations of the community” That is a job for democracy, and law,who form social policy not academics. I wouldn’t assert that naiveté has ever stopped a war either… I would say quite the opposite. Morality has always been weaponized to drive people to war. Nearly every war I can think of actually.
I don’t think that you are using the words ‘ upper class’ correctly?
Lee Floyd
3 years ago
I’m not sure the poor white working class, of which I used to be a member, would agree with your race centric interpretation of poverty. And, of course, the poorest, culturally, economically, and educationally, are white working class boys. No one speaks up for them, not because they are irritated by the attention, don’t want to be patronised or seen as victims, but Because. They. Don’t. Matter. Stick that in your middle class pot and stir it.
I was one of the white working class boys. It’s been said before on unheard and elsewhere, but building an interpretation of society purely around race and ignoring all other variables variables is counter productive and if it is allowed to continue will only lead to a sad pathetic ending as all racial politics does. Denouncing someone to be racist because of their skin colour is in itself bigoted and racist. The thing I detest more is some wealthy, supposedly educated, white person telling me that I can never be redeemed solely based on my skin colour.That if I’m not anti-racist, I must be racist. The world of most people does not revolve around race. Race seems to be a white middle class wet dream now and a nice little earner working in the race-relations industry, in whatever capacity. For most people, it is a struggle to work and earn enough to survive. The UK, thankfully, has free education and the NHS which cushions people from the crippling poverty inflicted on people in other parts of the ‘third world/USA’ who struggle to find money for medical treatment, for example. One day maybe someone will analyse why MSM and academia have adopted this ideology; an ideology that seeks to divide society even more. Is it because the extreme left failed at the ballot box and see their future in democratic elections as zero?
Precisely that. The author is offering a low resolution univariate analysis based on racialising individuals into racial group identities and at the same time erasing the foremost issue of socio-economic class distinctions.
Michael Dawson
3 years ago
Quite. You could have cited the author’s own statistic about the relative performance of people from an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi background. The obvious factor here is culture/religion, not whites being more racist against one group over another.
Michael. This is the nub right here. His mention of the performance of Indians compared to the other non-white cultures disprove the entire narrative. Racism isn’t the answer if some non-whites are succeeding are some are not.
That doesn’t mean racism isn’t present. It might mean that other discriminated groups might benefit from looking at how the Indians have resisted and overcome it (when they have). Resistance usually starts by making trouble, that is, for Black people in America as an instance, BLM.
I’m struggling to think of the iconic moments when the UK’s Indian diaspora “made trouble” in order to overcome the racism that was holding them back economically. “Political blackness”, back in the ‘60s/‘70s, I suppose (which I only found out about via an article on here); but (again according to the one article) it sounds like it was positively genteel compared to BLM.
Thomas Sowell – When asked whether immigration was good, he queried it depends who the immigrants are. Immigrants are not all the same. Why do Nigerian, Hindu Asian and Polish immigrants do so well, while Muslims and other Caribbean immigrants bring so many issues and do not so well.
Partly education and skills – but not always, partly work ethic, partly culture, partly religion, partly about whether they integrate and inter marry, partly about their attitudes to crime and violence, partly about whether they have embraced identity politics and victimhood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y-H1q6njw
Interesting point about British Indian vs Black American culture. I think you miss the fact that they differ in kind, not just in detail. India’s culture emerged intact from the Raj — changed, for good and for ill, but unbowed, vital, still “its own thing,” a wellspring of tradition to draw from and form the sorts of useful ethics you refer to. The Africans taken to America had nothing but dribs and drabs of their native cultures remaining. Different nations enslaved and thrown together according to the whim of industrial requirements. Language erased, history erased; families routinely broken up; the experience of slavery the only thing they had in common. Does it not seem overwhelmingly likely that it was this, not welfare, that created the “culture of dependency, perceived [perceived!?] victimhood and self-pitying [!] lassitude.” Dependency, victimhood and lassitude (apathy?) are after all three hallmarks on the enslaved throughout history.
Lassitude and demonstrations of victimhood and dependency are a reasonable adaptation to subjugation when there is not much chance of overthrowing or fending off the subjugators. Many Black people have taken a more constructive role, but it hasn’t gotten through yet.
In any case, making trouble is a necessary, primary step towards changing one’s culture and that of the surrounding culture as well. The fact that so many people, including people posting messages here, think that exhibition of an unarmed captive being strangled is acceptable for any category of person for any reason indicates that not enough trouble has been made yet.
That is the essential thrust of the “antiracist” demand for “safe spaces” for black people. It’s amazing that today those who proclaim themselves opposed to racism demand the return of segregation. I say “return”, but of course, in the UK we never had segregation in the first place; any “colour bars” were a private matter imposed by racist individuals and businesses, not the law.
I have seen no evidence that the treatment of George Floyd was caused by racism. He was a known career criminal. He also worked as door security in a club where Derek Chauvin moonlighted in the same role when not working as a police officer, so they clearly knew one another. Floyd had, at the time of his death, a potentially lethal level of fentanyl, and a smaller quantity of methamphetamine, in his body; there is even a suggestion, which I have only seen reported once, that he was complaining of an inability to breathe before any contact with police.
His death is not as simple as the narrative we have been given.
“For me, the event does seem to have a certain simplicity.”
Of course it does. The truth might cause you to change your mind. And we can’t be having that, can we?
The treatment of Floyd by the police was according to the book!
White people running from the police are treating exactly the same – nothing to do with colour!
Read Thomas Sowell. https://youtu.be/lm-FqtAOSB8
He argued that there was tremendous progress in the first half of the 20th century in black society in the US. He notes the welfare dependency if the 60s onwards caused the breakdown of families and a dependency culture. Just as it has with white working class here and in the USA.
ALSO REMEMBER, MANY BLACKS DO VERY WELL, HERE AND IN THE USA. Many are professionals and many run businesses. And I suspect many are bullied or forced to back movements like BLM. But I suspect primarily the BLM movement is a bit of a middle class opportunity for virtue signalling, and a marxist opportunity for pushing divide and rule. I say this, because in the UK there seems to minimal black participation in these protests and even in the USA it seems to be antifa types who are usually white.
So why does the media assume all blacks have more or less the same political views as though because they are the same colour, they have the same opinion.
That’s one of the biggest examples of racism. There are probably many Candace Owens out there that feel they have to keep their mouths shut.
On slavery. Germany,Denmark,Sweden, Austria, Norway, Finland etc. Didn’t have a big involvement in overseas Empires. Germany’s colonies didn’t last long. They are also wealthy. In fact some of the wealthiest on the planet. So it’s too simple to argue that most of the wealth in the West is down to slavery. There are many countries that have grown wealthy without it.
In the 1850s, in the Southern USA about 1000 families had about the same wealth as the other 660,000 families put together. It was from these families that the slave owning plantation owners came from. So the vast majority of wealth from slave owning was concentrated into a very small group of people and did not necessarily drip down and benefit the rest of the white population – in fact it made their lives tougher as they had to compete agains’t the plantation owners access to free labour. In many ways the poor white had more in common with the blacks than you think.
Of course this can also be seen in the civil war that followed, when the non slave owning North’s economy was proved to be far more powerful than the slave owning Souths. If you accept slaves created the wealth of the West, surely the South would have won hands down.
One final point. White families in the UK and their wealth. They have been here for generations. They have inherited wealth. As Asians, Blacks and others are here longer, they will slowly buy property and then inherit wealth too. Many of these groups have been here less than 40 years. So over time, wealth gaps that seem unfair will reduce.
Victim/Identity politics is not good for the people you claim try and help. Those that do best in the world look forward and don’t keep looking back and going over the past. Ok remove any racist obstacles, be honest about history, but from then on take responsibility for your own life and get on with it.
Blacks arrested for breaking the law isn’t racist, holding them to the same standards as anyone else isn’t racist, telling them that they are the cause of their own problems isn’t racist and calling out their lies isn’t racist
The presence of ‘racism’ in the event is irrelevant. What counts is whether what was done to Floyd was a crime, demonstrable physically. Criminalising ‘thought’ won’t ever work. There is no way at all of establishing whether what a person says he thinks is really, in fact, true.
And you win the Orwell Prize for Nu-Speak which conforms to the ‘correct’ narrative.
Why can it not be said that it is something else. Start by googling IQ by nation. IQ is the single largest indicator of likely educational outcome, which is the largest indicator of future income.
Google it, there it is, the most likely scenario possible.
“”Ocham’s razor, or the principle of parsimony or law of parsimony is the problem-solving principle that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”, or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one””
(this is why I get banned everywhere, I say the Emperor is naked, and get thrown out of the window.)
While Occam’s razor may be useful it is important not to entirely rule out Plato’s Beard, or more especially Hickam’s Dictum, which reminds us that complex problems may have multiple causes.
Also, though — Google the Flynn Effect (I’m sure you have…). IQs change within groups over time. No one knows why this happens. It seems likely that environmental factors are at play. Occam’s razor would lead me to consider that a group who have historically been allotted the most menial tasks, fed the poorest diet, educated in the most rudimentary fashion, might suffer a hit to average IQ. And that alleviating these material conditions might even out the disparity.
Apparently Western IQ is going down. This may be due to the more intelligent failing to have children. I wonder what environmental prescription you would give to close the IQ gap between Europeans and East Asians (about 5-6 IQ points)? Europeans are apparently so rich that we can give money and wealth away to other nations, and think nothing of multi-culturalizing our societies. Shouldn’t the Flynn effect be working in favour of Europeans?
But I don’t think he’s claiming that economic disparities are the result of racism. Rather, that racism only really matters when the group practicing it is economically dominant. Which is an arguable point, perhaps, but you’re knocking down a straw man here.
Fact is, racist blacks are being indulged with the power to destroy white culture, communities, deprive whites of their jobs, not for being hateful but because the whites didn’t bow down to their lies and frauds. What they call “institutional racism” are laws against theft, assault, rape, murder. They have a million excuses for their demanded black supremacy. And before you disagree with me name blacks who lose their homes, jobs, freedoms for disagreeing with a white person
David Morley
3 years ago
a white Brit does not have to be concerned in the same way about what black folk, who constitute just 3% of Britain, think about white people.
In a simple sense that is clearly true. So it is worth asking what effect white bashing does have on white people. I suspect it really gets some people’s backs up and increases people’s animosity. Either towards the (largely white) people who are pedalling the stuff or, unfortunately, towards black people. Even the ones who are completely non racist themselves.
I struggle to see a good outcome, because bullying and haranguing rarely have the effect the bullies intend.
When the MSMSM box ticking puts disproportionate numbers of people from whatever in vogue minority in peoples faces and they talk down AT the the public more and more the public switch off, mentally if not actually. Whilst the ‘woke’ virtue signalling white SJW’s lap it up they are blind to the fact all it’s doing is pushing more and more formerly non-racists into taking a position, which often starts as a question of why such excessive ‘positive’ discrimination is acceptable.
So it is worth asking what effect white bashing does have on white people. 1) it breeds hostility where none existed, which I’m starting to think is intentional. Activism has to have perceived enemies to continue. Otherwise, the grift comes to an end. 2) If I am racist due to skin color and there is no path to redemption, the reasonable answer is “so what?” which leads back to point 1. Being insulted never changed anyone’s mind, and if I am guilty no matter what I do, there is no incentive for me to behave differently.
a white Brit does not have to be concerned in the same way about what black folk, who constitute just 3% of Britain, think about white people.
In a simple sense that is clearly true.
But is it? It seems a fatuous comment of the author for a “white Brit”, nor any other person for that matter, cannot be concerned for they cannot know what all the individuals in one group think about all the individuals in another group. The author exposes his rhetorical strategy here, of treating all individuals with a particular characteristic as a single homogenous group and, it seems to me, then speaking as a spokesperson for all the individuals of that group.
Yeah… ever try getting a room of brits to agree on anything ;P
Jeff Chambers
3 years ago
This is an interesting and thoughtful article. But could you explain what you mean by “decolonising the curriculum”. I ask because whenever I’ve looked into this it turns out to mean replacing the native culture of England with the cultures of invaders. As you know, replacing native cultures with invader cultures is the classic act of colonisers …
When Nigeria was given its freedom in 1960 or whenever, its GDP per head was three of four times that of South Korea, and probably higher than a few countries in the Soviet bloc in eastern Europe.
Quite likely higher than most in the soviet bloc. In Romania (OK, a somewhat extreme example) there was very real hunger and starvation. In 1960 Nigeria’s population was just over 45 million. In 2020 it’s over 200 million, the growth pretty much living on western aid – something the soviet bloc countries never availed of.
Population growth used to be a sign of a countrys’ growing wealth-increase in GNP etc ,now there seems to be many countries with huge populations which lack the ability to feed and care for themselves -they mostly survive on aid from the first world and I presume increase in medical knowledge. These places are certainly exploited by others-China seems to be the main culprit nowadays-but that is a situation their rulers allow. Somehow places like Britain are considered not only responsible for their own problems but the rest of the worlds
Vivek Rajkhowa
3 years ago
In all honesty, who cares. You want more money? Find the job that pays you alot and go out and get that job. You need a leg up? Find a way to get the leg up and go out and get it.
Or you can do what you’re doing now and whine and complain. I for one was raised to always think about how to improve myself before complaining.
Complaining makes sense, inorder to improve our broken housing market or financial system which neglects SmE’S or address City of London corruption
Last edited 3 years ago by Jake C
Marie Morton
3 years ago
You have lumped all white people together and failed to realise that the class structure is far more important in the UK. The importation of US racial politics into Britain has tried to ignore this. So working class white and black people have similar life experiences. When wealth in the UK is examined actually Indian and Chinese people are richer per person than white people. In a country where their family may go back over a thousand years many working class white people have less than £500 in assets. You only have to look back to the decade before the outbreak of WW2 to see how hard life was – life expectancy, semi starvation, and absolute poverty were the norm for many working class people.
In my family the lack of money to pay a doctor meant that my grandmother died aged 40 in 1938. My father having got a scholarship – in the same year -could not go to Nottingham High School as they could not afford the uniform.
This was the way of things since Britain had industrialised.
Just one quote from Wikipedia: Recruitment to the British Army during the First World War – Wikipedia Almost 40 percent of the volunteers were rejected for medical reasons. Malnutrition was widespread in U.K. society; working class 15‑year‑olds had an average height of 5 feet 2 inches (160cm) while the upper class was 5 feet 6 inches (171cm)
Yes! This is almost within living memory for some. Who speaks for them, their families and communities who gave so much, when they had, and often continue to have, little materially? Instead academia, media, et al, stand on the doorsteps of their ivory towers, gleefully stoking the racial distraction fires.
The importation of US racial politics has also been a job creation scheme for various Americans who get employed to tell us where we are going wrong and if we do as they say we can achieve the successful cohesive society America enjoys.
George Bruce
3 years ago
Are black people really only 3% of the population of Britain? So only one in five non-whites is black (given the author says that 85% of the population is white and therefore 15% non-white)?
For 3% of the population, the media, government and academia really do go on about them – on and on and on and on and on and on….
Yes George. The previous census data makes this clear. Maybe last week’s census analysis will show movement, but not much i imagine. The result of the media onslaught of examples of perceived racism has slewed it’s relevance. Likewise the actual percentage of the ‘welfare budget’ in the UK spent on unemploymeng benefits is similarly disproprtioniate to the emotional heat it generates compared to where the bulk of it ends up. Words carry more weight than personal feelings and everybody feels aggreivances. If we all clamour for attention maybe we can level the playing field by drowning out the foghorns.
Last edited 3 years ago by Zap Zenn
Paul Booth
3 years ago
When I was in London for a conference some years ago, I was talking to two very nice ladies from Uganda. They had both worked for a time in Nigeria and told me, to my surprise, that I wouldn’t believe the prejudice that they had encountered when working there. Prejudice is a human thing, it appears.
I noticed the same thing while in Kenya. I watched the military police loading people up in open trucks and asked what it was all about. A Kenyan told me they were Somalis and that no one wanted them in Kenya. I asked him how the police knew they were Somalis and he said you could tell by their hair. I said people are being rounded up based on their hair without even asking for identification? and he said, yes we know who they are.
Peter LR
3 years ago
This emphasis on Caucasianess is a distraction from helpful analysis. The economic differences between countries of the world would be better discussed by looking at the historical and political applications of Protestant Christianity. This is at the root of the economic success of Northern Europe North America with its emphasis on honest work ethic. As one of its proponents said, “Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can!”
When you apply this ethic, the belief that all humans should have rights and the consequences where ‘the law is king’, then honest hard work produces wealth. When you combine giving and saving as investment it leads to job creation. If you believe as they did that the universe is an ordered creation it opens the door to science and technology. Like everything this enterprise became tainted by human selfishness.
The important analysis for the West is what will happen as we rapidly ditch this foundation for secular politics: what we label ‘woke’ gives us some idea.
Agree on work ethic but protestant Christianity was a challenge to religious orthodoxy, which then led to science based challenges to “ordered creation” rather than an acceptance of it.
Hi James, by ordered creation I mean a universe that is ruled by predictable laws rather than behaving randomly. Science won’t challenge these laws which can be verified consistently. The challenge comes in explaining origins and purpose both of which can’t be measured scientifically. This is a largely modern conflict as most people and most scientists accepted the Divine argument and just got on with discovering.
I’m pretty sure that the West would not have made such massive economic progress if the work ethic was only applied In agriculture and there had been no discoveries of science and technology.
Lee Floyd
3 years ago
Your hope is futile, I suspect. Truth will bend to the narrative. The arc of the moral universe doesn’t always bend towards justice, and I think, not in this case. Too much invested. We’re in trouble, all of us.
I’ve yet to see any evidence which proves the killing of George Floyd was racially motivated.
