What makes you think you're not a racist?

[french frank]

Isn't the problem the fact that he seemed to have no understanding of the problems of racist abuse in football, the impact it can have on people, & the need to take strong measures to deal with it. That isn't neccessarily being racist, but his feeble & nonsensical ideas about how to deal with it (seeing it as a purely personal issue) will be likely to encourage racists to think that they can get away with it.

As the thread has surfaced again, I'd say, yes, I agree with that entirely.

[scottycelt]

No, scotty the end of the story should be Blatter's announcement of his retirement from any position of influence in a game that he clearly does not understand and which he apparently is making no attempt to understand - SNAFU?!

I would think the very experienced Herr Blatter understands a lot more about the game than you or I, Ams

Gus Poyet, the Brighton manager ,who also happens to be Uruguayan, thinks Patrice Evra of Man Utd is 'a cry-baby' because he claimed another footballer referred to his colour and ethnicity on the field. The case is currently being investigated by the appropriate authorities.

I have great sympathy for anyone who is denied work etc because of his/her colour ... that should always be abhorred.

As for the childish name-calling case of Evra, a multi-millionaire footballer, I tend to agree with Poyet ...

[Lateralthinking1]

I have decided to shift this post onto the more relevant thread. It says much about the complexities of individuals and groups, the importance of presentation, the wrong assumptions we can make and how having any categorical view about one group of people has to be ludicrous for being so shallow. It also shows how economics can often make a big difference between viewing others positively or negatively and how the nature of someone's behaviour can matter more than the categories they are in or possibly not in. 2010 turned out to be quite a year. Friends of 25 years who had once been ordinary mates at university had ended up in different positions personally and professionally. Some were married, some had partners, some had children, some were single. Some had senior management positions while others were employed in average roles. Our fortnightly meetings were though an oasis of common interests - hobbies - where we could pretend it was still 1985. Music and sport mainly. It was to be assumed that there were some differences among the group in terms of sexual orientation. These seemed largely irrelevant. Contrary to the way the modern world is presented, a fair few I knew both inside and outside the group saw sexual relations in terms of partnerships. Where years passed by in the absence of partners, there was largely an absence of sexual interaction. I can think of at least ten people in that category. Some would be shocked by that fact. Are such people even given a box to tick on the national census?

Anyway, some low-level tensions did arise in respect of differences in income and professional status. Recalling what people were like at the age of eighteen, one knows that they were never sufficiently different to merit six times the income of another. There is in the stances they acquire with new status something slightly bogus. It becomes necessary to resist their attempts to apply senior management techniques on the group members. Somehow though, it is always the senior managers who decide on the time and place to meet. One of the plebs attempts to make an arrangement that is mutually beneficial. They either resist it or agree and then don't turn up. Excuses like they are then wanted back in the office by Lord Unelected of Potters Bar. It is a control thing. The types of house, holiday and car inevitably vary across the group and increasingly those differences are noticeable. Some network with a range of professional contacts while others simply have colleagues who enhance life enjoyment but can offer nothing of financial value. Many claim to be socialists as they were in a trendy way culturally in the late eighties but the attitudes and behaviour can suggest otherwise. One then suddenly recalls that year earlier on when they were in the Conservative association at university and were in a group photo with Mrs Thatcher. So much for the Billy Bragg gigs.

Additionally in a group one thinks one knows, there are the complexities of who is spending time with whom and why. Are some partners? If so, why the secrecy? There are hints that some but not all in the group are afforded the knowledge of what is actually happening dynamically. This selectivity matters more than the realities themselves. It's about inclusion. There is regular talk among some about early retirement and emigration. Will a quarter of a century of loyalty be rewarded by a mass walking away for all time. Before it didn't matter so why now suddenly? It is the sense that the lies and broken commitments in Government may be paralleled in the group. Some wondering then of whether friends are actually promoting in the workplace measures that will lead to the downfall of we the average. So they too claim that we are all in it together but are we? That they might be contributors to inequality is far from a feeling that is comfortable. What is this world that we are living in now and how different is it from the one assumed? Such worries led to questions that were asked privately and diplomatically. Questions that had never been asked before because we had all complied with the expected silence. They were enough to ensure that overnight the whole thing completely fell apart. As it turned out, the most senior of them all professionally was advising Select Committees - that is groups of largely uninformed MPs who were looking for expert advice - to be more harsh on the middle income earners and not to shy away from making necessary cuts. It makes you wonder how anyone could know what an African person or someone who is deaf might be.

