Black Lives Matter
Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:54 am
I have started this thread as a means of moving this important subject away from the humorous thread where it originated a few days ago. I don't know if the moderators would feel it appropriate to move the related posts.
It strikes me that we have 3 or 4 distinct sets of views on this subject, only some of which (thank goodness) are represented on this forum. Right of arc we have those who are, deep down anyway, white supremacists who genuinely believe that white people are inherently superior in some way or another to black people; I doubt there are any of these on the forum. Whatever one's individual views on the institution of Christ's Hospital, it is largely successful in educating its charges and I have rarely, if ever, come across an educated white supremacist.
Next we have the 'I'm not racist but ...' folk who probably believe what they say but see black people as 'others'; people who are fundamentally somewhat different from 'us' and interact with them accordingly. There are a lot of these people around and they are not necessarily wicked, but they simply can't separate something as minor as skin colour from those things that really can divide people. They tend to be the same folk who cannot differentiate between Zionism and Judaism, or Islamism and Islam.
Thirdly we have those who genuinely do not believe they are racist but just don't 'get' the concept of white privilege and who don't see that things need to change. These people would never dream of treating people differently because of the colour of their skin but invariably do. They will often tell you how many black friends they have as a means of demonstrating the liberality of their views. There is probably a bit of this in me, indeed in most of us to be honest, however much I strive to avoid it.
Finally, at the left of the arc there are those who genuinely get it; who accept that there is a problem, that they may even be part of the problem, and not only acknowledge the idea of 'white privilege' from which they have and continue to benefit, but similarly understand the institutional nature of racism, including in the United Kingdom. I include many of the young people of my daughter's generation in this group.
At the end of the day, things do have to change, both here and abroad. I have never actually been to a country where everybody is genuinely treated the same from cradle to grave, regardless of the colour of the skin, and some countries are better, or at least less bad, than others. The United Kingdom, however, is our country and thus somewhere where we can have some degree of influence in changing it for the better.
It strikes me that we have 3 or 4 distinct sets of views on this subject, only some of which (thank goodness) are represented on this forum. Right of arc we have those who are, deep down anyway, white supremacists who genuinely believe that white people are inherently superior in some way or another to black people; I doubt there are any of these on the forum. Whatever one's individual views on the institution of Christ's Hospital, it is largely successful in educating its charges and I have rarely, if ever, come across an educated white supremacist.
Next we have the 'I'm not racist but ...' folk who probably believe what they say but see black people as 'others'; people who are fundamentally somewhat different from 'us' and interact with them accordingly. There are a lot of these people around and they are not necessarily wicked, but they simply can't separate something as minor as skin colour from those things that really can divide people. They tend to be the same folk who cannot differentiate between Zionism and Judaism, or Islamism and Islam.
Thirdly we have those who genuinely do not believe they are racist but just don't 'get' the concept of white privilege and who don't see that things need to change. These people would never dream of treating people differently because of the colour of their skin but invariably do. They will often tell you how many black friends they have as a means of demonstrating the liberality of their views. There is probably a bit of this in me, indeed in most of us to be honest, however much I strive to avoid it.
Finally, at the left of the arc there are those who genuinely get it; who accept that there is a problem, that they may even be part of the problem, and not only acknowledge the idea of 'white privilege' from which they have and continue to benefit, but similarly understand the institutional nature of racism, including in the United Kingdom. I include many of the young people of my daughter's generation in this group.
At the end of the day, things do have to change, both here and abroad. I have never actually been to a country where everybody is genuinely treated the same from cradle to grave, regardless of the colour of the skin, and some countries are better, or at least less bad, than others. The United Kingdom, however, is our country and thus somewhere where we can have some degree of influence in changing it for the better.