Mr Chauvin himself is not even being charged with racially motivated murder, nor any hate crime, though such offences exist under US law. Two of the four officers involved in Mr Floyd’s death are themselves from racial minority groups.
I’d warmly invite any Unherd writer/ commenter to show me such evidence.
Last edited 3 years ago by Juilan Bonmottier
James Newman
3 years ago
I suspect it is because she voiced the inconvenient truth that the current preoccupation with white privilege, white racism and now “white wealth” (which of course doesn’t exist) is causing racial divisions in the UK and elsewhere, as predicted by Morgan Freeman. I say that as a person with one black and one mixed race business partners, both of whom had a more privileged upbringing than me but have significant academic and work achievements.
William Gladstone
3 years ago
But we should also acknowledge that in western societies like Britain, the type of racism with the power to limit one’s life chances is typically that practised and condoned by white folk. This is partly down to the sheer potency of numbers. I, for example, cannot realistically choose not to worry about the attitudes of Britain’s 85% white population towards people of black heritage such as myself. In contrast, a white Brit does not have to be concerned in the same way about what black folk, who constitute just 3% of Britain, think about white people.
and right here is a bad assumption. London for example has far more BAME members than 3% and it is the most well paid part of the UK and in London people are openly racist and discriminate against white people. I myself have had been ignored when I dared to criticise an Indian woman who had stolen work from a former colleague and called it her own. Similarily at the same place my opinion as a white man didn’t matter against a Black Man from Nigeria despite me having a far better track record. In the end this place struggled to find good people to fill the roles because of their openly racist way of working and the CEO has moved on leaving disaster in her wake.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Anti-racism is just like anti-fascism: the very opposite of what it claims to be. In the US, we are about 60 past the time of “colored only” anything and nearly 120 years past the Civil War. If a generation = 20 years, then we’re six generations removed from that time. At what point do claims of oppression and the rest reach their expiration date?
Society is not perfect and it will never be. But it’s not what it was a century ago or even 50 years ago. We have immigrants from a variety of third-world nations, including some in Africa, who come here and manage to build good lives. Yet, a native cohort chooses to stay stuck in victimhood, and the white left is determined to enable that. Because grievance is an industry to be perpetuated at all costs. This same column is likely to be printed 50 years from now, with the only change being a few names.
Dougie Undersub
3 years ago
British household wealth is, with few exceptions, tied up with house ownership. And this in turn is the result of the transfer of wealth down the generations. When the British-Bangladeshi family and black African family the article talks of have been the beneficiaries of British education and economic opportunities for a few more generations, they too will have comparable household wealth. Unless, of course, the current CRT nonsense makes us all poorer.
And provided rising house prices and increasing education-debt and a further rise in precarious employment don’t make houses unaffordable – this generation is shaping up to be first that is poorer than its parents, on the whole.
You can’t view everything through the lens of race (whichever group you think is being oppressed). Economic factors are a real issue for all ethnicities.
Steve Craddock
3 years ago
Is there any chance the median wealth of households and family, as it tends to accrue through the generations, is related to how long a household or family has been in the country and depends on how great a net contributor or a net drain they are on society at present?
I also think the more correct terms that should be used nowadays minoritism and favoritism, rather than racism or supremism, as this may allow us to root out and expose more of the core ‘non-melanin’ related challenges that I think are being overlooked.
Charlie Dibsdale
3 years ago
What twaddle, a debunked Marxist theory of hierarchy that oppresses minorities and plays victim-hood. White working class boys in the UK are the worst performing in education. White economic power? When China, Japan, Korea, etc are in the ascent with economic growth? India will also be a super power. Perhaps Africa’s time will be in the next century after it can be rid of dictators and corruption.
Michael Dawson
3 years ago
It also ignores the evidence that some groups – south-east Asians, Indians – have done very well, and much better than working class whites.
You realize that none of that proves much of anything. For instance, you can have a culture in which some tribes are discriminated against, but selected individuals of the discriminated tribes are allowed to rise for a variety of reasons. Those selected to rise will usually be those who best imitate the dominant tribe. You get the same phenomenon with other kinds of discrimination. Maybe it’s too complicated for some people?
The selection within ‘tribes’ of who shall and shall not rise is done organically within the tribes.
For example. In India where ‘tribes’ are called castes and all kinds of quota systems have been introduced to parcel out social benefits, such benefits are mostly enjoyed by the elites of each caste. There’s a phrase locally for these elites. They are called the ‘Creamy Layer’.
Yes. In the U.S. this solution is now being pushed as Idpol. You could say it’s the program of the Democratic Party. I shall almost avoid alluding to the color of cream.
That too is untrue, whites are denied jobs, especially by ethnic minority employers
Paul Ansell
3 years ago
This article is flawed from its opening sentence.
“…..a white officer calmly kneeling against the neck of a black man, fatally ignoring his pleas for air….” it has been shown on the full police video that he was already having problems breathing before they had him in the car and he asked to be allowed to lie down on the ground…….the fatality occurred due to the drugs in his system, not the knee on his neck. Guilty of a breach of a duty of care yes…. The author goes on to state that the potency of White racism is due to our relatively larger population…..85% White v 3% Black…..thus we are “limiting the life chances of Black people”……he does not say how a greater physical presence would improve things, but it sounds like intimidation, give us what we think we deserve or we will use our physical presence to get it……make of that what you will………
He also uses Nigeria as an example of how our British sense of fairness was exposed by the Post-colonial Govt…….”colonial rule does not meet the moral standards and democratic values the British professed to practise. In other words, it was a fundamentally unfair system deployed by a country that claimed to uphold fairness. With time, Britain had to acknowledge that this contradiction couldn’t be squared and the system had to go”………ROFL….maybe the author is not aware, but Nigeria is a byword for corruption and all the worst excesses of the African despot..and it is not alone, in Zimbabwe, pre-election, Robert Mugabe’s ZANLA troops had the blood of thousands of villagers on their hands and post-election around 50,000 Matabele……….hardly fairness or the high moral ground.
The author should be happy though, with China in the ascendancy, it will not be too long before the wealth loading shifts Eastwards……I have worked in SE Asia, if you think the Chinese will be more understanding or egalitarian then think again…………….
“the fatality occurred due to the drugs in his system, not the knee on his neck” yes and the media is trying to hide the toxicology report. It will be very hard to convict the cop of murder once it comes out at court, which it will.
In some places, yes. But if blue cities burn to the ground, no great loss, is it? I love watching MSM encourage blue cities to destroy themselves.
Kelly Mitchell
3 years ago
Anti-racism, in it’s essential form, is poorly clad virtue-signalling. That virtue signalling is a desperate plea to be seen as a ‘morally’ superior person, especially a white person, as oppossed to a normal white person, who has morally failed by being racist (ie, NOT anti-racist).
Anti-racism is the new racism.
Racism is racism; anti-racism is racism; anti-anti-racism is racism. Whatever shall we do? I’d suggest making an effort to get rid of the concept of race, but so many people enjoy playing with it, that won’t go over very well.
“Anti-racism” that purports to correct past injustice by perpetrating injustice against a “privileged” group is racist.
Anti-racism that attempts to reform structures that continue to discriminate against underprivileged groups, is not.
I’m reminded of a quote by Anatole France [corrected attribution]: The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.
Last edited 3 years ago by Paul N
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
“but unless we actually believe they can lead to white folk one day deciding to hand over half their collective wealth — which I don’t believe will happen”
Well, I made my actual wealth by using a saw, hammer and nail gun, wiring and plumbing, standing on ladders 12 hours a day, working at miserably hard work years and years, working for my self, so having to drive myself on every hour, create the work, do it, and then on the side build myself houses to keep, to build my wealth – I did it by manual labour. I once worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 8 MONTHS without even ONE day off when I began trying to get ahead! – to build up my money to buy a derelict house for cash to rebuild it on the side, meaning I spent a decade working all day every day, 12 hour days, essentially. I made a lot of money in that decade, and ended up with some nice houses. But you think I should give half away to someone who cannot get out and work their own a** off?
Pamela Watson-Bateman
3 years ago
This author completely neglects the fact that being white skinned does not make one “superior”. I kept waiting for the disgraceful term “white privilege” to appear. Perhaps he should get out of London and realise that many white Britons – and many other white people in various countries – are poor, and at the bottom of the ladder. In educational outcome in the UK, poor, white boys do the worst, with Indians at the top.
Joe Blow
3 years ago
I have no interest in, nor take seriously as a guide to social policy, any analysis that starts with “racial groupings” as the basis for a discussion of “equality.” Importantly, too many terms in this realm require very clear definitions that are not always included. Equality of what? Which inequalities matter? I will not, for example, entertain any discussion of female boardroom stats unless it is coupled with a discussion of homelessness and imprisonment rates.
The contemporary received-wisdom on race is shot-through with contradiction and risks alienating the very people (that is, the majority of reasonable, decent people) who need to be persuaded on what is perhaps to be changed.
1.) Why is the “critical race theory” conception of whiteness (including the astonishing notion of “white science”) any more acceptable that the 1930s conception of “Jewish science”?
2.) Why is the pretence maintained that all cultures are equivalently legitimate and to be “tolerated”? As an example, why is islamic misogyny more acceptable than Boer racism? Why is islamic teaching on slavery not as worrisome in the contemporary analyses (and cultural vandalism) of the Western leftist “academic” world?
3.) Why is a wolf-whistle perceived as misogyny reportable to the police, but a burka perceived as misogyny not?
There are idiots in politics like in any walk of life, but is is particularly galling when they become MPs… such as Corbynite MP Nadia Whittome, who “warned” against the “fetishisation of debate.” Fools like her create fierce opposition, and potentially support for draconian legislation.
The proposed ten-year jail sentences for statues removed without the support of a public vote (which I now support fully) might have been unnecessary had there been calm and respectful debate about what to do about statues that a few people find “offensive.”
We need a more public figures to state, noisily and repeatedly, that “if you are offended, tough – grow up, it doesn’t matter…”
Last edited 3 years ago by Joe Blow
Chris L
3 years ago
Some comments on here are a lot more intellectual and thought through than the article. Trevor Phillips did a good documentary on this explaining multiple factors to any disparities that exist. Three dominant ones include cultures, class and the fact people generally want to segregate with people like them rather than integrate.
The chasm between above and below line opinion in plutocrat media reflects that between officialdom and populace as much as between readers and commentariat.
Colin Elliott
3 years ago
“Median white British household wealth stands at £314,000 compared to £66,000 for the median British-Bangladeshi family and £34,000 for the black African family.”
That sounds about right. My ancestors have lived and worked in this land for hundreds, probably thousands of years, and I inherited property, after paying tens of thousands of pounds in inheritance tax, whereas the majority of British-Bangladeshi and black African families will have arrived within the last few years. Why would anyone think the difference odd? And what is the household wealth of the median Bangladeshi or black African family in Bangladesh and Africa?
The figure isn’t ‘about right’ as such. The white wealth figure is massively skewed by a tiny elite of very, very wealthy white people….the sort of white people who are happy to burden the ordinary white population with their guilt. If you remove that small percentage of whites who have inherited multiple millions out of the equation the figures for whites becomes a lot closer to the other ethnic groups.
Exactly, no one else is picking this up.
The aristocracy still own most of the land.
As recent as 1900 80% of the UK population were tenants
David Waring
3 years ago
And no one ever mentions CLASS or even less expertise.
Want to get on generation by generation get a skill no on cares about the colour of the surgeon or pilot. They just expect the task to be done right.
True but unlike humans tasks aren’t intrinsically political.
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago
There is a far more interesting and edifying discussion to be had in understanding the experience of some immigrants to this country through the lens of displacement, the experience of growing up far from home in a cultural minority and the struggle to attain a sense of belonging, than there is in any discussion about ‘racism’. I think most modern experiences of racism connect to feelings of dislocation, the disappointing failure of the immigrant dream when met with reality, and the subsequent disillusion and developing resentment. Not all immigrant experiences are the same, likely none are to any extent which justifies more than very basic generalisation. Some immigrants settle well and thrive. Once again it is the idealisation of power which drives people like this writer to collectivise identity and generalise experience; the which are subsequently called into service for the purpose of divide and rule.
Last edited 3 years ago by Juilan Bonmottier
Vinnie J
3 years ago
Please tell me this isn’t a woke site I’ve just joined.
Steve Gwynne
3 years ago
Corruption Perceptions Index
Validity
A study published in 2012 found a “very strong significant correlation” between the Corruption Perceptions Index and two other proxies for corruption: black market activity and an overabundance of regulation.[13]
All three metrics also had a highly significant correlation with real gross domestic product per capita (RGDP/Cap); the Corruption Perceptions Index correlation with RGDP/Cap was the strongest, explaining over three fourths of the variance.
Economic implications
Research papers published in 2007 and 2008 examined the economic consequences of corruption perception, as defined by the CPI. The researchers found a correlation between a higher CPI and higher long-term economic growth,[14] as well as an increase in GDP growth of 1.7% for every unit increase in a country’s CPI score.[15] Also shown was a power-law dependence linking higher CPI score to higher rates of foreign investment in a country.
Currently, Nigeria has a corruption index of 25 and is positioned 149 out of 179.
In other words, this article seeks to blame white majority countries for widespread corruption in black majority countries.
If you can explain with evidence how white majority countries compel black majority countries to be corrupt, then perhaps your racial argument might have some validity.
Last edited 3 years ago by Steve Gwynne
Michael Dawson
3 years ago
There’s a lot here, I’d agree with, but I do think all the BLM and related publicity has reached the point of being counter-productive. It comes across as deeply un-self-critical and all too ready to blame white Britons, often for things that happened a hundred years or more ago (imperialism) or in another country (US police killings, for example). BAME leaders and groups would get more sympathy, at least from me, if they would acknowledge that ‘black’ covers a lot of diverse groups, some of these groups are partly responsible for their own relative under-performance and that racism in the UK is both much less than it was, say, 30 years ago and much less than in almost any other society in the world. (Compare white racism with Japan or China, for example.) If they then focused on specific instances of unfairness, I think they would be a lot more successful, at least for the ordinary people that the author rightly highlights here.
michael stanwick
3 years ago
This essay begins by establishing the context within which its discussion takes place by referencing the death of George Floyd as a racist act.
Thus racism is introduced and the racialisation of individuals into racial groups begins, and from there the argumentation proceeds along racialised group indentitarian lines. Thus;”the informal racial hierarchies stemming from economic hierarchies. These hierarchies place the wealthiest racial group — white people — at the top, the collectively poorest large racial group — black people — at the bottom, and everyone else somewhere in the middle.”
But this vulgar homogenisation of individuals into racial groups eradicates the inherent disparities between the individuals of those groups as a result, it could be argued, of the more pernicious issue of social class distinctions.
This emphasis on the eradication of the real differences between individuals and forcing them into racialised group identities is low resolution, univariate and to me, indicative of a monist ideology reminiscent of identity politics.
Sean L
3 years ago
“Anti-racism” is a euphemism for anti-European: censoring any expression of national identity on the part of Europeans and their right not to be ethnic minorities in their ancestral homelands which is already mathematically guaranteed in Britain even without further influx.
Africanisation / Islamisation of Europe is a disaster for all concerned. Race separatist and Jamaican folk hero Marcus Garvey is officially celebrated in England. Yet one risks persecution even imprisonment for daring to publicly agree with him if a member of the group from whom he sought partition.
“Anti-racism” is cultural and ethnic suicide for Europeans. As the great truth teller Rene Girard put it: ‘Not only is the revolt against ethnocentrism an invention of the West, it cannot be found outside the West”.
The line of MLK about “Content of character” is routinely quoted against “racism”. Which is political mischief. Groups are no more comparable to individuals than bread to flour and water even if that’s all it consists of.
It might not be so bad if Europeans weren’t already an ethnic minority: there are more Africans, Chinese, Indians than Europeans individually never mind combined. “Racism” / “anti-racism” is a bigger lie than Covid. And sponsored by the same interests.
“Multi-racial” society is a contradiction in terms. Even where a population are racially identical society is a rare achievement. The history of our own islands is evidence enough of that.
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
3%? Not London where I was from, not in decades. If the three percent number was uniformly distributed he may have a point, but when it is not, as it is Not in England, using 3% is pointless (and I think it is a wrong number anyway, for political purposes). Take South Harrow, West Harrow, they are nor White towns.
Also, knowing how the different UK Minorities are MUCH more racist towards each other than White people are, I would love to hear his real thoughts on Carib Black compared to Nigerian Black in UK. My guess is he would have to totally make up his story, if my talking to Nigerians about Caribbeans was anything to go by.
Unfortunately it appears to be de rigueur these days to believe that only whitey can be racist.
To suggest that non-whites can also be racist would be seen by the professional enthusiasts of victimhood and CRT as definitely racist.
Last edited 3 years ago by Vic Timov
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Back in the 70s I used to read a lot of sci-fi. A common theme was the wonderful future with increased leisure time and more time to follow hobbies.
The time has come. Everybody has too much leisure time and what are our hobbies? Reading things on screens. What is on the screens? Any old rubbish. What else do we do? Complain, join groups of like-minded complainers.
I look around and I see racism everywhere. I see people trying to form minority groups in order to promote their own agendas.
I have been to India several times and seen the hatred between Muslims and Hindus. I travelled with a very dark-skinned Indian man and when we got to our destination he had to stay in a separate hotel because of the caste system.
I lived in England and saw the cruel remarks about the Welsh (disguised as jokes). My paternal grandmother would not talk to my mother (an Irish ‘tinker’). I lived in Scotland and saw the anti-English behaviour. I live in Wales and see the anti-English behaviour.
Racism is everywhere. Our hysterical reaction to it is new.
Nick Whitehouse
3 years ago
Another article about how some group is not succeeding as well as other groups.