Meanwhile the presentation to us was that the Government was awfully draconian and he was worried about his own position. Of course, he and we knew that he would be able to pick up the phone and walk into a lucrative position in the private sector within ten minutes. That then happened. One wondered about his heart. It would not have been suited to the caring professions. With this, confusion about his friendships and relationships disappeared. There was the girlfriend with whom he had lived and had a relationship. There was the woman with whom at the same time he went on holidays to America and Australia, leaving her and her son back at home. There were the gay sex clubs that he frequented on a regular basis again at the same time. And then us, the original university group, some knowing all of it, some knowing some of it, some knowing none of it except that actually we did know. Words spoken on cider. Big and little references here and there. It had always been obvious and yet generous and compliant we couldn't rock the boat. He was I thought needed as was the accountant who retired at the age of 43 and the senior banker. Where would our social life be without them? To ask privately about the truth of it - "I am not telling others but it would be courteous if you could tell me who in this "family" knows what - at present I am feeling like a second class citizen" - was met with disdain. It is apparently called "compartmentalizing one's life". To this day, I've said nothing to others in case they don't know but I don't know if they know. I shield them from him and vice versa. It is not a role that I enjoy and all direct ties have been broken.

According to the senior manager of compartmentalizing, immigration is necessary to pay for his pension and mine. That is, the public sector pension that will diminish by the time we get to our sixties so that it is adequate for ex senior civil servants and virtually non existent for others. We'll be in Britain. He by contrast will have emigrated along with others of wealth. What of his sexual orientation? Homosexuality is cool. Heterosexuality is cool. Bisexuality is cool. Being all three at the same time in terms of identity, and actively so, requires a dubious sense of morality, an instinct to grab whatever, a disregard for others' health and a complexity of Chinese walls. To me, the behaviour says little about orientation per se and a huge amount about the sheer absence of respect for other individuals. The indifference was quite staggering. So, anyhow, I lost my work, I lost my compensation entitlements, the pension looks doubtful and I also lost several friends, not only in the current time but in terms of how I had seen them since the eighties. What was the point? It has been pretty awful. Still, it has given me a unique insight into those who make the key decisions for all of us. It has been the end of any trust in government and that will last me for the rest of my life. Other people seem bloody horrible unless they indicate clearly that they are not so. But I can say now that I saw through it all.

[hackneyvi]

It is, I think, generally accepted that A Racist is someone who thinks people should be treated differently because of their racial differences, and/or who thinks that those differences account for differences in human character and/or ability. And who thinks some races are better than others (usually their own race is somewhere near the top).

Since races are difficult to define from a scientific viewpoint ... it is pretty dodgy empirical ground upon which to base any set of beliefs.

So, no, I am not A Racist. Have I ever had to overcome prejudices? Of course.

If I consider how racism and racists are discussed, it seems to me that the attribution isn't applied to people who feel treatment should be different but by people who notice difference. Whether or not they are correct in what they note is another matter, however racism is noticing characteristics in another person and attributing those characteristics to their culture, nationality or race, it seems.

In the matter of a racist, it seems that a person who - for example - suggests that racism is not a problem can be presumed racist (and then presumed, even avowed, not to be). Whether bungling Swiss cuckoo and FIFA President Septic Bladder is a racist or not is not relevant, the anti-accusation (that it's 'unthinkable' that he is racist) can be made against him. A person can be a suspected racist because they do not appear to understand the commonplaceness of racism, it's mundane nature, its everyday presence in human life, its normality. To display ignorance on the subject of racism is to be racist. This is logical since racism is judged to be an invisible enemy and something which can be displayed unwittingly by individuals or institutions.

So, it seems to me that your definition doesn't stand, Pm. Advocating different treatment according to race is not the definition of racism or a racist. It's certainly not the functional definition. Whether or not it's the legal one, I don't know.

