University to students: 'All whites are racist'

[Cicero]

Like I said lookout:

Racists are now an inferior race and we need to take them out.
Racists are white...not brown...not yellow..not red. Nope...I've never met a brown racist. They are all white. They need to recognize their inferiority.


What a goat-fuck.


One of those paradoxes that I reject and give no validity to.

[DanaC]

Well...once upon a time makes it sound an awfully long time ago Lookout. That kind of attitude is relatively recent and the socio-economic effects are still playing out. The reason discriminating against another group can be seen as a possible solution is that in order to remove the historic (and statistically still current) inequalities is to impose a control mechanism.

If some of the political parties in the UK hadn't enforced all-women shortlists in a limited set of circumstances, the number of women currently serving in Parliament would be minimal. It's still a long way from representative, but without some kind of imposed control mechanism to force change, we'd be looking (at the old rate of progress)at taking another three or four hundred years to reach something approaching parity.

This means that some women who are excellent candidates and who would have stood little chance of being able to follow that path were given that chance. The cost of their getting that chance, was that some men who'd have made excellent candidates and for whom the old system would have given them an excellent chance of being able to follow that path, were not given that chance.

The number of women in Parliament is still low compared to male participation. This means that despite the fact that some men lose out to the all-women shortlists, overall, it is still more advantageous to be male in politics.

[lookout123]

Dana if there was a male who would have been better in a position then the people certainly receive no benefit from a servant who was selected simply due to their lack of a penis. any job selection process that takes into account anything other than someone's qualification and ability to do the job is wrong. full stop.

[Sundae]

Lookout it's a case of changing cultural bias - the women weren't inferior but if they were up against a man the fact he did have a penis gave him a better chance.

We haven't had universal suffrage in this country for even a century yet - it takes time to change things. In fact if there had ever been a referendum on the subject we probably wouldn't have it yet.

And do remember that Star Trek (that ancient historical document) was ahead of its time with its mixed race crew. It's not all that long ago you know.

I don't care what someone else did, when, it is not my job to pay for it and I will not accept it and will fight against it.

[DanaC]

Good okay, you fight against it. Meanwhile, other groups who've been subject to far greater discrimination are fighting against that.

I discriminate against no one and will not own shit I did not personally do.
All group-think is the same.

[Sundae]

I am a product of my country's history, my family's history and my own personal history.

I will celebrate the culture in which I was raised and I consider myself lucky in that it was the culture my parents were raised in and that my grandparents were raised in. Before that generation the countries were different but the cultures were at least similar.

If other people want to celebrate the cultures in their history, then I wish them the pleasure of it. However I would like to continue to enjoy the things that I celebrated in childhood as well as what they celebrated, especially if their childhood was in a different country/ culture. My mantra would probably be, "Don't step on my festivals and cultural icons as I have no intention of stepping on yours," except being a Brit I'd probably add, "if you don't mind." And soddit, I am proud I was raised with manners.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

I am a product of my country's history, my family's history and my own personal history.

I will celebrate the culture in which I was raised and I consider myself lucky in that it was the culture my parents were raised in and that my grandparents were raised in. Before that generation the countries were different but the cultures were at least similar.

If other people want to celebrate the cultures in their history, then I wish them the pleasure of it. However I would like to continue to enjoy the things that I celebrated in childhood as well as what they celebrated, especially if their childhood was in a different country/ culture. My mantra would probably be, "Don't step on my festivals and cultural icons as I have no intention of stepping on yours," except being a Brit I'd probably add, "if you don't mind." And soddit, I am proud I was raised with manners.

But the question is: Do you believe you are a racist because you are white?

In fact, you are as white as I am (really white)...does this mean that we are really racist?

[Sundae]

No. I absolutely refute that idea.
To me racism denotes some form of hatred or discrimination.

Sure, I do form immediate impressions on the colour of people's skin. But in the same way I make assumptions re age or dress.

If I am waiting at a bus stop and there is an old granny there, I will be pleasantly surprised if a teen of any colour lets her on first. If I am walking down the street behind two mothers side by side with pushchairs I will be pleasantly surprised if one of them has peripheral vision and drops back to let me past. In the same spirit as the above, I have found Chinese students crowd you on pavements (end up brushing your shopping bags or your shoulders) and Asian men push to the front of queues.