You go on about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as if it was the only slave trade that ever existed. I am sure that you know that a slave trade has existed for thousands of years, long before the English became involved. But no mention of the heroic work of the Royal Navy to try to stamp it out.
You seem jealous of the fact that the whites produced great scientific discoveries and thus great wealth.
Your answer to this disparity of wealth seems to be to steal it from the whites. Perhaps a better answer would be to think of ways to increase your own wealth?
Phil Rushton’s opus Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective remains the premier work on human difference at the level of population; but, of course, the agenda of the destructive left does not have a place for it.
kathleen carr
3 years ago
As ‘white people’ are very much the minority population of the world why do other people gravitate to the west and put themselves at such a disadvantage? Are they so altruistic that people want to come here for example to do the worst , low-paid work just to help Britain as is frequently proclaimed?
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
What a load of racist tosh, if you don’t like it living in a white country may I suggest you consider moving to a black country, it’d be a lot easier for all of us?
Joe Blow
3 years ago
I am not sure precisely where it now is, but there is a complete set of the bodycams from that scene floating about on the web somewhere – unedited. It is hard to see any jury convicting after watching that.
If that fails, try searching YouTube with ‘George Floyd Parry’. Parry is the name of the presenter of the (24 minute) piece. He was a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, including a period working on police misconduct cases.
It’s the image that matters. The arguments given just above may well get the police officer off, but they will not touch the image and all the other images it relates to and recalls. Indeed, the better the defense of the police action, the more outrage it will provoke. You can keep telling yourselves that Floyd ‘deserved’ what he got, and maybe he did, but I don’t deserve the more general trouble your satisfaction with such things will cause.
That how I read a lot of the responses here, including the one by Marcus Leach right above (as I’m currently writing this). I don’t see how else it can be read. And it has plenty of company.
What I said was that George Floyd was the “author of his own demise”. George Floyd made a series of bad choices, that directly resulted in him dying of a heart attack
Saying that George Floyd’s choice to imbibe a lethal dose of fentanyl, to commit a criminal offence that resulted in the police being called to arrest him, and to then resist arrest, places responsibility on Floyd for his death is very different from saying that because of these choices George Floyd “deserved” to die. That is a crass mischaracterization of my comment.
Given the judge has unconstitutionally refused a change of venue, I can very well see a overwhelmingly black, leftist jury finding against the officer. Minneapolis is also the city covered up for the incompetent Somali police officer (because he was black and had bonus points for being Muslim) who shot and killed the white Australian woman
Penny Heater
3 years ago
”White folks….hand over half their collective wealth” -given that you claim only 1 in 3 white people are in managerial/professional roles, and so potentially earn above the national average wage, where exactly will this policy leave the other two thirds, who likely have debt, no savings or own a property? It seems the priority for some is that ALL white people should be rendered destitute before their loathing of white people is sated. The middle class obsessions with colour is not addressing the fundamental issues of global wealth distribution. Another narrative provoking division where in reality across the U.K, folks of all colours get long quite happily.
GA Woolley
3 years ago
It is not the ‘plausibility’ of the findings and recommendations of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which will be the true measure of this initiative, of course, but their acceptability to the race professionals. If it comes up with anything which even hints at attitudes and behaviours which black communities could change to improve their own life chances and outcomes it will be met with outrage.
Pierre Pendre
3 years ago
Racism is ineradicable. Not the end of the story, fortunately. We can work to make racism less toxic. But it’s not like measles. It can’t be eliminated by chemical magic in labs or good intentions.
Does anyone even have a clear idea of what the components of racism are? Its causes are surely more complex than mere skin colour however potent that factor obviously is. If we could explain racism, we could probably explain anti-semitism which is an equally intractable phenomenon.
The explanation of racism probably lies so deep in the human psyche that it may be unreachable. This is no excuse for racism since we know that it is morally wrong and society has a duty to right wrongs where it can.
One thing we can do is to stop pretending that racism is exclusively white. It stands out more obviously in the white West where non-whites are a minority, but it exists everywhere and is equally abhorrent to the victims when practised among themselves by non-white racists.
In the past week, Unherd has published articles about why the English hate the French and vice versa. They were jocular and ended up deciding we didn’t really hate each other and vive la difference, what!
But some English people do hate the French and some French people do hate the English. I know this because I’ve encountered it. To me, this kind of hostility to the Other springs from the same well as racism.
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
In contrast to the UK (according to this article) anti-racism or wokeism is more of an upper income thing in the US, as well as a young person thing. As in, people still living off their parents.
Most middle income people in the US, of any race, are at work and not out protesting or tearing things up.
Chuck Burns
3 years ago
There is no racism except in the minds of the intolerant Left. Racism is a political tool used by the Leftists to divide, disrupt, and cause chaos.
William Harvey
3 years ago
Racism is utter twaddle. We are all the same type of ape , descended from a very small number in Africa, a very short time ago.
You could easily say the in terms of an evolved species….All 7.8 billion of us are African
We have spread across the world and in doing so undergone minor evolutionary changes to accommodate local conditions. (Changes to skin, hair and gut flora being the main ones)
We are all exactly the same.
“Race ” is an illusion. After all we dont make similar illusory groupings based on eye colour or gut flora do we? … just skin colour…
Is it just me that thinks that is very odd?
( I do hope not)
Last edited 3 years ago by William Harvey
Jonathan West
3 years ago
Reads to me like an early opening salvo for reparations… “I want what you’ve got” so I’m going to try and use twisted Marxist argument to claim I’m owed.
No, I mean everyone get in line and identify as whatever you have to identify as to score your share. That way it isn’t reparations. It’s what people would do in the US if there were going to be reparations paid.
Johannes Kreisler
3 years ago
I dearly hope that Adekoya is reading the comments below his grossly abhorrent article. That’s why publishing such twaddle is not a bad move by Unherd: it creates a platform for quality commentary. (Well, until one’s account gets blocked, just like happened to me yesterday – still wondering what’s up with that, the stereotypical Nigerian propensity for melodramatic overreaction being a quite plausible explanation.)
Last edited 3 years ago by Johannes Kreisler
David Morley
3 years ago
This is not about today’s activists holding bad or even consciously selfish intentions, but about the fact that we are all prone to view the world, as well as what most needs to be changed about it, through the lens of our own everyday situation.
I don’t think they see the world through the lens of their everyday situation, though this may prevent them from seeing what is right in front of their nose.
They see it through the lens they have been provided by education. It is how they have been taught to see the world.
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago
Should love to see the comments….. it has to be very, very bad hate speech for me to condone censorship.
Well they seemed to be well-received by the fellow commenters, as i had a very decent amount of upvotes on all. Can’t be faffed with re-typing them now.
That account is well & truly b u g g e r e d now (cannot post with it), so i use this new one – will see how long it lasts.
(i.martin is my other half, helped me out with posting that query on my behalf. I often ask him to check & correct my sloppy grammar after i type stuff on the web, my English is still a hot convoluted mess esp. when it comes to sentence structure.)
Anthony Berend
3 years ago
What a fabulous blog this is. Well written and intellectually stimulating.
We have recently become friendly with an immigrant family from the Balkans. The Wife is a Vet, professionally first class and personally kindly and sympathetic. The Husband a Landscape Gardener who has just started his own business. They have a 12 year old daughter.
When we asked them why the came to Scotland their reply disgusted us both. Everyone we met in Kent, where we lived for 3 years avoided us. Even to the extent that our daughter was told by a class mate, “I cannot invite you to my party because my parents say I must not speak to immigrants”.
That is racism pure and simple.
I guess that doesn’t count as racism to the ‘Woke society’ as they are not coloured.
You’re taking their word for everything they say? Seems a bit less than skeptical. And even if it’s all true, why would Scotland be any better than Kent? How is it racism if the immigrants are Balkans?
Yes, the Balkans are Europe. In fact “more” Europe than some of the rest, as they were of the Roman Empire while some of us north of the limes were still swinging from the trees so to speak (or wandering through the steppes, in my case).
In wokespeak, ‘immigrant’ = ‘nonwhite thirdworlder‘. The woke would not even contemplate the word’s actual meaning, which is ‘someone from a foreign country’, i.e. Irish, Japanese, Canadian, Serbian, Luxembourgian, French, Russian, Australian, etc. etc. etc.
I’ve never met anyone on the left who didn’t think all prejudice against immigrants was wrong. It might not meet a particular definition of racism, or systemic or institutionalised racism, but probably would count as xenophobia.
“Why would Scotland be any better than Kent?”
Geography, Annette. Kent is where most illegal immigrants – apart from those who fly in so I guess it should be most poor illegal immigrants – enter the UK. Scotland is nearly completely white. A Balkan immigrant couple may be interestingly exotic to a Scot when they would be borderline resented ‘invaders’ to many residents of Dover.
And you’re right. It’s not racism at all. It’s classic xenophobia. A natural human condition since the first group found a cave and wanted to keep it for themselves. It’s not got a good rap over much of history but it has quite a few positives and it’s never going to disappear.
Given the history of the Balkans, I’d think it wasn’t a surprise to the immigrant couple.
That’s fine if you choose to judge complex matters by a single anecdote.
If you you like that kind of thing, you might like to weigh it against the anecdotes I have heard in which English people in Scotland were openly told things such as ‘You do know you have a job that should have gone to a Scot?’ Or the 1998 case of a youth in Scotland kicked to death for having an English accent? (He was Scottish, by the way, he had just picked up an English accent by going to school in England.)
My point is not any value in the anecdotes themselves, but rather the danger of seizing on random scraps of information to create an illusion of a generalised argument. (And parading one’s ‘disgust’ in a little bit of virtue signalling, while pointing the finger of ‘racism’ by implying the greater virtue of your own country over another’s. That’s not racism in itself, then?)
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
I gather there is a video of Mr Floyd performing on the “Judge Judy Show “ aged 16. He was explaining why he had stolen a motor car, without much success.
Not sure what you are implying.
If you watch the bodycams from the police officers who were involved in the arrest of Floyd at the time of his death, it is apparent that the narrative of “a police officer knelt on his neck and murdered him” is far, far too simplistic – and inaccurate.
There is no suggestion that Floyd “deserved what he got” or anything so repugnant. But even an office in the midst of this mess deserves justice.
That he was educationally sub normal from the start, and frankly never had much of a chance.
“There is nothing more unequal than equality itself “, as you know who said.
Jonathan Weil
3 years ago
And yet there he is, publishing books, disseminating his thoughts to a wide audience across a variety of media, influencing the increasingly fractious, (increasingly mad if you want my opinion) race debate in a direction I’d wager you actually approve (“not all the facts for the anti-colonialist narrative”; “white-bashing is a thing”)… he made it clear what a sh!tshow he thinks Marxism has been, and ok I find the phrase “white folk” annoying too but for goodness’ sake! You might not agree with everything the guy says, but he’s clearly being fair-minded and looking to solve actual problems in good faith.
‘White folk’ is nore than annoying though. It is tribute to the modern belief that people sharing random traits (skin colour, language) all think alike (and what is more, ought to).
David Morley
3 years ago
the Democratic Party, who cannot win elections without the black vote and so must of necessity characterize the US as a hotbed of racism and inequality that only they can resolve.
But never actually do.
Derek Cuff
3 years ago
Correct we do need to correct the balance ‘on the material side of things’ – we could start for example examining the role of the ‘Freemasons’ and the wealth they generated from the slave trade in which they built their many lodges up and down the country . We also need to get rid of the House of Lords where some many old ‘Etonians’ claim so much expenses for so little time in attendance. At the same time we need confront FGM , HBV , Forced Marriage – and about the of abuse white young teenage girls in Rotherham etc ? and how about the 2.5 million immigrants ( illegal ? ) who have not completed the census –
JD Parkes
3 years ago
One of the interesting matters is that a very tiny minority of whites warp the high “wealth” figures enormously, as I sincerely doubt there’s any commenter here with that £314,000 in the bank, I’d love it if it was the case but no.
I’ve seen this argument trotted out time and again as justification for giving minorities money or other “help” to try and “level the playing field” or whatnot while ignoring the fact that is largely rich bankers and others that warp the figures quite considerably and its the rest of us dragging it down to such a number.
The main problem, quite simply, is there’s no cadre of minority billionaires in britain dragging that “median” up.
The author also hoists themselves by their own petard somewhat, as the average household income in FYE 2020 was £29,900.
But the averages for Bangladeshis is £66k, and £34k for an African family.
So if those two averages are higher than the median applied to everyone in the UK…. who’s dragging those figures down to £29,900?
Maybe the majority population? They’d be the only group big enough to drag it down there after all.
Ironically written from a very middle class perspective. Perhaps its satirical considering the cover photograph has a majority non-black audience at an anti-racism protest?
With regard to your statements about Bangladeshi and African families hie is talking about wealth, not income. Most wealth is in property. It stands to reason that people who have lived on these islands for hundreds of years will often have paid off their mortgages and be in a position to pass that wealth on.
Philosophically I believe that we should try to even things out a little by taxing some estates more heavily upon death. The only problem is, of course, that the government will simply squander that money on all manner of garbage.
As recent as 1900 80% of the population were tenants.
David Foot
3 years ago
We want to focus exclusively on MERIT, when we can do that focusing on Merit regarding outcomes, then there are no “victims” unless somebody is trying to look a victim for their own gain. That person would be shortchanging the entire society which would not be getting something as good as it could. Everybody loses.
There has to be no other measure but MERIT
There must not be forced outcomes. Forced outcomes are essentially Marxism, and this doctrine has always failed. Forced outcomes are an open loop control system which will hit a wall somewhere. Forced outcomes are bad for our society and for everybody in our society, if what the “old white men” developed, constructed, wrote etc has more merit, then that is what you want to teach because that is better for all our society.
For example: To the “decolonizers” and the “victims” Mathematics is not “white” nor “racist” you either can do it or you can’t and if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
To “show your results” is not racist and doesn’t perpetuate “whiteness” if it does, then we must face that terrible fact that Darwin was right in a way and that would be what MERIT would tell us, simple as that! We don’t do ourselves any favours if we cover our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears not to see what IS a fact.
The water, the soil, the air of Africa is the same as anywhere else, and Africa is a very rich continent geographically, but let us not kid ourselves, it is not going as well as other places. That is a fact.
Whatever is holding back some societies mustn’t stop the rest of us, we need to concentrate on MERIT and in the facts.
The sums and calculations needed for whatever activity we practice would carry on requiring to have the correct results, there is nothing racist to do about it, those who can come up with the right answers are the ones we want to identify in the exams using pure MERIT to do the jobs of that nature,
Perhaps there is information which is not good for us to know and will mess up our progress, however, we must not be selfish and stand in the way of progress. We must give priority for what is the best for everybody.
Even those who can’t come up with mostly the correct results for the sums will benefit from the work of those who can do the sums correctly. There is in the end only one truth, those who can do the calculations and those who can’t and that is it. Nothing else to say really
The problem with ‘merit’ is that it’s not well-defined in objective, material terms, and winds up being somebody’s opinion after all.
Derek Cuff
3 years ago
The death of George Floyd was horrendous – BUT this was the USA – in 2015 there were more deaths by firearms on Christmas day ( 27 ) than the UK had in the whole year – 18500 police forces across the USA who refuse to talk about community policing . Lets also talk about the 2nd amendment ( corrupted to ‘ the right to bare arms’ !!) and there is no political will to change Gun possession – In the UK a women is murdered every 3 days due to Domestic Violence – where is the uproar regarding this narrative ?
I doubt it but even if that were true, does it make it okay for people to be knifed in the UK? Why not ban knives? Don’t you care about people losing their lives?
Earl King
3 years ago
Britain has had the yoke class to bear making acceptance of the races more difficult. In America we by in large have avoid class acceptance. Sure there were conversations about boys from the wrong side of the railroad tracks. But nobody cares….College has largely wiped that out. Money is the new class…
I find this to be true. Britain has a hereditary class system almost like a caste system. You never escape your class no matter what you do in life. It’s always brought back up that you are “working class” whatever that means since very rich people often work harder than anyone else.
Working class meant people who had to work for a living as opposed to upper class who had assets (typically land that has been in the family for centuries or since william the conquerer )which provided income.
Very rich people usually make their money through some type of looting( look at wall st)
David Wicks
3 years ago
Also in the research on the wealth per household, why do you think Black African wealth is bottom on £34,300 v’s Black Caribbean at £85,900, which is ahead of Bangladeshi and Chinese, but obviously nowhere near Indian / White British on £313,000.
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
This article is morally repugnant and is hardly an argument for the implied transfer of white wealth to the black community. In the USA, the black community today, especially in the urban inner city, is clearly suffering from a lack of ‘personal responsibility’ that has nothing to do with poverty per se. Statistics show that if you do five things you will not find yourself in poverty- (1) don’t take drugs (2) stay in and finish high school (3) don’t have a baby before you are married (4) get married and form a family, (5) get a job. As is well-known, urban drug use is endemic to the black community. The black illegitimacy rate at 75% is higher than any other racial demographic; It never used to be – before 1950’s, the black community had a lower rate of divorce than whites. And the nuclear family is virtually non-existent, hence BLM’s platform insists on the abolishment of it if anyone ever did think it existed. As regards schooling, in 2017, $25K was spent per head per pupil in New York City – the highest per capita figure in the world; Only 10% of NYC students are white today. Even with such an outlay, less than 20% of NYC students can pass the state exams, most of whom are Asian. Ironically, BLM & Progressive want to get rid of the state exam as well so no one can see the terrible performance; they also want to remove merit tests to get into the more competitive schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science. etc. Seems to me Dear Fellow, that the black community needs to do some soul searching. How Not to be Poor: http://www.ncpathinktank.org/pub/ba428
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
Antiracism is too middle-class An obsession with language ignores the material priorities of Britain’s minoritiespoor
Poor has no race! Universal policies for those in distress are more just. Intersectionality: People are viewed in terms of the number of claims to victimisation that they have, and through this ideology, which wants to place people into broad racial categories, moral and immoral is determined based on how much power a person’s particular racial group has.
intersectionality focuses too much on group identities, which can lead it to ignore the fact that people are individuals, not just members of a class. Ignoring this can cause intersectionality to lead to a simplistic analysis and inaccurate assumptions about how a person’s values and attitudes are determined.
