The world is wrong,” wrote the American poet Claudia Rankine. “You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard.” To be black, in a society that invented race for the specific purpose of dehumanising people who are black, and then invented an equally formidable system of denial, is to carry the burden of history that others would rather forget.
Eh? Agreed, Carlyle wanted to use race to dehumanise but he was rather swiftly shown to be wrong, no?
The Guardian’s own research found that just 3% of Britain’s most powerful elite are from ethnic minority groups.
If you’ll not take age and lifecycles into account you’re never going to understand the world.
“If you’ll not take age and lifecycles into account you’re never going to understand the world.”
Indeed. What % of the over-45 UK population is ethnic minority, for example? Rather smaller than of the population as a whole.
Also interesting to til what counts as ethnic minority. In many ways the UK has integrated ethnic minorities so successfully that we don’t tend to lump Jews, Scottish people, Irish people or Welsh people into that category at all. But if eg Yugoslav politics was dominated by Serbs at the expense of Croats or Bosniaks or Albanians, we would comment to that effect.
>live as free riders benefiting from the economic, technological, cultural and social capital of a race of people you palpably despise
>endlessly whinge about “racism”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
*looks at name of author*
*rolls eyes*
“…unemployment among black, Asian and minority ethnic people was nearly double that of white Britons.”
Must be racism, innit? No other possible reasons. QED.
The Guardian’s own research found that just 3% of Britain’s most powerful elite are from ethnic minority groups.
I thought the complaint was the Jews ran everything. I’m confused.
in a society that invented race for the specific purpose of dehumanising people who are black
Wut?
The Guardian’s own research found that just 3% of Britain’s most powerful elite are from ethnic minority groups.
I wonder what the percentage is in the Scott Trust or the Guardian itself.
Anyway, as someone wittily and perceptively commented on another deranged Guardian article yesterday:
“The Guardian: the place of a thousand genders but only one race”.
I am perfectly prepared not to lecture the half-Ashkenazi Ms Hirsch on the Black experience of racism if she, in turn, is willing to stop lecturing the rest of us on White racism.
That is, a White person probably has no idea what it is like to experience racism but likewise a Black person is in no position to pronounce on what White people feel about race. Even a half-White person like Ms Hirsch. So she should stop. She does not know how racist British people are because she is not White.
So we are at an impasse. We cannot talk to her. She cannot talk to us. The only solution is an amicable separation. She ought to move to the land of her ancestors. Whichever ones she picks. I could not care less which. We should be left at peace in our own land. Then we will never need to inflict indignities on each other again.
This found that unemployment among black, Asian and minority ethnic people was nearly double that of white Britons.
Old School racism: White man lives in idleness off the labour of people considerably darker than him working to support his lifestyle.
New School racism: Black men live in idleness off the labour of people considerably paler than them working to support their lifestyles.
We need a Clause Four moment – the working man is entitled to the full product of his labours without a parasitic class leaching off his sweat.
What percentage of Guardian editors have been from an ethnic minority group? Is it 0%?
You can file this alongside Owen Jones’ complaint regarding what he sees as our lack of enthusiasm for the gay community. He remains miffed that, despite securing equal rights, we remain reluctant to rush across the street to hug and kiss him. Ms Hirsch obviously believes our ambivalence to race, overt lack of racism, is insufficient – that we should go the extra mile… To do what, exactly, I’m not sure.
“She ought to move to the land of her ancestors. Whichever ones she picks”
Since your reasoning (I so enjoyed writing that) applies equally to all people of all different races, you must mean that nobody can live with anyone except their own. Which, given the very benefits a number of people on this blog have enjoyed travelling, living and working around the world, must be be a very stupid thing to suggest indeed.
Do you know what you are?
How come you don’t live in the New South Africa no more, Ironman?
‘carry the burden of history’
I am not responsible for the sins* of my father . . . nor my great, great grandfather. Who actually ended slavery.
What we have here is Ms Hirsh’s racism disguised as anti-racism. Note then that the Guardian fully supports racism.