On the last point you make, you say you have had to overcome racial prejudices. Have you overcome them? Do you feel they no longer exist in you?

I ask because if such prejudice can exist and manifest unwittingly, how do you know when they've gone?

I don't feel they have gone from me and that therefore I must presume that I am racist and a racist. This seems, from the perspective of another person concerned about racism and racists, to be a positive thing since my awareness of this prejudice makes possible a watchfullness and compensation for it. To avow oneself a racist can be to avow oneself concerned about racism.

Yours, perhaps from a whinging, Limey Pom,

[Boilk]

As a non-breeder (I'm gay) how can my 'conscious decision' [to have a life partner] have its roots in reproduction?

A conscious decision for companionship, and the underlying driver for companionship - going back millennia - is survival through everyday interdepedence and through reproduction. Just because one doesn't practice reproduction, doesn't mean one has lost a whole host of inherited needs.

[amateur51]

A conscious decision for companionship, and the underlying driver for companionship - going back millennia - is survival through everyday interdepedence and through reproduction. Just because one doesn't practice reproduction, doesn't mean one has lost a whole host of inherited needs.

Lordy we can inherit needs now?

Whatever will they think of next?

So explain people who lead very happy lives sans children, sans partner to me please. It all sounds a bit reductive to me, a bit like an organised religion

[Serial_Apologist]

I have decided to shift this post onto the more relevant thread. It says much about the complexities of individuals and groups, the importance of presentation, the wrong assumptions we can make and how having any categorical view about one group of people has to be ludicrous for being so shallow. It also shows how economics can often make a big difference between viewing others positively or negatively and how the nature of someone's behaviour can matter more than the categories they are in or possibly not in. 2010 turned out to be quite a year. Friends of 25 years who had once been ordinary mates at university had ended up in different positions personally and professionally. Some were married, some had partners, some had children, some were single. Some had senior management positions while others were employed in average roles. Our fortnightly meetings were though an oasis of common interests - hobbies - where we could pretend it was still 1985. Music and sport mainly. It was to be assumed that there were some differences among the group in terms of sexual orientation. These seemed largely irrelevant. Contrary to the way the modern world is presented, a fair few I knew both inside and outside the group saw sexual relations in terms of partnerships. Where years passed by in the absence of partners, there was largely an absence of sexual interaction. I can think of at least ten people in that category. Some would be shocked by that fact. Are such people even given a box to tick on the national census?

Anyway, some low-level tensions did arise in respect of differences in income and professional status. Recalling what people were like at the age of eighteen, one knows that they were never sufficiently different to merit six times the income of another. There is in the stances they acquire with new status something slightly bogus. It becomes necessary to resist their attempts to apply senior management techniques on the group members. Somehow though, it is always the senior managers who decide on the time and place to meet. One of the plebs attempts to make an arrangement that is mutually beneficial. They either resist it or agree and then don't turn up. Excuses like they are then wanted back in the office by Lord Unelected of Potters Bar. It is a control thing. The types of house, holiday and car inevitably vary across the group and increasingly those differences are noticeable. Some network with a range of professional contacts while others simply have colleagues who enhance life enjoyment but can offer nothing of financial value. Many claim to be socialists as they were in a trendy way culturally in the late eighties but the attitudes and behaviour can suggest otherwise. One then suddenly recalls that year earlier on when they were in the Conservative association at university and were in a group photo with Mrs Thatcher. So much for the Billy Bragg gigs.

Additionally in a group one thinks one knows, there are the complexities of who is spending time with whom and why. Are some partners? If so, why the secrecy? There are hints that some but not all in the group are afforded the knowledge of what is actually happening dynamically. This selectivity matters more than the realities themselves. It's about inclusion. There is regular talk among some about early retirement and emigration. Will a quarter of a century of loyalty be rewarded by a mass walking away for all time. Before it didn't matter so why now suddenly? It is the sense that the lies and broken commitments in Government may be paralleled in the group. Some wondering then of whether friends are actually promoting in the workplace measures that will lead to the downfall of we the average. So they too claim that we are all in it together but are we? That they might be contributors to inequality is far from a feeling that is comfortable. What is this world that we are living in now and how different is it from the one assumed? Such worries led to questions that were asked privately and diplomatically. Questions that had never been asked before because we had all complied with the expected silence. They were enough to ensure that overnight the whole thing completely fell apart. As it turned out, the most senior of them all professionally was advising Select Committees - that is groups of largely uninformed MPs who were looking for expert advice - to be more harsh on the middle income earners and not to shy away from making necessary cuts. It makes you wonder how anyone could know what an African person or someone who is deaf might be.