It's all generalisation, but I do not hate any of these people and do not feel superior to them. Sometimes I have to accept what I call manners is not the way they were raised - and that includes white Brits.

[Cicero]

I wonder what couples who are married to a contrasting skin color think about their racism.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Cicero

I wonder what couples who are married to a contrasting skin color think about their racism.

We weren't married but we lived in a defacto relationship for six years. My husband had darker skin than me. We both used to make jokes which people from the outside would have considered extremely racist. An example of this is if I was relaxing and he asked me to do something, I might reply by saying, "do I look black to you?" He'd usually respond by saying something like, "get off your arse you lazy palangi (white person)".

It depends on your perspective and how you feel about racist remarks. To us it was a joke and a way of accepting our differences through humour.

[TheMercenary]

IMHO anyone who thinks that only whites can be racist are idiots. You obviously have never lived where the majority of people are of darker skin. My family never owned slaves. Get off your high horses and make something of yourself. Like RK has said, I think that the continual state of playing the race card is counter productive to making progress and plays into the hands of those who support racist notions. Me and my family need not suffer the injustice of race based promotion or affirmative action policies because of some historical fact. Screw that.

Manners has nothing to do with anything.
There is no need to respect an illogical idea, it is not disrespectful of any individual holding that idea.
Feeling pride in a coincidence of birth or place is illogical.
Unless you can make it logical for me, please, feel free.
Pride is for something one accomplishes, not chance.
Being born gay, Irish, Welsh, Black, Red, Green, American or Australian, tall, short, disabled, blind, etc, is nothing to be proud of.
If you do something, then you can be proud of it.

[DanaC]

I'm not particularly proud of being white. I am proud of my northern heritage though. The reason I am proud of my northern heritage is tied up with northern culture and the sense of class pride which that usualy encompasses. Pride in your home town (as evidenced by people's tendency to support their home town in sports even if they're not a sports fan) is something which every community tries to engender in its citizens. Pride in, love of, one's home town helps to promote civic responsibility and a sense of belonging. What colour you are, to me, is irrelevant. Where you were born is not irrelevant, it speaks of where you have come from. Where you live is not irrelevant, it speaks to who you are. I identify very strongly with the town I was raised in and the town in which I now live. I identify very strongly with the class I was born into and the culture that prevailed within that class. I idenitify very strongly with my region, possibly to an even larger extent to my identification with my country. That said I identify very strongly with my country (England) and also Europe. All these things matter to me because they dictate the culture in which I was raised.

I also feel a strong sense of 'pride' in my heritage, my family's past, my class's past, my gender's past. All these things matter to me. I feel a sense of pride in the women who fought so hard so that women of my generation would be able to take part in our democratic institutions. I feel a sense of pride in those working class lads and lasses who made it possible, through their struggle, for me to have an education and access to healthcare and employment rights.

To me, class and gender are of much greater importance than skin colour...but then again the battles in my country were primarily based on class and gender, not skin colour. Although skin colour has been an issue in my country (Rivers of Blood speech and all that) and continues to be, it has never been as wide an issue as that of class. Perhaps in a country where colour was the major dividing line, those descendents of colour will look to the battles their grandparents fought and see pride in their achievements, in much the same way I look at the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the General Trades Union in my history.

A little under a thousand years ago, William the Conqueror razed the North to the bare soil. Remembered to posterity as The Harrowing of the North, the destruction was such that twenty years later, most of Yorkshire was still counted as 'Waste'. Well over 100,000 people were slaughtered, many more died of starvation. Animals, crops, villages, towns, all suffered. Like the Anglo-saxon kings before him, William based himself in the South. That's where the money flowed. Even when King Cotton strode the Pennines in the 18th and 19th centuries, the work may have been done in the North, but the finance flowed South. We still have something known as the North-South divide. The North is significantly poorer than the South. Opportunities for wealth creation are fewer in the North and the culture of the North is primarily working-class. I identify myself as a Northerner. These things are important to me.