The other problem is that that the special interest groups for each category claim to represent the individual. For example feminism claims to speak universally for all women! – I find that idea laughable! I require and wish to speak for myself! I don’t condone special interest groups to be made on my behalf creating policy I don’t condone. policy that is made and created in an undemocratic way. There are in short limitations in categories that don’t give voice to the many variations of thought and individuality within those set categories.
intersectionality also sounds an awful lot like apartheid to me, each category based on its race and morality, then allocated resources and rights.. I doubt any amount of good can come from such a racist and divisive idea.
Intersectionality is in conflict with human rights values! That all people are equal regardless of race, sex, creed. It’s a far cry from equal human rights based on humanity. Dehumanise: to deprive of human qualities or attributes; divest people of their of individuality Apartheid: a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
The way that works it called common humanity identity politics. identity politics is not bad but if it’s organised by common hatred of the enemy it gets ugly quick, and never works.
Common humanity identity politics is universal recognition of common humanity. We are all humans and therefore we all deserve to be treated in such a way that we would want others to treat us. All social justice movements grew from that intrinsic root. “I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods. When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind” ~ Pauli Murray
A society ought to attempt to promote individuality as it is a prerequisite for creativity and diversity. A social outlook that emphasises the moral worth of the individual, through their own actions. To value independence and self-reliance the right of the individual to freedom and self-realisation, to possess individual characteristics as opposed to traditional or popular mass opinions and behaviours.
Jonathan Haidt: The Three Terrible Ideas Weakening Gen Z and Damaging Universities and Democracies Racist Intersectionality as taught in universities (51:02) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E
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David Morley
3 years ago
There’s a lot of information there. Do you have sources?
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
And usually work harder. Well work in a lot of cases.
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
Decolonising the curriculum is the most absurd idea, it’s always the way that traditional knowledge gets replaced with better systems. Not just different but better. Take roman numerals we incorporated them because they worked better – not because it reached some diversity target. Worthwhile knowledge is like that, it inspires and gets picked up seamlessly. Also non universal law making is unjustifiable, make laws to help poor people of course, but I object to needing any other criteria after that point, being poor is enough of a burden.
Katy Hibbert
3 years ago
median white British household wealth stands at £314,000 compared to £66,000 for the median British-Bangladeshi family and £34,000 for the black African family.
That’s because white British people have lived here for longer and work harder. What a dreary, crashing bore this race-grifter is.
There’s no evidence that white British people work harder.
80% of UK population were landless tenants.
That only changed relatively recently.
The only reason the white figure is high is due to the aristocracy and very rich pushing it up.
As a matter of fact the most deprived areas in England are predominantly white;Blackpool, Jaywick,Middlesbrough, South Shields, Stoke on trent.
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
.
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Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
“It needs hardly stating that the white capacity to dominate stems from their wealth….Crucially, whites run much of today’s world because of this wealth”
I disagree, wealth is only a byproduct. The power to dominate industry comes from knowledge, skill, technology, efficiency and application! It comes from having a tax system that people adhere to, So schools can be built, It comes from politicians not pocketing money that should go to improvement of community services. Or having policemen who are competent and not corrupt. It comes from good property law and protection. Financial transparency, It comes from rule of law and respect for human rights.
As to what makes a good learner and a successful person in today’s economic climate – I’m sure there are plenty of theories. But nobody is interested to talk about that! – The conversation is dominated by race and only race as being the final arbitrator. “While the majority poor population are often keen for the international media to highlight their suffering in the desperate hope some help might be forthcoming, affluent Africans are usually more concerned with the “negative stereotypes” I would say the rich are quite happy to have their suffering crowds on TV – It is a perverse incentive, Ensured foreign aid which can be siphoned off, without the need to actually improve anything, or to slow improvement to ensure more aid. “British identity is very much intertwined with a self-image of fairness.”
I wonder as to the national identity of Africa, is fairness even an issue amongst the ruling classes, who exploit their poor so viciously? wealth inequality in South Africa is staggering. Africa’s three richest billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population of Africa The wealthiest 1% owns 67% of all the country’s wealth. The top 10% owns 93%. The remaining 90% of South Africa owns a paltry 7% of the country’s wealth. South Africa’s corruption watchdog has found officials misused millions of dollars during Nelson Mandela’s funeral four years ago. According to the report, 300m rand ($22m; £16m) was redirected from a development fund to help with costs. It had been earmarked for things like “sanitation, the replacement of mud schools and the refurbishment of hospitals,” the report stated.
No doubt the very rich waited for another TV opportunity, starving children to get another top up.
But acknowledging that socioeconomic power differentials are the key to enabling corrupt leadership today is a crucial beginning to a more equal and racially harmonious Africa.. But only the latter [money] can truly change the everyday realities of Britain’s minorities. poor.
I disagree. Only knowledge, education, skill, technology, efficiency and application will provide a way out of the situation, choosing good friends who will bring out the best in you personally and academically, studying, having supportive parents who help you, avoiding drugs, not getting pregnant too soon in life, these are the talents among others required by this economy to be successful. “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”
Last edited 3 years ago by Natalija Svobodné
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
Author makes a passing comment of the middle class “prone to view the world” Not understanding it is probably that world-view that gives them the advantage!
Self sufficiency is king…It’s a dangerous game to tie your sense of meaning and wellbeing to someone or something else. When you fixate on things beyond your control, you become restricted, dependent, and weak. And you introduce dependencies that can drop you into a state of anxiety, envy, or despair.
But when you guard your self-sufficiency above all else and focus more attention on what’s within your sphere of control, you gain flexibility, independence, and strength. Self-sufficiency is about focusing more of your time and energy on the things you can actually have an impact on. And it demands that you assume responsibility for those things. The wish to have others “make space”, “give you meaning”, “validate you”, or “give money” makes them the master. In this case you would subvert freedom to a political party, or some other organisation.
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Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago
“…It is an antiracism… the highway to racial equality.” I couldn’t imagine the least effective way to teach equality and respect!Anti-racism teaches the belief that “the white race is bad, black race is good” I doubt this will in anyway be a “highway to racial equality” if anything it will perhaps be a highway to hell.
A perverse result where “Equality” becomes to mean tyranny and apartheid.
Jonathan Haidt: The Three Terrible Ideas Weakening Gen Z and Damaging Universities and Democracies (50 min) “Black is moral, white race is immoral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E
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Jake C
3 years ago
Yes,I’ve noticed this.
As a somewhat leftist I was interested in fixing the UK’s economic weaknesses and things like the housing crisis,low productivity, improving the financial system.
But I found that there was a large circle who wasn’t interested in any of this but instead in addressing white racial “arrogance” or english exceptionalism ,these supposed problems that they would insist exists.
They (the group is mainly made up of poc and whites)would talk endlessly about things that seemed more like playground status games or ethnonarcism and ethnochauvinism and very little on technical policy debate.
Regarding Dr Remi Adekoya point about “economic racism” I’m not particularly concerned that the white median of household wealth is higher than black peoples because the white median figure includes the aristocracy who still owns most of the land.
The most deprived areas in England are all predominantly white,from South Shields,Middlesbrough, Jaywick and Blackpool,
Infact there’s so much white socio-economic deprivation in England it’s ridiculous to make out that black people somehow have it worse.
The number of white households with food affordability problems is greater than the entire population of black people in the UK.
The clear and most pressing need in the country is to end homelessness and fix the housing crisis. Then the next pressing need is to fix our low productivity problem.
Regarding housing,it is a bit galling how in certain areas of London black people are complaining about white English people moving in.Even though these particular areas have always been predominantly white English.Let alone the fact that Black people do not have an exclusive right to ethnic enclaves in London which exclude other British citizens.Let alone that London has had people from all over the world moving; it seems very rich to complain about the one group indigenous to the country.Let alone the nerve of people who aren’t even from Britain originally to complain about white English people moving in;if the opposite was done then it would be considered appalling.
UK should be fixing its economic problems and taking ideas from Austria,Germany, South Korea,Taiwan, USA,Singapore, Isreal-lifting its masses into higher levels of economic development.
But instead Black people want to talk about stuff which is incomprehensible and seems to be predicated on there own insecurities when for the most part they seem to be doing great on an economic level personally.It’s a shame the country seems to pay heed to these superfluous concerns.
Caroline Ayers
1 year ago
Interesting but ultimately Marxist view of the issues.
Jennifer Britton
3 years ago
Three points: 1) the Level of Corruption is a huge factor in whether a country rises or falls economically. Nigeria is wealthy in natural resources. Since Nigeria gained its independence, where have the economic benefits from these resources gone? The answer to that question is key to Nigeria’s economic condition.
2) there are long standing and pervasive inequities between Blacks and Whites in the US, especially in southern states. One need look no further than this week’s developments in the state of Georgia. Under the banner of “protecting elections,” Georgia GOP senators and representatives passed sweeping legislation that makes it very very difficult for Black people to vote. 13 other states are mounting similar plans to keep Blacks from voting. These kinds of legal impediments to Black voting were vanquished after the Civil War but roared back under when Reconstruction efforts failed. The 1960’s voting rights laws attempted to return a level playing field at the ballot box. Though officially leveled at the national level, local voting rights were stymied. It is no accident that since the Supreme Court did away with federal monitoring of states cited for voting intimidation voting protection in the Civil Rights Act, those states, along with states controlled by extreme GOP politicians, have now instituted new ways to disenfranchise Black voters, all under the banner of “protecting the vote.”
3) one respondent to this essay claims that minority poverty is due to ways of life that are self destructive, ie., against their own self interest. This claim suggests that had Blacks acted in their own self interest they would have better lives. That may be so, but people of all races in the US have acted against their self interests. On the whole, Only Blacks seem to have been unable to recover from the kinds of missteps (acts against self interest) commonly found among all racial groups (humanity in general) in the US. George Wallace, governor of Alabama in the 1960’s, pointed out that as long as poor Whites had Blacks to look down upon, poor Whites were satisfied with their own poverty. What we see today in the base support for Donald Trump and his MAGA insurrectionists, 75% of those arrested have serious financial problems, proves Wallace’s understanding of divide and conquer in the American south. And January 6 provides evidence of the desperation evident in White people acting against their own self interest and against the interest of democracy to keep a racist in the White House.
In what sense does the new legislation in Georgia make it difficult for black people to vote? The new legislation is designed to prevent people from voting by mail without proving who they are, as happened on a massive scale in the last GE. It also aims to abolish ‘ballot harvesting’ completely, another tactic that was used on a massive scale to get Trump out of office last year.
Project Veritas’ findings are widely accessible. You won’t get evidence harder than that, straight out of the horses’ mouth, recorded on video/audio. Infiltration is a wonderful tool to shine light on unsavoury dealings.
Very difficult how? Explain in your own words – not in some talking point you’re told to repeat – how voting will be more difficult. The vast majority of black people have IDs; it’s the racists who act as if black folks are incapable of getting identification cards. If you’re not able to back up that claim, then try it with this one: there are long standing and pervasive inequities between Blacks and Whites in the US, especially in southern states. There has been plenty of rioting across the northern tier, the midwest, and the west coast. The south is full of black elected officials on every municipal and state body. Atlanta has had black mayors my entire life. Places like Birmingham, New Orleans, and Jackson have minority leadership, too, so if there is inequality, the correlation has far more to do with one-party rule than with white people.
You are watching too much Fox TV if you think voter suppression has anything to do with transnational corporate conspiracy. You make a logical error in your claim that I underestimate Blacks: I do not present blacks as helpless; I do point out that they have endured often unfair economic and political conditions. Pointing out a historical fact about political and economic limits on one group says nothing about that group’s inherent abilities. It does suggest, however, that those political and economic limits likely stunt that group’s achievements.
You are saying it’s your opinion that ‘Blacks’ (as you seem to like to label this entire group as a single class of persons) are stunted in their growth and development due to political and economic limits. Currently 36% of African Americans are middle class as defined by household income. 7% are upper middle to upper class (census data). What happened there then? At some stage you are going to have to acknowledge that this has less to do with skin colour and racism than you want to believe.
“The sooner we start focusing more on the material side of things the better.” I heartily agree. But if you are going to focus on the material side of things only as it applies to lack and brown people you will be making a big mistake. There is another large marginalised group in Britain for whom nobody seems to be rooting, working class white boys. Help for one disadvantaged group on the basis of the colour of their skin will not lead to a more equal and racially harmonious Britain, quite the contrary.
Kevin this is an excellent point about white working class boys. There was a wholly disingenuous article in the times this morning about Afro-caribbean boys doing worse at school than white working class. Whilst I accept is true, the fact that British- African schoolboys do better than both aforementioned demographics pulls the rug out from the whole racist white man argument.
Yes, and white working class girls as well IMO, and, by definition – it is partly the result of social class relations being the fundamental issue to be addressed.
The thing of the Working Classes is over the last hundred years the get-up-and-go working class people, the ones who work hard and smart, well they moved up. This left the other ones in place, and took their genes with them.
Some are trapped in a culture of self destruction, but most are just not up to it for many factors, my guess is intelligence would be a large one. It would seem, that is IF the Government looked for answers rather than making facts fit their agenda, that they would do a study on who fails, and why, by collecting statistics like drug use, single mothers, criminal behavior in parents and the children, and IQ. In the vary rare study of IQ in US Prisons – well guess what they find?
But in this, insane, Liberal, world where only OPPORTUNITY determines outcome, rather than ability, it is essentially a crime to look into this, although nothing could be more obvious.
I would love to see this Woke principal be applied to creating professional sports teams.
Admittedly I grew up in Australia, not the UK, but at my sink comprehensive school the teachers told us we’d never get anywhere. In fact one refused to teach the entire English literature curriculum because working class kids would never need to know it.
When I went to the careers advisor and said that I wanted to go to university I was laughed at! I did get to uni eventually, as a part-time, mature age student after I was married.
What a load of , the get up and go didn’t leave but the jobs did, and then employers that didn’t leave found it cheaper to hire foreigners. Let’s not forget the minority employers who discriminate against whites seeking work
In Britain, it has been shown that most prisoners have very weak self-control – they continually behave impulsively.
It’s not IQ. It’s the ability to keep on struggling!
Good point. Eddison said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
What is ignored is that in the UK, the education system is a watered down university training scheme. Historically, people could leave school at 14 years of age and enter an apprenticeship,where academic and prcatical skills were taught . The Tripartite Aspects of Schools in the 1944 Butler Education Act were never introduced and practical skills have been removed.
Teachers have vast ranges in intellectual abilities but tend to lack adventurous and pioneering spirits and so do not earn the respect of many tough children. If a teacher had practical experience outside of the classroom- engineering, combat, industry, forestry, farming, commercial fishing and brought this top the classroom, they would enthuse many more. A teacher explaining the problems of designing and constructing an offshore oil platform in rough seas would enthuse many boys.
Well the ‘get-up-and-go’ working class people did have the benefit of being lifted up by the Grammar School system selectively creaming off the ‘smart genes’ as you would have it; and post-war, they ( er, *we*) had the additional benefit of a University system that funded their (er, *our*) higher education. Don’t kid yourself that this was motivated working class determinism. When it suited the politico-economic system to keep people down for hundreds of yours, they did so very effectively. Lifting up the ‘get-up-and-go’ types served as an additional tool to divide and conquer the feudal-peasant-working classes.
That get-up-and-go class had no benefit of the Unions that ameliorated their fathers, grandfathrs and great-grandfathers conditions: my father was a life-long union member and official, and he got-up-and-did a lot in the way of social organization. I was a member of a Union for only about 3 years of my 40 year career, though I have the advanced degrees he never had the opportunity to have, but that his generation gave me the opportunity to acquire.
I am certainly not “better” than my father because of my education. Indeed, in may ways my life has been less socially responsible than his. Boomers like me need to keep aware that our descendants only prosper in the large because of our collective fostering of a socially equal and financially equitable system.
I don’t think unity and nice things are a lot of these people’s goals…the author of this piece cites Marx and talks about white people surrendering their wealth and THAT is their real goal…never mind that communism doesn’t and hasn’t worked or that tying this attempt to race is only going to make the whole racism thing worse when this attempt doesn’t work either
“As many have pointed out, that isn’t to say that white people cannot be the target of racism.”
Actually, Kendi, DiAngelo and other celebrated “anti-racists” say EXACTLY this. It follows logically from their re-definition of racism. If racism can only exist due to power imbalances, minorities can never be racist, since they are oppressed and therefore not capable of holding power over whites.
According to Kendi, should a black person actually be in a position to hold power over whites, their behavior still can’t be racist, since when they discriminate against whites, it’s in pursuit of an anti-racist outcome. Their discrimination is against systemic whiteness, which, as an oppressor ideology, must be opposed. And no, I’m really not making this stuff up — read the books. It’s really there.
So whites discriminating against blacks is racist; blacks discriminating against whites is anti-racist. At least in England and America. I’ve never heard Kendi address whether the same rules apply in black-majority cultures like S. Africa.
After the explosion of CRT onto the public radar in 2020, it’s pretty astounding that an article like this could be unaware of these basic tenets of modern “anti-racist” philosophy.