*Alleged sin. Up to 200 years ago, the world was full of slavery. Said burden, were it to exist, rests on humanity, not some particular race. Especially when one considers that particular race was instrumental in ending slavery, and tells the world that slavery is bad. Ms Hirsh uses Western mores to condemn the West.
SS2:SoTP, probably for the same reason I no longer live there. I didn’t want to live in a country where the President was the African equivalent of Gerry Adams.
Ironman – “Since your reasoning”
Not *my* reasoning. Ms *Hirsch’s*. It is her argument that White men cannot discuss this topic with non-Whites. Do you agree with that or not? Please tell us what White men can tell Blacks about racism in your opinion? Ms Hirsch wants to create a situation where the only common discourse between the races is Marxist-Leninism. Where do you stand on that issue?
“Which, given the very benefits a number of people on this blog have enjoyed travelling, living and working around the world, must be be a very stupid thing to suggest indeed.”
Really? Why did that little thought cross your tiny mind?
“Do you know what you are?”
Ooooh, oooh, I know, I know. Ask me! Ask me!
Henry – a lot of folks consider not wanting to live under black rule and the predictable consequences thereof to be thick.racist.prickery.
Ask me! Ask me!
SMFS inadvertently doxxes himself as lugubrious Mancunian warbler Morrissey and I claim my £5.
And now I know how joan of arc felt
Now I know how joan of arc felt, oh
I have always thought of myself as the Last of the Famous International Playboys. And no doubt Rusty thinks there is a Special Place in Hell for me and my Friends while proving the World is Full of Crashing Bores. Myself, I think running a National Front Disco sounds fun.
So I have to confess, maybe I am and maybe I am not. But I do like Gladiolas.
I’ve had enough of white people who try to deny my experience…
On a TV panel show I was forced, yet again, to explain the reality of racism to those who believe they are colour-blind. It’s exhausting.
Then, Afua Hirsch, live elsewhere.
Theophrastus – “Then, Afua Hirsch, live elsewhere.”
The logical conclusion of her line of thought must end up here. If she says we can’t talk about racism because White people do not understand what it is to be Black and the experience of Black racism, then how can we understand something obvious like guilt?
This is pretty much where Black America is. They deny that Black and White America can talk to each other about crime because White America cannot understand the lived experience of Blackness and hence cannot understand what might cause them to rob a Korean-run convenience store.
If we cannot judge each other’s experience, how can we serve on juries? This can only lead to separation. And if that is the road she wants to take, that road leads to Ghana. I will happily chip in for a ticket.
As proof of this, people are objecting today because Transport for London is celebrating Rourke’s Drift. Now I admit, a Black person of African origin is never going to feel the same way I do about Zulu. Great film by the way. Fine. Each to their own. But in our own homelands where we all can agree that murder is murder.
Gladioli.
“How come you don’t live in the New South Africa no more, Ironman?”
Steve–If they boiled him alive –as they did that 12 year old white boy–he’d be cooked in the tin.
‘I’ve had enough of white people who try to deny my experience…’
Whites excel in clinical psychology. Get yourself some.
On a TV panel show I was forced, yet again, to explain the reality of racism to those who believe they are colour-blind. It’s exhausting.
Blanketty Blank isn’t as good as it used to be.
Afua Hirsch called for the removal of Nelson’s Column because he supported slavery:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/22/toppling-statues-nelsons-column-should-be-next-slavery
Yet, of course, she ignores the enslavement of Europeans. Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his magisterial (if rather PC) book ‘Reformation’ states:
…Islamic raiders enslaved around a million western Christian Europeans between 1530 and 1640; this…is about equivalent to the numbers of West Africans taken by Christian Europeans across the Atlantic at the same time.
100% of the elite were ethnic minorities at the end of 1066. How long did it take to drop to 3%?
Hirsch wrote: “These are the nation’s black and brown national treasures.”
I guess there is no money to be made in taking the Morgan Freeman approach to racism – to stop talking about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3cGfrExozQ
Exactly, Gareth. Anyone who talks about racism is a racist.
DuckyMcDuckface – “Gladioli.”
Gladipodes surely?
3.32 is another “fake” Mr Ecks comment.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery –even from some cut-price leftist cunt.