Meanwhile the presentation to us was that the Government was awfully draconian and he was worried about his own position. Of course, he and we knew that he would be able to pick up the phone and walk into a lucrative position in the private sector within ten minutes. That then happened. One wondered about his heart. It would not have been suited to the caring professions. With this, confusion about his friendships and relationships disappeared. There was the girlfriend with whom he had lived and had a relationship. There was the woman with whom at the same time he went on holidays to America and Australia, leaving her and her son back at home. There were the gay sex clubs that he frequented on a regular basis again at the same time. And then us, the original university group, some knowing all of it, some knowing some of it, some knowing none of it except that actually we did know. Words spoken on cider. Big and little references here and there. It had always been obvious and yet generous and compliant we couldn't rock the boat. He was I thought needed as was the accountant who retired at the age of 43 and the senior banker. Where would our social life be without them? To ask privately about the truth of it - "I am not telling others but it would be courteous if you could tell me who in this "family" knows what - at present I am feeling like a second class citizen" - was met with disdain. It is apparently called "compartmentalizing one's life". To this day, I've said nothing to others in case they don't know but I don't know if they know. I shield them from him and vice versa. It is not a role that I enjoy and all direct ties have been broken.

According to the senior manager of compartmentalizing, immigration is necessary to pay for his pension and mine. That is, the public sector pension that will diminish by the time we get to our sixties so that it is adequate for ex senior civil servants and virtually non existent for others. We'll be in Britain. He by contrast will have emigrated along with others of wealth. What of his sexual orientation? Homosexuality is cool. Heterosexuality is cool. Bisexuality is cool. Being all three at the same time in terms of identity, and actively so, requires a dubious sense of morality, an instinct to grab whatever, a disregard for others' health and a complexity of Chinese walls. To me, the behaviour says little about orientation per se and a huge amount about the sheer absence of respect for other individuals. The indifference was quite staggering. So, anyhow, I lost my work, I lost my compensation entitlements, the pension looks doubtful and I also lost several friends, not only in the current time but in terms of how I had seen them since the eighties. What was the point? It has been pretty awful. Still, it has given me a unique insight into those who make the key decisions for all of us. It has been the end of any trust in government and that will last me for the rest of my life. Other people seem bloody horrible unless they indicate clearly that they are not so. But I can say now that I saw through it all.

An amazing piece of writing, Lat. You should have taken up writing professionally. However, on you last point I always think one should base one's view of other people enountered first time on the assumption that they are as honest and well-meaning as yourself. One is still obviously in a vulnerable position, but no more vulnerable than from having negative preconceptions.

S-A

[Pilchardman]

racism is noticing characteristics in another person and attributing those characteristics to their culture, nationality or race, it seems.

My problem with that definition of racism comes when you bring culture into it. It assumes that a particular culture is a necessary part of someone, and which culture that is can be deduced by ethnic origin. Cultures are social constructs.

However, the general point about noticing characteristics in a person and attributing them to a whole race is covered by my second phrase in the definition: thinking that racial differences account for differences in human character and/or ability. In other words, stereotyping. Person A is good at dancing. Person A is Welsh, therefore all Welsh people are good at dancing.

To display ignorance on the subject of racism is to be racist.

This is a symptom of the bureaucratic nature of the Multicultural Project. The answer is to send the ignorant person on Diversity Training. Once they have had this training, they are no longer racist. The training will tell you that it is racist to hand an Asian shopkeeper change with your left hand. This comes from a half understood trope about some Asian cultures. It equates culture and race again. The two are not the same.

On the last point you make, you say you have had to overcome racial prejudices. Have you overcome them? Do you feel they no longer exist in you?