This article applies far too much logic and ethical rationality to these positions. It’s not about racism or sexism or able-ism or thin-ism and it never has been. Its about power. Full stop. College-educated, upper-middle-class (mostly white) elites want to convince the rest of us that their obvious class advantages are irrelevant — what matters is their skin color, their sexual partners, or (for those who can’t claim to be a minority themselves) their virtue signaling on behalf of other oppressed groups.
Also Kendi is actually extremely materialist in his proposals. His proposal is for a government department that sits above all others in terms of rank and power concerning itself entirely with judging economic and political acts on their racially equitable outcomes.
Where Remi really hits the nail on the head is regarding the middle class nature of this movement. This is what worries me most. It’s being brought into society at the policy level, via higher educational institutions, into the best practice of HR departments in corporates, education more broadly, and into the public sector (who in turn make diversity and inclusion goals part of procurement etc). It’s a huge bottom up shift in policy, with a massive introduction of a political ideology into the corporate workplace and public sector, that hasn’t been voted in by the electorate. As such it is going to be very very difficult to get rid of
Not least because, once the work of re-education has been done, there will be almost no one left to vote against it.
Our faith has to be in such education either failing to stick – or on its rejection by the young.
“If racism can only exist due to power imbalances, minorities can never be racist, since they are oppressed and therefore not capable of holding power over whites”
I wonder what the slaves taken from various European countries by the Ottoman traders would make of that “analysis”?
Globally, whites are a minority. Or doesn’t that count?
Whites weren’t just enslaved by the Ottoman Turks, but by Arabs and Africans. Millions in coastal areas of Britain, Ireland, France, Italy , etc were often enslaved after their villages were raided
An ancestor of mine was an ‘indentured fisherman’ in Aberdeen in the late 18th C. Effectively slavery. Absconders could be tracked and captured by the ‘police’ and returned to their employers. All involved were white.
When did African or arabs raid English villages
Google the Barbary slave trade. Happened at the same time as the transatlantic slave trade.
and for 300 years, as long as the transatlantic slave trade… anglo-egyptian Treaty of August 4th 1877 prohibited the continued sale of white slaves in Egypt after August 3rd 1885, well after blacks gained freedom in the US.
During the Middle Ages Slavs were so widely used as slaves in both Europe and the Islamic world that the very word slave derived from the word for Slav not only in English but also in other European languages as well as in Arabic
For over 300 years, the coastlines of the south west of England were at the mercy of Barbary pirates (corsairs) from the coast of North Africa, based mainly in the ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Their number included not only North Africans but also English and Dutch privateers. Their aim was to capture slaves for the Arab slave markets in North Africa.
The Barbary pirates attacked and plundered not only those countries bordering the Mediterranean but as far north as the English Channel, Ireland, Scotland and Iceland, with the western coast of England almost being raided at will.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/
The reasoning behind the ‘unusual’ casting of the latest Ann Boleyn is that they wanted ‘to challenge the perception of the doomed queen…and what was taught in schools’. Media don’t seem so interested in finding out facts that contradict the current slavery story.
THOMAS SOWELL – THE REAL HISTORY OF SLAVERY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrfjUzYvPo
And we also freed the world from slavery, something none of those nations ever considered as a moral problem, if they considered it at all…
“If racism can only exist due to power imbalances, minorities can never be racist,”
Interesting. So that exculpates the British ruling class then.
Kendi is so racist he wrote an op-ed in college raising the possibility that white people “might be aliens” Racists to the point he would remove a person’s humanity just for being white…
Middle class, or more precisely woke anti-racism is not really anti-racism. It is an appropriation of anti-racism for the purpose of demonstrating the moral superiority required for justifying elite status. Similarly with environmentalism. Environmentalism is flawed because of the wealth and status disparities between developed and developing nations. China, India and all are not going to stop developing to justify the elite status of wokeists. If environmentalists gave away ‘over half their collective wealth’ to developing nations they might genuinely make a claim for the moral high ground. Until then hypocrisy will be their overriding characteristic and their fatal flaw.
“…woke anti-racism is not really anti-racism”
Of course it is not. It is the equivalent of those stupid Mao or Che posters that used to adorn students’ walls.
I disagree. To begin with, if you’re going to have classes, it’s the job of the upper classes to manage the political relations of the community, and to deal with what seem to be its problems. Tribalism, one form of which is racism, is now considered a problem. Contrary to a major assertion of the article above, racism and racist practice are mostly mediated by language; this is why racial slurs are so potent. In a capitalist polity, the upper classes would like to rule without trouble or serious opposition, so the academic system, the media, and the receptive young, perceiving the desires of the leading or ruling classes, are trying to deal with the problem they have been assigned. It’s more than an act, even if it’s somewhat naive. Indeed, that naiveté is encouraged to keep the problem from spilling over into class war.
The upper classes (if you mean the woke class) have no interest in dealing with problems, only with maintaining their status. I’m not sure why racist language is worse than racist acts that ensure certain races are assigned low social status and wealth.
Racist acts come from racist thoughts which are communicated by words. One isn’t ‘worse’ than another; they’re parts of a system of mutual reinforcement.
My experience of upper-class people, which is considerable, is that many of them are very concerned about maintaining their power, property, and status, just like the rest of us. Right now, what you seem to be calling ‘woke’ or at least performances thereof seems cheaper than the race and class war which would follow overt repression.
There are plenty of people who use what’s called racist language but never commit racist acts, especially of older generations. Language is so policed and so many language traps have been set to catch people out, that defining what is racist language is less important that catching someone out and scoring moral superiority points. Whereas racist acts are clearer to see.
If you believe that the current social hierarchy can be maintained and is desirable you have a point. I doubt it either can or should be. The days when a ruling elite in Britain was viable are over. There are national and international pressures that make this mode of government impossible, whether you think it’s desirable or not. Nationally, Brexit is a demand for democratic accountability that looks like intensifying. Internationally, the dynamic economies like South Korea, India and China are fostering vast populations of educated professionals. We are going to need a lot more than a handful of Old Etonians to compete.
I was just trying to explain upper-class ‘wokeism’ to people who seemed to be mystified by it.
Ah, good.
define racist?
what is racism? can someone please give me a definition?
The upper class are most definitely NOT woke!
the upper classes are most certainly NOT the woke classes: interesting how the term upper class is so misunderstood and misused on this medium?
The problem with this approach is it emulates apartheid, segregating people by race, grouping people by language and then applying rights based on those group memberships.
It also gives a moral valence to skin colour black is good white is evil Jonathan Haidt (51:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E
The ANC came to power on a promise of universalism, to abolish the racial groupings – they had also hoped to avoid the tribalism that it has now sadly sunk into and mired it into deep nepotism and corruption.
South africa has a lot we can learn from. the least of all being that when we fail to have universal policies, we fail completely. Policies based on immutable characteristics are a bad way to write policy.
Make policy for the poor, the old, those in need. That is universalism.
I disagree, “it’s the job of the upper classes to manage the political relations of the community” That is a job for democracy, and law,who form social policy not academics. I wouldn’t assert that naiveté has ever stopped a war either… I would say quite the opposite. Morality has always been weaponized to drive people to war. Nearly every war I can think of actually.
I don’t think that you are using the words ‘ upper class’ correctly?
I’m not sure the poor white working class, of which I used to be a member, would agree with your race centric interpretation of poverty. And, of course, the poorest, culturally, economically, and educationally, are white working class boys. No one speaks up for them, not because they are irritated by the attention, don’t want to be patronised or seen as victims, but Because. They. Don’t. Matter. Stick that in your middle class pot and stir it.
I was one of the white working class boys. It’s been said before on unheard and elsewhere, but building an interpretation of society purely around race and ignoring all other variables variables is counter productive and if it is allowed to continue will only lead to a sad pathetic ending as all racial politics does. Denouncing someone to be racist because of their skin colour is in itself bigoted and racist. The thing I detest more is some wealthy, supposedly educated, white person telling me that I can never be redeemed solely based on my skin colour.That if I’m not anti-racist, I must be racist. The world of most people does not revolve around race. Race seems to be a white middle class wet dream now and a nice little earner working in the race-relations industry, in whatever capacity. For most people, it is a struggle to work and earn enough to survive. The UK, thankfully, has free education and the NHS which cushions people from the crippling poverty inflicted on people in other parts of the ‘third world/USA’ who struggle to find money for medical treatment, for example. One day maybe someone will analyse why MSM and academia have adopted this ideology; an ideology that seeks to divide society even more. Is it because the extreme left failed at the ballot box and see their future in democratic elections as zero?
Precisely that. The author is offering a low resolution univariate analysis based on racialising individuals into racial group identities and at the same time erasing the foremost issue of socio-economic class distinctions.
Quite. You could have cited the author’s own statistic about the relative performance of people from an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi background. The obvious factor here is culture/religion, not whites being more racist against one group over another.
Michael. This is the nub right here. His mention of the performance of Indians compared to the other non-white cultures disprove the entire narrative. Racism isn’t the answer if some non-whites are succeeding are some are not.
That doesn’t mean racism isn’t present. It might mean that other discriminated groups might benefit from looking at how the Indians have resisted and overcome it (when they have). Resistance usually starts by making trouble, that is, for Black people in America as an instance, BLM.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-median-household-income-and-share-of-births-to-unwed-mothers/
I’m struggling to think of the iconic moments when the UK’s Indian diaspora “made trouble” in order to overcome the racism that was holding them back economically. “Political blackness”, back in the ‘60s/‘70s, I suppose (which I only found out about via an article on here); but (again according to the one article) it sounds like it was positively genteel compared to BLM.
Thomas Sowell – When asked whether immigration was good, he queried it depends who the immigrants are. Immigrants are not all the same. Why do Nigerian, Hindu Asian and Polish immigrants do so well, while Muslims and other Caribbean immigrants bring so many issues and do not so well.
Partly education and skills – but not always, partly work ethic, partly culture, partly religion, partly about whether they integrate and inter marry, partly about their attitudes to crime and violence, partly about whether they have embraced identity politics and victimhood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y-H1q6njw
Interesting point about British Indian vs Black American culture. I think you miss the fact that they differ in kind, not just in detail. India’s culture emerged intact from the Raj — changed, for good and for ill, but unbowed, vital, still “its own thing,” a wellspring of tradition to draw from and form the sorts of useful ethics you refer to. The Africans taken to America had nothing but dribs and drabs of their native cultures remaining. Different nations enslaved and thrown together according to the whim of industrial requirements. Language erased, history erased; families routinely broken up; the experience of slavery the only thing they had in common. Does it not seem overwhelmingly likely that it was this, not welfare, that created the “culture of dependency, perceived [perceived!?] victimhood and self-pitying [!] lassitude.” Dependency, victimhood and lassitude (apathy?) are after all three hallmarks on the enslaved throughout history.
Lassitude and demonstrations of victimhood and dependency are a reasonable adaptation to subjugation when there is not much chance of overthrowing or fending off the subjugators. Many Black people have taken a more constructive role, but it hasn’t gotten through yet.
In any case, making trouble is a necessary, primary step towards changing one’s culture and that of the surrounding culture as well. The fact that so many people, including people posting messages here, think that exhibition of an unarmed captive being strangled is acceptable for any category of person for any reason indicates that not enough trouble has been made yet.
Manslaughter at worst.
Quite clearly the only sane solution must be to separate the races then
That is the essential thrust of the “antiracist” demand for “safe spaces” for black people. It’s amazing that today those who proclaim themselves opposed to racism demand the return of segregation. I say “return”, but of course, in the UK we never had segregation in the first place; any “colour bars” were a private matter imposed by racist individuals and businesses, not the law.
I wonder how you would go about doing that.
Nobody needs to. People naturally separate themselves.
I have seen no evidence that the treatment of George Floyd was caused by racism. He was a known career criminal. He also worked as door security in a club where Derek Chauvin moonlighted in the same role when not working as a police officer, so they clearly knew one another. Floyd had, at the time of his death, a potentially lethal level of fentanyl, and a smaller quantity of methamphetamine, in his body; there is even a suggestion, which I have only seen reported once, that he was complaining of an inability to breathe before any contact with police.
His death is not as simple as the narrative we have been given.
I don’t really see how Floyd’s faults justify his execution by strangling. For me, the event does seem to have a certain simplicity.
It doesn’t, but there is also no benefit in pretending he was some upstanding black man in his community either.
“For me, the event does seem to have a certain simplicity.”
Of course it does. The truth might cause you to change your mind. And we can’t be having that, can we?
The treatment of Floyd by the police was according to the book!
White people running from the police are treating exactly the same – nothing to do with colour!
What, like the Israel’s ?
Read Thomas Sowell.
https://youtu.be/lm-FqtAOSB8
He argued that there was tremendous progress in the first half of the 20th century in black society in the US. He notes the welfare dependency if the 60s onwards caused the breakdown of families and a dependency culture. Just as it has with white working class here and in the USA.
ALSO REMEMBER, MANY BLACKS DO VERY WELL, HERE AND IN THE USA. Many are professionals and many run businesses. And I suspect many are bullied or forced to back movements like BLM. But I suspect primarily the BLM movement is a bit of a middle class opportunity for virtue signalling, and a marxist opportunity for pushing divide and rule. I say this, because in the UK there seems to minimal black participation in these protests and even in the USA it seems to be antifa types who are usually white.
So why does the media assume all blacks have more or less the same political views as though because they are the same colour, they have the same opinion.
That’s one of the biggest examples of racism. There are probably many Candace Owens out there that feel they have to keep their mouths shut.
On slavery. Germany,Denmark,Sweden, Austria, Norway, Finland etc. Didn’t have a big involvement in overseas Empires. Germany’s colonies didn’t last long. They are also wealthy. In fact some of the wealthiest on the planet. So it’s too simple to argue that most of the wealth in the West is down to slavery. There are many countries that have grown wealthy without it.
In the 1850s, in the Southern USA about 1000 families had about the same wealth as the other 660,000 families put together. It was from these families that the slave owning plantation owners came from. So the vast majority of wealth from slave owning was concentrated into a very small group of people and did not necessarily drip down and benefit the rest of the white population – in fact it made their lives tougher as they had to compete agains’t the plantation owners access to free labour. In many ways the poor white had more in common with the blacks than you think.
Of course this can also be seen in the civil war that followed, when the non slave owning North’s economy was proved to be far more powerful than the slave owning Souths. If you accept slaves created the wealth of the West, surely the South would have won hands down.
One final point. White families in the UK and their wealth. They have been here for generations. They have inherited wealth. As Asians, Blacks and others are here longer, they will slowly buy property and then inherit wealth too. Many of these groups have been here less than 40 years. So over time, wealth gaps that seem unfair will reduce.
Victim/Identity politics is not good for the people you claim try and help. Those that do best in the world look forward and don’t keep looking back and going over the past. Ok remove any racist obstacles, be honest about history, but from then on take responsibility for your own life and get on with it.
Blacks arrested for breaking the law isn’t racist, holding them to the same standards as anyone else isn’t racist, telling them that they are the cause of their own problems isn’t racist and calling out their lies isn’t racist
That doesn’t mean racism wasn’t present in the situation. It’s not a binary question with a simple answer.
The presence of ‘racism’ in the event is irrelevant. What counts is whether what was done to Floyd was a crime, demonstrable physically. Criminalising ‘thought’ won’t ever work. There is no way at all of establishing whether what a person says he thinks is really, in fact, true.
“Resistance” has simply been taking education and the family unit seriously, not glorifying “street” culture and basically being easy to be around
define racism?
“The obvious factor here is culture/religion”
And you win the Orwell Prize for Nu-Speak which conforms to the ‘correct’ narrative.
Why can it not be said that it is something else. Start by googling IQ by nation. IQ is the single largest indicator of likely educational outcome, which is the largest indicator of future income.
Google it, there it is, the most likely scenario possible.
“”Ocham’s razor, or the principle of parsimony or law of parsimony is the problem-solving principle that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”, or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one””
(this is why I get banned everywhere, I say the Emperor is naked, and get thrown out of the window.)
While Occam’s razor may be useful it is important not to entirely rule out Plato’s Beard, or more especially Hickam’s Dictum, which reminds us that complex problems may have multiple causes.
Also, though — Google the Flynn Effect (I’m sure you have…). IQs change within groups over time. No one knows why this happens. It seems likely that environmental factors are at play. Occam’s razor would lead me to consider that a group who have historically been allotted the most menial tasks, fed the poorest diet, educated in the most rudimentary fashion, might suffer a hit to average IQ. And that alleviating these material conditions might even out the disparity.
Could it be the Neanderthal gene. Look at a map of Neanderthal gene by % by race?
Apparently Western IQ is going down. This may be due to the more intelligent failing to have children. I wonder what environmental prescription you would give to close the IQ gap between Europeans and East Asians (about 5-6 IQ points)? Europeans are apparently so rich that we can give money and wealth away to other nations, and think nothing of multi-culturalizing our societies. Shouldn’t the Flynn effect be working in favour of Europeans?
I think that has been established for some time and is now running like a well oiled machine.
But I don’t think he’s claiming that economic disparities are the result of racism. Rather, that racism only really matters when the group practicing it is economically dominant. Which is an arguable point, perhaps, but you’re knocking down a straw man here.
Fact is, racist blacks are being indulged with the power to destroy white culture, communities, deprive whites of their jobs, not for being hateful but because the whites didn’t bow down to their lies and frauds. What they call “institutional racism” are laws against theft, assault, rape, murder. They have a million excuses for their demanded black supremacy. And before you disagree with me name blacks who lose their homes, jobs, freedoms for disagreeing with a white person
In a simple sense that is clearly true.
So it is worth asking what effect white bashing does have on white people. I suspect it really gets some people’s backs up and increases people’s animosity. Either towards the (largely white) people who are pedalling the stuff or, unfortunately, towards black people. Even the ones who are completely non racist themselves.
I struggle to see a good outcome, because bullying and haranguing rarely have the effect the bullies intend.
When the MSMSM box ticking puts disproportionate numbers of people from whatever in vogue minority in peoples faces and they talk down AT the the public more and more the public switch off, mentally if not actually. Whilst the ‘woke’ virtue signalling white SJW’s lap it up they are blind to the fact all it’s doing is pushing more and more formerly non-racists into taking a position, which often starts as a question of why such excessive ‘positive’ discrimination is acceptable.
So it is worth asking what effect white bashing does have on white people.
1) it breeds hostility where none existed, which I’m starting to think is intentional. Activism has to have perceived enemies to continue. Otherwise, the grift comes to an end.
2) If I am racist due to skin color and there is no path to redemption, the reasonable answer is “so what?” which leads back to point 1. Being insulted never changed anyone’s mind, and if I am guilty no matter what I do, there is no incentive for me to behave differently.
Of course it’s intentional. Divide et impera.
“
ActivismDiversity and Inclusion, Directors need to have perceived enemies to continue. Otherwise, the grift comes to an end.”In a simple sense that is clearly true.
But is it? It seems a fatuous comment of the author for a “white Brit”, nor any other person for that matter, cannot be concerned for they cannot know what all the individuals in one group think about all the individuals in another group. The author exposes his rhetorical strategy here, of treating all individuals with a particular characteristic as a single homogenous group and, it seems to me, then speaking as a spokesperson for all the individuals of that group.
Well, UK is the home of the Native Brits, and the three percent are guests in that sense.
Yeah… ever try getting a room of brits to agree on anything ;P
This is an interesting and thoughtful article. But could you explain what you mean by “decolonising the curriculum”. I ask because whenever I’ve looked into this it turns out to mean replacing the native culture of England with the cultures of invaders. As you know, replacing native cultures with invader cultures is the classic act of colonisers …
100% correct
Quite likely higher than most in the soviet bloc. In Romania (OK, a somewhat extreme example) there was very real hunger and starvation.
In 1960 Nigeria’s population was just over 45 million. In 2020 it’s over 200 million, the growth pretty much living on western aid – something the soviet bloc countries never availed of.
Population growth used to be a sign of a countrys’ growing wealth-increase in GNP etc ,now there seems to be many countries with huge populations which lack the ability to feed and care for themselves -they mostly survive on aid from the first world and I presume increase in medical knowledge. These places are certainly exploited by others-China seems to be the main culprit nowadays-but that is a situation their rulers allow. Somehow places like Britain are considered not only responsible for their own problems but the rest of the worlds
In all honesty, who cares. You want more money? Find the job that pays you alot and go out and get that job. You need a leg up? Find a way to get the leg up and go out and get it.
Or you can do what you’re doing now and whine and complain. I for one was raised to always think about how to improve myself before complaining.
Complaining makes sense, inorder to improve our broken housing market or financial system which neglects SmE’S or address City of London corruption
You have lumped all white people together and failed to realise that the class structure is far more important in the UK. The importation of US racial politics into Britain has tried to ignore this. So working class white and black people have similar life experiences. When wealth in the UK is examined actually Indian and Chinese people are richer per person than white people. In a country where their family may go back over a thousand years many working class white people have less than £500 in assets. You only have to look back to the decade before the outbreak of WW2 to see how hard life was – life expectancy, semi starvation, and absolute poverty were the norm for many working class people.
In my family the lack of money to pay a doctor meant that my grandmother died aged 40 in 1938. My father having got a scholarship – in the same year -could not go to Nottingham High School as they could not afford the uniform.
This was the way of things since Britain had industrialised.
Just one quote from Wikipedia:
Recruitment to the British Army during the First World War – Wikipedia
Almost 40 percent of the volunteers were rejected for medical reasons. Malnutrition was widespread in U.K. society; working class 15‑year‑olds had an average height of 5 feet 2 inches (160cm) while the upper class was 5 feet 6 inches (171cm)
Marie, you’ve nailed it. Thank you.
Yes! This is almost within living memory for some. Who speaks for them, their families and communities who gave so much, when they had, and often continue to have, little materially? Instead academia, media, et al, stand on the doorsteps of their ivory towers, gleefully stoking the racial distraction fires.
The importation of US racial politics has also been a job creation scheme for various Americans who get employed to tell us where we are going wrong and if we do as they say we can achieve the successful cohesive society America enjoys.
Are black people really only 3% of the population of Britain? So only one in five non-whites is black (given the author says that 85% of the population is white and therefore 15% non-white)?
For 3% of the population, the media, government and academia really do go on about them – on and on and on and on and on and on….
There’s a help fellowship for them called on an’ on an’ on anonymous.
Yes George. The previous census data makes this clear. Maybe last week’s census analysis will show movement, but not much i imagine. The result of the media onslaught of examples of perceived racism has slewed it’s relevance. Likewise the actual percentage of the ‘welfare budget’ in the UK spent on unemploymeng benefits is similarly disproprtioniate to the emotional heat it generates compared to where the bulk of it ends up. Words carry more weight than personal feelings and everybody feels aggreivances. If we all clamour for attention maybe we can level the playing field by drowning out the foghorns.
When I was in London for a conference some years ago, I was talking to two very nice ladies from Uganda. They had both worked for a time in Nigeria and told me, to my surprise, that I wouldn’t believe the prejudice that they had encountered when working there. Prejudice is a human thing, it appears.
I noticed the same thing while in Kenya. I watched the military police loading people up in open trucks and asked what it was all about. A Kenyan told me they were Somalis and that no one wanted them in Kenya. I asked him how the police knew they were Somalis and he said you could tell by their hair. I said people are being rounded up based on their hair without even asking for identification? and he said, yes we know who they are.
This emphasis on Caucasianess is a distraction from helpful analysis. The economic differences between countries of the world would be better discussed by looking at the historical and political applications of Protestant Christianity. This is at the root of the economic success of Northern Europe North America with its emphasis on honest work ethic. As one of its proponents said, “Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can!”
When you apply this ethic, the belief that all humans should have rights and the consequences where ‘the law is king’, then honest hard work produces wealth. When you combine giving and saving as investment it leads to job creation. If you believe as they did that the universe is an ordered creation it opens the door to science and technology. Like everything this enterprise became tainted by human selfishness.
The important analysis for the West is what will happen as we rapidly ditch this foundation for secular politics: what we label ‘woke’ gives us some idea.
Agree on work ethic but protestant Christianity was a challenge to religious orthodoxy, which then led to science based challenges to “ordered creation” rather than an acceptance of it.
Hi James, by ordered creation I mean a universe that is ruled by predictable laws rather than behaving randomly. Science won’t challenge these laws which can be verified consistently. The challenge comes in explaining origins and purpose both of which can’t be measured scientifically. This is a largely modern conflict as most people and most scientists accepted the Divine argument and just got on with discovering.
I’m pretty sure that the West would not have made such massive economic progress if the work ethic was only applied In agriculture and there had been no discoveries of science and technology.
Your hope is futile, I suspect. Truth will bend to the narrative. The arc of the moral universe doesn’t always bend towards justice, and I think, not in this case. Too much invested. We’re in trouble, all of us.
And already down $27 million and counting.
I’ve yet to see any evidence which proves the killing of George Floyd was racially motivated.
Mr Chauvin himself is not even being charged with racially motivated murder, nor any hate crime, though such offences exist under US law. Two of the four officers involved in Mr Floyd’s death are themselves from racial minority groups.
I’d warmly invite any Unherd writer/ commenter to show me such evidence.
I suspect it is because she voiced the inconvenient truth that the current preoccupation with white privilege, white racism and now “white wealth” (which of course doesn’t exist) is causing racial divisions in the UK and elsewhere, as predicted by Morgan Freeman. I say that as a person with one black and one mixed race business partners, both of whom had a more privileged upbringing than me but have significant academic and work achievements.
and right here is a bad assumption. London for example has far more BAME members than 3% and it is the most well paid part of the UK and in London people are openly racist and discriminate against white people. I myself have had been ignored when I dared to criticise an Indian woman who had stolen work from a former colleague and called it her own. Similarily at the same place my opinion as a white man didn’t matter against a Black Man from Nigeria despite me having a far better track record. In the end this place struggled to find good people to fill the roles because of their openly racist way of working and the CEO has moved on leaving disaster in her wake.
Anti-racism is just like anti-fascism: the very opposite of what it claims to be. In the US, we are about 60 past the time of “colored only” anything and nearly 120 years past the Civil War. If a generation = 20 years, then we’re six generations removed from that time. At what point do claims of oppression and the rest reach their expiration date?
Society is not perfect and it will never be. But it’s not what it was a century ago or even 50 years ago. We have immigrants from a variety of third-world nations, including some in Africa, who come here and manage to build good lives. Yet, a native cohort chooses to stay stuck in victimhood, and the white left is determined to enable that. Because grievance is an industry to be perpetuated at all costs. This same column is likely to be printed 50 years from now, with the only change being a few names.
British household wealth is, with few exceptions, tied up with house ownership. And this in turn is the result of the transfer of wealth down the generations. When the British-Bangladeshi family and black African family the article talks of have been the beneficiaries of British education and economic opportunities for a few more generations, they too will have comparable household wealth. Unless, of course, the current CRT nonsense makes us all poorer.
And provided rising house prices and increasing education-debt and a further rise in precarious employment don’t make houses unaffordable – this generation is shaping up to be first that is poorer than its parents, on the whole.
You can’t view everything through the lens of race (whichever group you think is being oppressed). Economic factors are a real issue for all ethnicities.
Is there any chance the median wealth of households and family, as it tends to accrue through the generations, is related to how long a household or family has been in the country and depends on how great a net contributor or a net drain they are on society at present?
I also think the more correct terms that should be used nowadays minoritism and favoritism, rather than racism or supremism, as this may allow us to root out and expose more of the core ‘non-melanin’ related challenges that I think are being overlooked.
What twaddle, a debunked Marxist theory of hierarchy that oppresses minorities and plays victim-hood. White working class boys in the UK are the worst performing in education. White economic power? When China, Japan, Korea, etc are in the ascent with economic growth? India will also be a super power. Perhaps Africa’s time will be in the next century after it can be rid of dictators and corruption.
It also ignores the evidence that some groups – south-east Asians, Indians – have done very well, and much better than working class whites.
You realize that none of that proves much of anything. For instance, you can have a culture in which some tribes are discriminated against, but selected individuals of the discriminated tribes are allowed to rise for a variety of reasons. Those selected to rise will usually be those who best imitate the dominant tribe. You get the same phenomenon with other kinds of discrimination. Maybe it’s too complicated for some people?
The selection within ‘tribes’ of who shall and shall not rise is done organically within the tribes.
For example. In India where ‘tribes’ are called castes and all kinds of quota systems have been introduced to parcel out social benefits, such benefits are mostly enjoyed by the elites of each caste. There’s a phrase locally for these elites. They are called the ‘Creamy Layer’.
Yes. In the U.S. this solution is now being pushed as Idpol. You could say it’s the program of the Democratic Party. I shall almost avoid alluding to the color of cream.
That too is untrue, whites are denied jobs, especially by ethnic minority employers
This article is flawed from its opening sentence.
“…..a white officer calmly kneeling against the neck of a black man, fatally ignoring his pleas for air….” it has been shown on the full police video that he was already having problems breathing before they had him in the car and he asked to be allowed to lie down on the ground…….the fatality occurred due to the drugs in his system, not the knee on his neck. Guilty of a breach of a duty of care yes….
The author goes on to state that the potency of White racism is due to our relatively larger population…..85% White v 3% Black…..thus we are “limiting the life chances of Black people”……he does not say how a greater physical presence would improve things, but it sounds like intimidation, give us what we think we deserve or we will use our physical presence to get it……make of that what you will………
He also uses Nigeria as an example of how our British sense of fairness was exposed by the Post-colonial Govt…….”colonial rule does not meet the moral standards and democratic values the British professed to practise. In other words, it was a fundamentally unfair system deployed by a country that claimed to uphold fairness. With time, Britain had to acknowledge that this contradiction couldn’t be squared and the system had to go”………ROFL….maybe the author is not aware, but Nigeria is a byword for corruption and all the worst excesses of the African despot..and it is not alone, in Zimbabwe, pre-election, Robert Mugabe’s ZANLA troops had the blood of thousands of villagers on their hands and post-election around 50,000 Matabele……….hardly fairness or the high moral ground.
The author should be happy though, with China in the ascendancy, it will not be too long before the wealth loading shifts Eastwards……I have worked in SE Asia, if you think the Chinese will be more understanding or egalitarian then think again…………….
“the fatality occurred due to the drugs in his system, not the knee on his neck”
yes and the media is trying to hide the toxicology report. It will be very hard to convict the cop of murder once it comes out at court, which it will.
And then they’ll burn the country to the ground all backed up, excused and praised by the MSM
In some places, yes. But if blue cities burn to the ground, no great loss, is it? I love watching MSM encourage blue cities to destroy themselves.
Anti-racism, in it’s essential form, is poorly clad virtue-signalling. That virtue signalling is a desperate plea to be seen as a ‘morally’ superior person, especially a white person, as oppossed to a normal white person, who has morally failed by being racist (ie, NOT anti-racist).
Anti-racism is the new racism.
Racism is racism; anti-racism is racism; anti-anti-racism is racism. Whatever shall we do? I’d suggest making an effort to get rid of the concept of race, but so many people enjoy playing with it, that won’t go over very well.
“Anti-racism” that purports to correct past injustice by perpetrating injustice against a “privileged” group is racist.
Anti-racism that attempts to reform structures that continue to discriminate against underprivileged groups, is not.
I’m reminded of a quote by Anatole France [corrected attribution]: The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.
“but unless we actually believe they can lead to white folk one day deciding to hand over half their collective wealth — which I don’t believe will happen”
Well, I made my actual wealth by using a saw, hammer and nail gun, wiring and plumbing, standing on ladders 12 hours a day, working at miserably hard work years and years, working for my self, so having to drive myself on every hour, create the work, do it, and then on the side build myself houses to keep, to build my wealth – I did it by manual labour. I once worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 8 MONTHS without even ONE day off when I began trying to get ahead! – to build up my money to buy a derelict house for cash to rebuild it on the side, meaning I spent a decade working all day every day, 12 hour days, essentially. I made a lot of money in that decade, and ended up with some nice houses. But you think I should give half away to someone who cannot get out and work their own a** off?
This author completely neglects the fact that being white skinned does not make one “superior”. I kept waiting for the disgraceful term “white privilege” to appear. Perhaps he should get out of London and realise that many white Britons – and many other white people in various countries – are poor, and at the bottom of the ladder. In educational outcome in the UK, poor, white boys do the worst, with Indians at the top.
I have no interest in, nor take seriously as a guide to social policy, any analysis that starts with “racial groupings” as the basis for a discussion of “equality.” Importantly, too many terms in this realm require very clear definitions that are not always included. Equality of what? Which inequalities matter? I will not, for example, entertain any discussion of female boardroom stats unless it is coupled with a discussion of homelessness and imprisonment rates.
The contemporary received-wisdom on race is shot-through with contradiction and risks alienating the very people (that is, the majority of reasonable, decent people) who need to be persuaded on what is perhaps to be changed.
1.) Why is the “critical race theory” conception of whiteness (including the astonishing notion of “white science”) any more acceptable that the 1930s conception of “Jewish science”?
2.) Why is the pretence maintained that all cultures are equivalently legitimate and to be “tolerated”? As an example, why is islamic misogyny more acceptable than Boer racism? Why is islamic teaching on slavery not as worrisome in the contemporary analyses (and cultural vandalism) of the Western leftist “academic” world?
3.) Why is a wolf-whistle perceived as misogyny reportable to the police, but a burka perceived as misogyny not?
There are idiots in politics like in any walk of life, but is is particularly galling when they become MPs… such as Corbynite MP Nadia Whittome, who “warned” against the “fetishisation of debate.” Fools like her create fierce opposition, and potentially support for draconian legislation.
The proposed ten-year jail sentences for statues removed without the support of a public vote (which I now support fully) might have been unnecessary had there been calm and respectful debate about what to do about statues that a few people find “offensive.”
We need a more public figures to state, noisily and repeatedly, that “if you are offended, tough – grow up, it doesn’t matter…”
Some comments on here are a lot more intellectual and thought through than the article. Trevor Phillips did a good documentary on this explaining multiple factors to any disparities that exist. Three dominant ones include cultures, class and the fact people generally want to segregate with people like them rather than integrate.
The chasm between above and below line opinion in plutocrat media reflects that between officialdom and populace as much as between readers and commentariat.
“Median white British household wealth stands at £314,000 compared to £66,000 for the median British-Bangladeshi family and £34,000 for the black African family.”
That sounds about right. My ancestors have lived and worked in this land for hundreds, probably thousands of years, and I inherited property, after paying tens of thousands of pounds in inheritance tax, whereas the majority of British-Bangladeshi and black African families will have arrived within the last few years. Why would anyone think the difference odd?
And what is the household wealth of the median Bangladeshi or black African family in Bangladesh and Africa?
The figure isn’t ‘about right’ as such. The white wealth figure is massively skewed by a tiny elite of very, very wealthy white people….the sort of white people who are happy to burden the ordinary white population with their guilt. If you remove that small percentage of whites who have inherited multiple millions out of the equation the figures for whites becomes a lot closer to the other ethnic groups.
Exactly, no one else is picking this up.
The aristocracy still own most of the land.
As recent as 1900 80% of the UK population were tenants
And no one ever mentions CLASS or even less expertise.
Want to get on generation by generation get a skill no on cares about the colour of the surgeon or pilot. They just expect the task to be done right.
True but unlike humans tasks aren’t intrinsically political.