I didn't say that, actually. I didn't specify the nature of the prejudices. The one I was thinking of was the homophobia that was instilled into me by my Christian parents of an older generation. I overcame it by meeting gay people as I grew up, and realising that the judgemental nature of my parents' views was not one I shared.

I don't feel they have gone from me and that therefore I must presume that I am racist and a racist.

I think you're getting yourself confused by the semantics. But I can't say I blame you; I think it's a product of the Multicultural Project that people are confused by what counts as racism, and think it an easy thing to accidentally transgress without realising you have done.

In my culture, people visit each others' houses to celebrate New Year. If you misunderstand that and get the tradition wrong - perhaps you mispronounce "Hogmanay" in my hearing, or you visit me on the 30th of December - that is not racist towards me. First because it's a cultural thing, not a racial thing. Secondly because it's simply a misunderstanding. If you were to make similar mistakes about Diwali or Eid, the Multicultural Project would go into overdrive. Partly because the bureaucrats don't know about scale. They only know a box hasn't been ticked. In box ticking exercises a box is either ticked on not. There is no sliding scale of ticked to unticked.

That is how not knowing the extent of racism in football gets an outcry equivalent to calling for the gas ovens to be fired up. Hysteria.

I have no idea how much racism there is in football, since I don't follow it. Presumably that makes me racist. Blatter thinks a handshake can sort out racist slights, but that's because there is no measure of gravity he can use to differentiate between misunderstanding a cultural more and Nazism.

Finally, it is racist to suggest that a person of a certain race must follow the mores of a certain culture. For example, the campaigner Peter Tatchell was called racist for complaining about homophobia in certain Jamaican dancehall lyrics. "That is their culture", he was told. Well, that attitude tells us that they "can't help" being homophobic. It is their destiny. Sorry, but, no, it isn't.

[hackneyvi]

I suspect the rather OTT fabricated media fury over Herr Blatter's off-the-cuff remarks have much more to do with poor old Ingerland not being granted a future World Cup series than anything else ...

So there, I'm being frightfully racist towards the English ... and I'm most definitely and defiantly a 100% sexist ... vive la difference, je dis! ... but, alas, I'm a bit too old myself now to be an ageist ..

There's a line in Auden somewhere that goes, I think:

Now, at an age when one starts to dislike the young ...

As a middle-aged man, I find I'm ageist in all directions, pre-judge and sometimes revile.

[Lateralthinking1]

S-A - Thank you for your kind comments - Lat.

[hackneyvi]

Racism is a value system that believes that people who are from another racial group are intrinsically flawed or less worthy or inferior. An important addition is that racists have the power to do 'something' about it - withhold jobs, housing, education, promotion, etc on those racist grounds. Thus although theoretically a Black man may wish me ill because my white skin brands me as a racist, he has (generally) no power to enforce that attitude to my detriment.

I don't agree with your definition of racism, either, a51, because the daily, functional definition of racism and a racist is different.

When I went to live and work in SE23/SE8, entirely unexpectedly, I found myself reminded of the remarks made that I heard as I grew up - usually from young black men - about their treatment by white people in public. There was a feeling that they were looked at with suspicion and hostility, were treated differently in public, in shops from white people. I found the converse true for myself, that some young black men looked at me with suspicion and sometimes hostility and that if I went to get a pattie or curried goat in the carribean take-away across the road from my workplace, I was treated coldly or with clear unease by the staff compared to the black customers.

Watching the young black men in cars with blacked out windows, young black men wearing sunglasses at all times of the day and night, regardless of lighting but most particularly young black men wearing coats with hoods pulled up in hot weather, I began to interpret this as uneasiness, as hiding and came to believe that far such behaviour signifying confidence, its that its origins might arise from fear. Fear of feeling seen. A fear of feeling self.

As a gay man whose sexual identify was clear to him at the age of 12 in 1975, I know something of what that feels like.

To come back to your point, about black people having no power to enforce attitudes, I can't agree. I think and feel that the power exists and is sometimes yielded to, used; consciously and unconsciously, actively and passively. My experience was that what was withheld from me by some black people was humanity. Now, that withholding is something which all sorts of people do in all sorts of circumstances towards all sorts of others. It's a common human quality, a normal part of the spectrum of human life and interaction.