There is a far more interesting and edifying discussion to be had in understanding the experience of some immigrants to this country through the lens of displacement, the experience of growing up far from home in a cultural minority and the struggle to attain a sense of belonging, than there is in any discussion about ‘racism’. I think most modern experiences of racism connect to feelings of dislocation, the disappointing failure of the immigrant dream when met with reality, and the subsequent disillusion and developing resentment. Not all immigrant experiences are the same, likely none are to any extent which justifies more than very basic generalisation. Some immigrants settle well and thrive. Once again it is the idealisation of power which drives people like this writer to collectivise identity and generalise experience; the which are subsequently called into service for the purpose of divide and rule.
Please tell me this isn’t a woke site I’ve just joined.
Corruption Perceptions Index
Validity
A study published in 2012 found a “very strong significant correlation” between the Corruption Perceptions Index and two other proxies for corruption: black market activity and an overabundance of regulation.[13]
All three metrics also had a highly significant correlation with real gross domestic product per capita (RGDP/Cap); the Corruption Perceptions Index correlation with RGDP/Cap was the strongest, explaining over three fourths of the variance.
Economic implications
Research papers published in 2007 and 2008 examined the economic consequences of corruption perception, as defined by the CPI. The researchers found a correlation between a higher CPI and higher long-term economic growth,[14] as well as an increase in GDP growth of 1.7% for every unit increase in a country’s CPI score.[15] Also shown was a power-law dependence linking higher CPI score to higher rates of foreign investment in a country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Currently, Nigeria has a corruption index of 25 and is positioned 149 out of 179.
In other words, this article seeks to blame white majority countries for widespread corruption in black majority countries.
If you can explain with evidence how white majority countries compel black majority countries to be corrupt, then perhaps your racial argument might have some validity.
There’s a lot here, I’d agree with, but I do think all the BLM and related publicity has reached the point of being counter-productive. It comes across as deeply un-self-critical and all too ready to blame white Britons, often for things that happened a hundred years or more ago (imperialism) or in another country (US police killings, for example). BAME leaders and groups would get more sympathy, at least from me, if they would acknowledge that ‘black’ covers a lot of diverse groups, some of these groups are partly responsible for their own relative under-performance and that racism in the UK is both much less than it was, say, 30 years ago and much less than in almost any other society in the world. (Compare white racism with Japan or China, for example.) If they then focused on specific instances of unfairness, I think they would be a lot more successful, at least for the ordinary people that the author rightly highlights here.
This essay begins by establishing the context within which its discussion takes place by referencing the death of George Floyd as a racist act.
Thus racism is introduced and the racialisation of individuals into racial groups begins, and from there the argumentation proceeds along racialised group indentitarian lines. Thus;”the informal racial hierarchies stemming from economic hierarchies. These hierarchies place the wealthiest racial group — white people — at the top, the collectively poorest large racial group — black people — at the bottom, and everyone else somewhere in the middle.”
But this vulgar homogenisation of individuals into racial groups eradicates the inherent disparities between the individuals of those groups as a result, it could be argued, of the more pernicious issue of social class distinctions.
This emphasis on the eradication of the real differences between individuals and forcing them into racialised group identities is low resolution, univariate and to me, indicative of a monist ideology reminiscent of identity politics.
“Anti-racism” is a euphemism for anti-European: censoring any expression of national identity on the part of Europeans and their right not to be ethnic minorities in their ancestral homelands which is already mathematically guaranteed in Britain even without further influx.
Africanisation / Islamisation of Europe is a disaster for all concerned. Race separatist and Jamaican folk hero Marcus Garvey is officially celebrated in England. Yet one risks persecution even imprisonment for daring to publicly agree with him if a member of the group from whom he sought partition.
“Anti-racism” is cultural and ethnic suicide for Europeans. As the great truth teller Rene Girard put it: ‘Not only is the revolt against ethnocentrism an invention of the West, it cannot be found outside the West”.
The line of MLK about “Content of character” is routinely quoted against “racism”. Which is political mischief. Groups are no more comparable to individuals than bread to flour and water even if that’s all it consists of.
It might not be so bad if Europeans weren’t already an ethnic minority: there are more Africans, Chinese, Indians than Europeans individually never mind combined. “Racism” / “anti-racism” is a bigger lie than Covid. And sponsored by the same interests.
“Multi-racial” society is a contradiction in terms. Even where a population are racially identical society is a rare achievement. The history of our own islands is evidence enough of that.
3%? Not London where I was from, not in decades. If the three percent number was uniformly distributed he may have a point, but when it is not, as it is Not in England, using 3% is pointless (and I think it is a wrong number anyway, for political purposes). Take South Harrow, West Harrow, they are nor White towns.
Also, knowing how the different UK Minorities are MUCH more racist towards each other than White people are, I would love to hear his real thoughts on Carib Black compared to Nigerian Black in UK. My guess is he would have to totally make up his story, if my talking to Nigerians about Caribbeans was anything to go by.
Unfortunately it appears to be de rigueur these days to believe that only whitey can be racist.
To suggest that non-whites can also be racist would be seen by the professional enthusiasts of victimhood and CRT as definitely racist.
Back in the 70s I used to read a lot of sci-fi. A common theme was the wonderful future with increased leisure time and more time to follow hobbies.
The time has come. Everybody has too much leisure time and what are our hobbies? Reading things on screens. What is on the screens? Any old rubbish. What else do we do? Complain, join groups of like-minded complainers.
I look around and I see racism everywhere. I see people trying to form minority groups in order to promote their own agendas.
I have been to India several times and seen the hatred between Muslims and Hindus. I travelled with a very dark-skinned Indian man and when we got to our destination he had to stay in a separate hotel because of the caste system.
I lived in England and saw the cruel remarks about the Welsh (disguised as jokes). My paternal grandmother would not talk to my mother (an Irish ‘tinker’). I lived in Scotland and saw the anti-English behaviour. I live in Wales and see the anti-English behaviour.
Racism is everywhere. Our hysterical reaction to it is new.
Another article about how some group is not succeeding as well as other groups.
You go on about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as if it was the only slave trade that ever existed. I am sure that you know that a slave trade has existed for thousands of years, long before the English became involved. But no mention of the heroic work of the Royal Navy to try to stamp it out.
You seem jealous of the fact that the whites produced great scientific discoveries and thus great wealth.
Your answer to this disparity of wealth seems to be to steal it from the whites. Perhaps a better answer would be to think of ways to increase your own wealth?
Phil Rushton’s opus Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective remains the premier work on human difference at the level of population; but, of course, the agenda of the destructive left does not have a place for it.
As ‘white people’ are very much the minority population of the world why do other people gravitate to the west and put themselves at such a disadvantage? Are they so altruistic that people want to come here for example to do the worst , low-paid work just to help Britain as is frequently proclaimed?
What a load of racist tosh, if you don’t like it living in a white country may I suggest you consider moving to a black country, it’d be a lot easier for all of us?
I am not sure precisely where it now is, but there is a complete set of the bodycams from that scene floating about on the web somewhere – unedited. It is hard to see any jury convicting after watching that.
Just enter the following on YouTube: https://wwwDOTyoutubeDOTcom/results?search_query=george+floyd+parry
If that fails, try searching YouTube with ‘George Floyd Parry’. Parry is the name of the presenter of the (24 minute) piece. He was a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, including a period working on police misconduct cases.
It’s the image that matters. The arguments given just above may well get the police officer off, but they will not touch the image and all the other images it relates to and recalls. Indeed, the better the defense of the police action, the more outrage it will provoke. You can keep telling yourselves that Floyd ‘deserved’ what he got, and maybe he did, but I don’t deserve the more general trouble your satisfaction with such things will cause.
I don’t think anyone has suggested Floyd ‘deserved what he got’.
That how I read a lot of the responses here, including the one by Marcus Leach right above (as I’m currently writing this). I don’t see how else it can be read. And it has plenty of company.
What I said was that George Floyd was the “author of his own demise”. George Floyd made a series of bad choices, that directly resulted in him dying of a heart attack
Saying that George Floyd’s choice to imbibe a lethal dose of fentanyl, to commit a criminal offence that resulted in the police being called to arrest him, and to then resist arrest, places responsibility on Floyd for his death is very different from saying that because of these choices George Floyd “deserved” to die. That is a crass mischaracterization of my comment.
Our job is not to save you from ‘general trouble’.
Given the judge has unconstitutionally refused a change of venue, I can very well see a overwhelmingly black, leftist jury finding against the officer. Minneapolis is also the city covered up for the incompetent Somali police officer (because he was black and had bonus points for being Muslim) who shot and killed the white Australian woman
”White folks….hand over half their collective wealth” -given that you claim only 1 in 3 white people are in managerial/professional roles, and so potentially earn above the national average wage, where exactly will this policy leave the other two thirds, who likely have debt, no savings or own a property? It seems the priority for some is that ALL white people should be rendered destitute before their loathing of white people is sated. The middle class obsessions with colour is not addressing the fundamental issues of global wealth distribution. Another narrative provoking division where in reality across the U.K, folks of all colours get long quite happily.
It is not the ‘plausibility’ of the findings and recommendations of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which will be the true measure of this initiative, of course, but their acceptability to the race professionals. If it comes up with anything which even hints at attitudes and behaviours which black communities could change to improve their own life chances and outcomes it will be met with outrage.
Racism is ineradicable. Not the end of the story, fortunately. We can work to make racism less toxic. But it’s not like measles. It can’t be eliminated by chemical magic in labs or good intentions.
Does anyone even have a clear idea of what the components of racism are? Its causes are surely more complex than mere skin colour however potent that factor obviously is. If we could explain racism, we could probably explain anti-semitism which is an equally intractable phenomenon.
The explanation of racism probably lies so deep in the human psyche that it may be unreachable. This is no excuse for racism since we know that it is morally wrong and society has a duty to right wrongs where it can.
One thing we can do is to stop pretending that racism is exclusively white. It stands out more obviously in the white West where non-whites are a minority, but it exists everywhere and is equally abhorrent to the victims when practised among themselves by non-white racists.
In the past week, Unherd has published articles about why the English hate the French and vice versa. They were jocular and ended up deciding we didn’t really hate each other and vive la difference, what!
But some English people do hate the French and some French people do hate the English. I know this because I’ve encountered it. To me, this kind of hostility to the Other springs from the same well as racism.
In contrast to the UK (according to this article) anti-racism or wokeism is more of an upper income thing in the US, as well as a young person thing. As in, people still living off their parents.
Most middle income people in the US, of any race, are at work and not out protesting or tearing things up.
There is no racism except in the minds of the intolerant Left. Racism is a political tool used by the Leftists to divide, disrupt, and cause chaos.
Racism is utter twaddle. We are all the same type of ape , descended from a very small number in Africa, a very short time ago.
You could easily say the in terms of an evolved species….All 7.8 billion of us are African
We have spread across the world and in doing so undergone minor evolutionary changes to accommodate local conditions. (Changes to skin, hair and gut flora being the main ones)
We are all exactly the same.
“Race ” is an illusion. After all we dont make similar illusory groupings based on eye colour or gut flora do we? … just skin colour…
Is it just me that thinks that is very odd?
( I do hope not)
Reads to me like an early opening salvo for reparations… “I want what you’ve got” so I’m going to try and use twisted Marxist argument to claim I’m owed.
So, identify as whatever you need to identify as to get your share of the reparations.
Yeah I imagine that’s precisely the way it works. Grifters.
No, I mean everyone get in line and identify as whatever you have to identify as to score your share. That way it isn’t reparations. It’s what people would do in the US if there were going to be reparations paid.
I dearly hope that Adekoya is reading the comments below his grossly abhorrent article. That’s why publishing such twaddle is not a bad move by Unherd: it creates a platform for quality commentary. (Well, until one’s account gets blocked, just like happened to me yesterday – still wondering what’s up with that, the stereotypical Nigerian propensity for melodramatic overreaction being a quite plausible explanation.)
I don’t think they see the world through the lens of their everyday situation, though this may prevent them from seeing what is right in front of their nose.
They see it through the lens they have been provided by education. It is how they have been taught to see the world.
Should love to see the comments….. it has to be very, very bad hate speech for me to condone censorship.
Well they seemed to be well-received by the fellow commenters, as i had a very decent amount of upvotes on all. Can’t be faffed with re-typing them now.
That account is well & truly b u g g e r e d now (cannot post with it), so i use this new one – will see how long it lasts.
(i.martin is my other half, helped me out with posting that query on my behalf. I often ask him to check & correct my sloppy grammar after i type stuff on the web, my English is still a hot convoluted mess esp. when it comes to sentence structure.)
What a fabulous blog this is. Well written and intellectually stimulating.
We have recently become friendly with an immigrant family from the Balkans. The Wife is a Vet, professionally first class and personally kindly and sympathetic. The Husband a Landscape Gardener who has just started his own business. They have a 12 year old daughter.
When we asked them why the came to Scotland their reply disgusted us both. Everyone we met in Kent, where we lived for 3 years avoided us. Even to the extent that our daughter was told by a class mate, “I cannot invite you to my party because my parents say I must not speak to immigrants”.
That is racism pure and simple.
I guess that doesn’t count as racism to the ‘Woke society’ as they are not coloured.
You’re taking their word for everything they say? Seems a bit less than skeptical. And even if it’s all true, why would Scotland be any better than Kent? How is it racism if the immigrants are Balkans?
Yes, the Balkans are Europe. In fact “more” Europe than some of the rest, as they were of the Roman Empire while some of us north of the limes were still swinging from the trees so to speak (or wandering through the steppes, in my case).
In wokespeak, ‘immigrant’ = ‘nonwhite thirdworlder‘. The woke would not even contemplate the word’s actual meaning, which is ‘someone from a foreign country’, i.e. Irish, Japanese, Canadian, Serbian, Luxembourgian, French, Russian, Australian, etc. etc. etc.
I’ve never met anyone on the left who didn’t think all prejudice against immigrants was wrong. It might not meet a particular definition of racism, or systemic or institutionalised racism, but probably would count as xenophobia.
“Why would Scotland be any better than Kent?”
Geography, Annette. Kent is where most illegal immigrants – apart from those who fly in so I guess it should be most poor illegal immigrants – enter the UK. Scotland is nearly completely white. A Balkan immigrant couple may be interestingly exotic to a Scot when they would be borderline resented ‘invaders’ to many residents of Dover.
And you’re right. It’s not racism at all. It’s classic xenophobia. A natural human condition since the first group found a cave and wanted to keep it for themselves. It’s not got a good rap over much of history but it has quite a few positives and it’s never going to disappear.
Given the history of the Balkans, I’d think it wasn’t a surprise to the immigrant couple.
That’s fine if you choose to judge complex matters by a single anecdote.
If you you like that kind of thing, you might like to weigh it against the anecdotes I have heard in which English people in Scotland were openly told things such as ‘You do know you have a job that should have gone to a Scot?’ Or the 1998 case of a youth in Scotland kicked to death for having an English accent? (He was Scottish, by the way, he had just picked up an English accent by going to school in England.)
My point is not any value in the anecdotes themselves, but rather the danger of seizing on random scraps of information to create an illusion of a generalised argument. (And parading one’s ‘disgust’ in a little bit of virtue signalling, while pointing the finger of ‘racism’ by implying the greater virtue of your own country over another’s. That’s not racism in itself, then?)
I gather there is a video of Mr Floyd performing on the “Judge Judy Show “ aged 16. He was explaining why he had stolen a motor car, without much success.
Not sure what you are implying.
If you watch the bodycams from the police officers who were involved in the arrest of Floyd at the time of his death, it is apparent that the narrative of “a police officer knelt on his neck and murdered him” is far, far too simplistic – and inaccurate.
There is no suggestion that Floyd “deserved what he got” or anything so repugnant. But even an office in the midst of this mess deserves justice.
That he was educationally sub normal from the start, and frankly never had much of a chance.
“There is nothing more unequal than equality itself “, as you know who said.
And yet there he is, publishing books, disseminating his thoughts to a wide audience across a variety of media, influencing the increasingly fractious, (increasingly mad if you want my opinion) race debate in a direction I’d wager you actually approve (“not all the facts for the anti-colonialist narrative”; “white-bashing is a thing”)… he made it clear what a sh!tshow he thinks Marxism has been, and ok I find the phrase “white folk” annoying too but for goodness’ sake! You might not agree with everything the guy says, but he’s clearly being fair-minded and looking to solve actual problems in good faith.
Which is more than can be said for…
‘White folk’ is nore than annoying though. It is tribute to the modern belief that people sharing random traits (skin colour, language) all think alike (and what is more, ought to).
But never actually do.
Correct we do need to correct the balance ‘on the material side of things’ – we could start for example examining the role of the ‘Freemasons’ and the wealth they generated from the slave trade in which they built their many lodges up and down the country . We also need to get rid of the House of Lords where some many old ‘Etonians’ claim so much expenses for so little time in attendance. At the same time we need confront FGM , HBV , Forced Marriage – and about the of abuse white young teenage girls in Rotherham etc ? and how about the 2.5 million immigrants ( illegal ? ) who have not completed the census –
One of the interesting matters is that a very tiny minority of whites warp the high “wealth” figures enormously, as I sincerely doubt there’s any commenter here with that £314,000 in the bank, I’d love it if it was the case but no.
I’ve seen this argument trotted out time and again as justification for giving minorities money or other “help” to try and “level the playing field” or whatnot while ignoring the fact that is largely rich bankers and others that warp the figures quite considerably and its the rest of us dragging it down to such a number.
The main problem, quite simply, is there’s no cadre of minority billionaires in britain dragging that “median” up.
The author also hoists themselves by their own petard somewhat, as the average household income in FYE 2020 was £29,900.
But the averages for Bangladeshis is £66k, and £34k for an African family.
So if those two averages are higher than the median applied to everyone in the UK…. who’s dragging those figures down to £29,900?
Maybe the majority population? They’d be the only group big enough to drag it down there after all.
Ironically written from a very middle class perspective. Perhaps its satirical considering the cover photograph has a majority non-black audience at an anti-racism protest?
With regard to your statements about Bangladeshi and African families hie is talking about wealth, not income. Most wealth is in property. It stands to reason that people who have lived on these islands for hundreds of years will often have paid off their mortgages and be in a position to pass that wealth on.
Philosophically I believe that we should try to even things out a little by taxing some estates more heavily upon death. The only problem is, of course, that the government will simply squander that money on all manner of garbage.
As recent as 1900 80% of the population were tenants.
We want to focus exclusively on MERIT, when we can do that focusing on Merit regarding outcomes, then there are no “victims” unless somebody is trying to look a victim for their own gain. That person would be shortchanging the entire society which would not be getting something as good as it could. Everybody loses.
There has to be no other measure but MERIT
There must not be forced outcomes. Forced outcomes are essentially Marxism, and this doctrine has always failed. Forced outcomes are an open loop control system which will hit a wall somewhere. Forced outcomes are bad for our society and for everybody in our society, if what the “old white men” developed, constructed, wrote etc has more merit, then that is what you want to teach because that is better for all our society.
For example: To the “decolonizers” and the “victims” Mathematics is not “white” nor “racist” you either can do it or you can’t and if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
To “show your results” is not racist and doesn’t perpetuate “whiteness” if it does, then we must face that terrible fact that Darwin was right in a way and that would be what MERIT would tell us, simple as that! We don’t do ourselves any favours if we cover our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears not to see what IS a fact.
The water, the soil, the air of Africa is the same as anywhere else, and Africa is a very rich continent geographically, but let us not kid ourselves, it is not going as well as other places. That is a fact.
Whatever is holding back some societies mustn’t stop the rest of us, we need to concentrate on MERIT and in the facts.
The sums and calculations needed for whatever activity we practice would carry on requiring to have the correct results, there is nothing racist to do about it, those who can come up with the right answers are the ones we want to identify in the exams using pure MERIT to do the jobs of that nature,
Perhaps there is information which is not good for us to know and will mess up our progress, however, we must not be selfish and stand in the way of progress. We must give priority for what is the best for everybody.
Even those who can’t come up with mostly the correct results for the sums will benefit from the work of those who can do the sums correctly. There is in the end only one truth, those who can do the calculations and those who can’t and that is it. Nothing else to say really
The problem with ‘merit’ is that it’s not well-defined in objective, material terms, and winds up being somebody’s opinion after all.
The death of George Floyd was horrendous – BUT this was the USA – in 2015 there were more deaths by firearms on Christmas day ( 27 ) than the UK had in the whole year – 18500 police forces across the USA who refuse to talk about community policing . Lets also talk about the 2nd amendment ( corrupted to ‘ the right to bare arms’ !!) and there is no political will to change Gun possession – In the UK a women is murdered every 3 days due to Domestic Violence – where is the uproar regarding this narrative ?
You probably need to ban knives in the UK to cut down on knife deaths.
knife crime is at a higher rate in the US than in UK too.
I doubt it but even if that were true, does it make it okay for people to be knifed in the UK? Why not ban knives? Don’t you care about people losing their lives?
Britain has had the yoke class to bear making acceptance of the races more difficult. In America we by in large have avoid class acceptance. Sure there were conversations about boys from the wrong side of the railroad tracks. But nobody cares….College has largely wiped that out. Money is the new class…
I find this to be true. Britain has a hereditary class system almost like a caste system. You never escape your class no matter what you do in life. It’s always brought back up that you are “working class” whatever that means since very rich people often work harder than anyone else.
Working class meant people who had to work for a living as opposed to upper class who had assets (typically land that has been in the family for centuries or since william the conquerer )which provided income.
Very rich people usually make their money through some type of looting( look at wall st)
Also in the research on the wealth per household, why do you think Black African wealth is bottom on £34,300 v’s Black Caribbean at £85,900, which is ahead of Bangladeshi and Chinese, but obviously nowhere near Indian / White British on £313,000.
This article is morally repugnant and is hardly an argument for the implied transfer of white wealth to the black community.
In the USA, the black community today, especially in the urban inner city, is clearly suffering from a lack of ‘personal responsibility’ that has nothing to do with poverty per se. Statistics show that if you do five things you will not find yourself in poverty- (1) don’t take drugs (2) stay in and finish high school (3) don’t have a baby before you are married (4) get married and form a family, (5) get a job.
As is well-known, urban drug use is endemic to the black community. The black illegitimacy rate at 75% is higher than any other racial demographic; It never used to be – before 1950’s, the black community had a lower rate of divorce than whites. And the nuclear family is virtually non-existent, hence BLM’s platform insists on the abolishment of it if anyone ever did think it existed.
As regards schooling, in 2017, $25K was spent per head per pupil in New York City – the highest per capita figure in the world; Only 10% of NYC students are white today. Even with such an outlay, less than 20% of NYC students can pass the state exams, most of whom are Asian. Ironically, BLM & Progressive want to get rid of the state exam as well so no one can see the terrible performance; they also want to remove merit tests to get into the more competitive schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science. etc.
Seems to me Dear Fellow, that the black community needs to do some soul searching.
How Not to be Poor: http://www.ncpathinktank.org/pub/ba428
Antiracism is too middle-class An obsession with language ignores the material priorities of Britain’s
minoritiespoorPoor has no race! Universal policies for those in distress are more just.
Intersectionality: People are viewed in terms of the number of claims to victimisation that they have, and through this ideology, which wants to place people into broad racial categories, moral and immoral is determined based on how much power a person’s particular racial group has.
intersectionality focuses too much on group identities, which can lead it to ignore the fact that people are individuals, not just members of a class. Ignoring this can cause intersectionality to lead to a simplistic analysis and inaccurate assumptions about how a person’s values and attitudes are determined.
The other problem is that that the special interest groups for each category claim to represent the individual. For example feminism claims to speak universally for all women! – I find that idea laughable! I require and wish to speak for myself! I don’t condone special interest groups to be made on my behalf creating policy I don’t condone. policy that is made and created in an undemocratic way. There are in short limitations in categories that don’t give voice to the many variations of thought and individuality within those set categories.
intersectionality also sounds an awful lot like apartheid to me, each category based on its race and morality, then allocated resources and rights.. I doubt any amount of good can come from such a racist and divisive idea.
Intersectionality is in conflict with human rights values! That all people are equal regardless of race, sex, creed. It’s a far cry from equal human rights based on humanity.
Dehumanise: to deprive of human qualities or attributes; divest people of their of individuality
Apartheid: a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
The way that works it called common humanity identity politics. identity politics is not bad but if it’s organised by common hatred of the enemy it gets ugly quick, and never works.
Common humanity identity politics is universal recognition of common humanity. We are all humans and therefore we all deserve to be treated in such a way that we would want others to treat us. All social justice movements grew from that intrinsic root.
“I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods. When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind” ~ Pauli Murray
A society ought to attempt to promote individuality as it is a prerequisite for creativity and diversity. A social outlook that emphasises the moral worth of the individual, through their own actions. To value independence and self-reliance the right of the individual to freedom and self-realisation, to possess individual characteristics as opposed to traditional or popular mass opinions and behaviours.
Jonathan Haidt: The Three Terrible Ideas Weakening Gen Z and Damaging Universities and Democracies
Racist Intersectionality as taught in universities (51:02)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E
There’s a lot of information there. Do you have sources?
And usually work harder. Well work in a lot of cases.
Decolonising the curriculum is the most absurd idea, it’s always the way that traditional knowledge gets replaced with better systems. Not just different but better. Take roman numerals we incorporated them because they worked better – not because it reached some diversity target. Worthwhile knowledge is like that, it inspires and gets picked up seamlessly. Also non universal law making is unjustifiable, make laws to help poor people of course, but I object to needing any other criteria after that point, being poor is enough of a burden.
That’s because white British people have lived here for longer and work harder.
What a dreary, crashing bore this race-grifter is.
There’s no evidence that white British people work harder.
80% of UK population were landless tenants.
That only changed relatively recently.
The only reason the white figure is high is due to the aristocracy and very rich pushing it up.
As a matter of fact the most deprived areas in England are predominantly white;Blackpool, Jaywick,Middlesbrough, South Shields, Stoke on trent.
.
“It needs hardly stating that the white capacity to dominate stems from their wealth….Crucially, whites run much of today’s world because of this wealth”
I disagree, wealth is only a byproduct.
The power to dominate industry comes from knowledge, skill, technology, efficiency and application! It comes from having a tax system that people adhere to, So schools can be built, It comes from politicians not pocketing money that should go to improvement of community services. Or having policemen who are competent and not corrupt. It comes from good property law and protection. Financial transparency, It comes from rule of law and respect for human rights.
As to what makes a good learner and a successful person in today’s economic climate – I’m sure there are plenty of theories. But nobody is interested to talk about that! – The conversation is dominated by race and only race as being the final arbitrator.
“While the majority poor population are often keen for the international media to highlight their suffering in the desperate hope some help might be forthcoming, affluent Africans are usually more concerned with the “negative stereotypes”
I would say the rich are quite happy to have their suffering crowds on TV – It is a perverse incentive, Ensured foreign aid which can be siphoned off, without the need to actually improve anything, or to slow improvement to ensure more aid.
“British identity is very much intertwined with a self-image of fairness.”
I wonder as to the national identity of Africa, is fairness even an issue amongst the ruling classes, who exploit their poor so viciously? wealth inequality in South Africa is staggering. Africa’s three richest billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population of Africa The wealthiest 1% owns 67% of all the country’s wealth. The top 10% owns 93%. The remaining 90% of South Africa owns a paltry 7% of the country’s wealth.
South Africa’s corruption watchdog has found officials misused millions of dollars during Nelson Mandela’s funeral four years ago. According to the report, 300m rand ($22m; £16m) was redirected from a development fund to help with costs. It had been earmarked for things like “sanitation, the replacement of mud schools and the refurbishment of hospitals,” the report stated.
No doubt the very rich waited for another TV opportunity, starving children to get another top up.
But acknowledging that socioeconomic power differentials are the key to enabling corrupt leadership today is a crucial beginning to a more equal and racially harmonious Africa..
But only the latter [money] can truly change the everyday realities of Britain’s
minorities. poor.I disagree. Only knowledge, education, skill, technology, efficiency and application will provide a way out of the situation, choosing good friends who will bring out the best in you personally and academically, studying, having supportive parents who help you, avoiding drugs, not getting pregnant too soon in life, these are the talents among others required by this economy to be successful.
“give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”
Author makes a passing comment of the middle class “prone to view the world” Not understanding it is probably that world-view that gives them the advantage!
Self sufficiency is king…It’s a dangerous game to tie your sense of meaning and wellbeing to someone or something else. When you fixate on things beyond your control, you become restricted, dependent, and weak. And you introduce dependencies that can drop you into a state of anxiety, envy, or despair.
But when you guard your self-sufficiency above all else and focus more attention on what’s within your sphere of control, you gain flexibility, independence, and strength. Self-sufficiency is about focusing more of your time and energy on the things you can actually have an impact on. And it demands that you assume responsibility for those things.
The wish to have others “make space”, “give you meaning”, “validate you”, or “give money” makes them the master. In this case you would subvert freedom to a political party, or some other organisation.
“…It is an antiracism… the highway to racial equality.”
I couldn’t imagine the least effective way to teach equality and respect! Anti-racism teaches the belief that “the white race is bad, black race is good” I doubt this will in anyway be a “highway to racial equality” if anything it will perhaps be a highway to hell.
A perverse result where “Equality” becomes to mean tyranny and apartheid.
Jonathan Haidt: The Three Terrible Ideas Weakening Gen Z and Damaging Universities and Democracies (50 min) “Black is moral, white race is immoral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IGyHNvr7E
Yes,I’ve noticed this.
As a somewhat leftist I was interested in fixing the UK’s economic weaknesses and things like the housing crisis,low productivity, improving the financial system.
But I found that there was a large circle who wasn’t interested in any of this but instead in addressing white racial “arrogance” or english exceptionalism ,these supposed problems that they would insist exists.
They (the group is mainly made up of poc and whites)would talk endlessly about things that seemed more like playground status games or ethnonarcism and ethnochauvinism and very little on technical policy debate.
Regarding Dr Remi Adekoya point about “economic racism” I’m not particularly concerned that the white median of household wealth is higher than black peoples because the white median figure includes the aristocracy who still owns most of the land.
The most deprived areas in England are all predominantly white,from South Shields,Middlesbrough, Jaywick and Blackpool,
Infact there’s so much white socio-economic deprivation in England it’s ridiculous to make out that black people somehow have it worse.
The number of white households with food affordability problems is greater than the entire population of black people in the UK.
The clear and most pressing need in the country is to end homelessness and fix the housing crisis. Then the next pressing need is to fix our low productivity problem.
Regarding housing,it is a bit galling how in certain areas of London black people are complaining about white English people moving in.Even though these particular areas have always been predominantly white English.Let alone the fact that Black people do not have an exclusive right to ethnic enclaves in London which exclude other British citizens.Let alone that London has had people from all over the world moving; it seems very rich to complain about the one group indigenous to the country.Let alone the nerve of people who aren’t even from Britain originally to complain about white English people moving in;if the opposite was done then it would be considered appalling.
UK should be fixing its economic problems and taking ideas from Austria,Germany, South Korea,Taiwan, USA,Singapore, Isreal-lifting its masses into higher levels of economic development.
But instead Black people want to talk about stuff which is incomprehensible and seems to be predicated on there own insecurities when for the most part they seem to be doing great on an economic level personally.It’s a shame the country seems to pay heed to these superfluous concerns.
Interesting but ultimately Marxist view of the issues.
Three points: 1) the Level of Corruption is a huge factor in whether a country rises or falls economically. Nigeria is wealthy in natural resources. Since Nigeria gained its independence, where have the economic benefits from these resources gone? The answer to that question is key to Nigeria’s economic condition.
2) there are long standing and pervasive inequities between Blacks and Whites in the US, especially in southern states. One need look no further than this week’s developments in the state of Georgia. Under the banner of “protecting elections,” Georgia GOP senators and representatives passed sweeping legislation that makes it very very difficult for Black people to vote. 13 other states are mounting similar plans to keep Blacks from voting. These kinds of legal impediments to Black voting were vanquished after the Civil War but roared back under when Reconstruction efforts failed. The 1960’s voting rights laws attempted to return a level playing field at the ballot box. Though officially leveled at the national level, local voting rights were stymied. It is no accident that since the Supreme Court did away with federal monitoring of states cited for voting intimidation voting protection in the Civil Rights Act, those states, along with states controlled by extreme GOP politicians, have now instituted new ways to disenfranchise Black voters, all under the banner of “protecting the vote.”
3) one respondent to this essay claims that minority poverty is due to ways of life that are self destructive, ie., against their own self interest. This claim suggests that had Blacks acted in their own self interest they would have better lives. That may be so, but people of all races in the US have acted against their self interests. On the whole, Only Blacks seem to have been unable to recover from the kinds of missteps (acts against self interest) commonly found among all racial groups (humanity in general) in the US. George Wallace, governor of Alabama in the 1960’s, pointed out that as long as poor Whites had Blacks to look down upon, poor Whites were satisfied with their own poverty. What we see today in the base support for Donald Trump and his MAGA insurrectionists, 75% of those arrested have serious financial problems, proves Wallace’s understanding of divide and conquer in the American south. And January 6 provides evidence of the desperation evident in White people acting against their own self interest and against the interest of democracy to keep a racist in the White House.
In what sense does the new legislation in Georgia make it difficult for black people to vote? The new legislation is designed to prevent people from voting by mail without proving who they are, as happened on a massive scale in the last GE. It also aims to abolish ‘ballot harvesting’ completely, another tactic that was used on a massive scale to get Trump out of office last year.
Where is your evidence for your claim of ballot harvesting?
Project Veritas’ findings are widely accessible. You won’t get evidence harder than that, straight out of the horses’ mouth, recorded on video/audio. Infiltration is a wonderful tool to shine light on unsavoury dealings.
That video has been debunked: no fraud was found per report in USA Today, which, by the way, is Murdoch owned paper.
When was it debunked? Provide the proof.
where are your other posts?
Very difficult how? Explain in your own words – not in some talking point you’re told to repeat – how voting will be more difficult. The vast majority of black people have IDs; it’s the racists who act as if black folks are incapable of getting identification cards. If you’re not able to back up that claim, then try it with this one:
there are long standing and pervasive inequities between Blacks and Whites in the US, especially in southern states.
There has been plenty of rioting across the northern tier, the midwest, and the west coast. The south is full of black elected officials on every municipal and state body. Atlanta has had black mayors my entire life. Places like Birmingham, New Orleans, and Jackson have minority leadership, too, so if there is inequality, the correlation has far more to do with one-party rule than with white people.
You are watching too much Fox TV if you think voter suppression has anything to do with transnational corporate conspiracy. You make a logical error in your claim that I underestimate Blacks: I do not present blacks as helpless; I do point out that they have endured often unfair economic and political conditions. Pointing out a historical fact about political and economic limits on one group says nothing about that group’s inherent abilities. It does suggest, however, that those political and economic limits likely stunt that group’s achievements.
You are saying it’s your opinion that ‘Blacks’ (as you seem to like to label this entire group as a single class of persons) are stunted in their growth and development due to political and economic limits. Currently 36% of African Americans are middle class as defined by household income. 7% are upper middle to upper class (census data). What happened there then? At some stage you are going to have to acknowledge that this has less to do with skin colour and racism than you want to believe.