I believe that racism is in the spectrum of normal human behaviour, that it's a human quality not a racial one.

[amateur51]

I believe that racism is in the spectrum of normal human behaviour, that it's a human quality not a racial one.

I completely agree hackneyvi and as such it is something that can and should be resisted. It is not ultimately inevitable.

[Lateralthinking1]

I would be quite interested to hear when you moved to South London. My guess would be that you were not there in the 1980s. To the extent that one can generalize, and that generally isn't wise, I have two distinct versions of black South London in my mind. I couldn't be precise about the dividing timeline but it is approximately the late 1990s.

The first is ostensibly Caribbean. It is also of my age group and yours. The appearance of rastafarians particularly was a bit edgy. The whole vibe seemed slightly dangerous following the 1981 riots but also culturally interesting. Overall, it was exciting to go up to Brixton. Liking the music helped and, of course, the emphasis of that religion was peace even if there was some criminality. I remember forcing myself there to enjoy it to overcome anxieties. It felt like an adventure. But I was also rallying against a school which did nothing for confidence while wider family lived just up the road. So there was in some senses a feeling of being almost on home turf and in a world more real than would ever be negotiated by the George Osbornes to be. I claimed it as my own and felt a real sense of achievement. I might add though that going into reggae music shops was always sticking a white neck out - a bit like a southerner walking into a Lancashire pub. One looked at the facial expressions and thought "erm, maybe not this time".

The second is American. It is a video of Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls parading as reality on the streets. I find the fantasy nature of it depressing. Any feelings of danger are linked both to the frequent violence in the lyrics - it is a direct "stuff you" to our political correctness - and the knowledge of American-style territorial gangs in the area and their occasional use of guns. Having said as much, it would be easy to find white people who are acting in similar ways. Those ways are not the ways of the majority of black people in South London. There are elements dare I say it of the skinhead and the biker to it. Much of it is largely innocuous stance rather than anything of substance. We are also discussing younger people in the main who culturally will never align with the norms of the older. In some ways, you may be describing the challenging nature of ageing. It says life has changed.

Although it is years since I have attended the Notting Hill Carnival, I suggest that you attend it. It accentuates the reality of Londoners of Caribbean background. It has more colour and good food. You will be with a million others from every background you could imagine. Actually, I think you would find it pleasant, slightly stimulating but almost surprisingly bland. There is a lot of normal walking around looking for the floats. Mostly, you think "it is getting too crowded" rather than "I fear for my life". Actually, it is too crowded for me now but not so the smaller festivals with plenty of space. So, alternatively, you could come to Womad which is truly international, friendly, distinctly un-American, and so real one just wonders why life can't always be like it is there.

[Boilk]

Lordy we can inherit needs now?

Whatever will they think of next?

Yes, most of our physical and psychological needs we have indeed inherited. Did you consciously decide amateur, that you needed water to live, or did you inherit that need by virtue of the fact that you are 70% water?

So explain people who lead very happy lives sans children, sans partner to me please. It all sounds a bit reductive to me, a bit like an organised religion

At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs amateur51, the vast majority of people need interaction with other humans to stay sane (haven't they shown that extended solitary confinement doesn't benefit one's sanity?). You don't necessarily need children, though surprise surprise, the majority seem to end up wanting and rearing them! Not many people aspire to become religious hermits and go live in caves.


I think I'll ignore responding to any further infantile "logic" from now on !!!

[amateur51]

Yes, most of our physical and psychological needs we have indeed inherited. Did you consciously decide amateur, that you needed water to live, or did you inherit that need by virtue of the fact that you are 70% water?



At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs amateur51, the vast majority of people need interaction with other humans to stay sane (haven't they shown that extended solitary confinement doesn't benefit one's sanity?). You don't necessarily need children, though surprise surprise, the majority seem to end up wanting and rearing them! Not many people aspire to become religious hermits and go live in caves.


I think I'll ignore responding to any further infantile "logic" from now on !!!

Fairy nuff Boilk

I still say it's bollix