Good news! Britain has solved racism!

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by JQH » Thu Apr 01, 2021 4:39 pm

Thanks for the fisking, Fishnut. What unbelievable shite.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by warumich » Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:55 pm

I only had time to scroll through the report very quickly, but guess how many union jacks were in it.

Go on, guess
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Apr 01, 2021 6:03 pm


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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by bmforre » Thu Apr 01, 2021 7:55 pm

lpm wrote Re: 'How men can help make workplaces more gender inclusive' that institutions not opinion must handle issues like sexism or racism:
No. Stop. This thread is heading in completely the wrong direction. Turn around and go back.

When there's the stench of sewage in the Victorian streets, the answer isn't to go round encouraging individual action. "Don't empty your chamber pot out the window on market days". The answer is institutional change and pressuring the powerful to build a massive f.cking sewer to sort the sh.t once and for all...
A great problem with that is that institutions will often delegate evaluating such issues to groups like the leaders of this Great Whitewash. Independent and critical people are often too rebelliously inclined to be allowed to set directions and make important decisions.

So suppression vs. privilege will not be solved in committee. Campaigners feet on the ground are and will be needed.

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Herainestold » Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:00 pm

Britain is not the worst developed country with respect to racism.(We know who that is).That is damning with faint praise.
Unfortunately racism is getting markedly worse and reports like this are just an attempt to whitewash the situation. A Conserative government is never going to do anything for non white people. At this point I'm not sure Labour would be that much better.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Vertigowooyay » Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:22 pm

Shocked. I am shocked that this blatant, shoddy, dismissive, offensive report is *somehow* falling apart around their f.cking ears just over 24 hours since it’s publication.

It’s almost as if, say, including academics in the list of stakeholders who have not actually been consulted, is a move that will be called out f.cking immediately.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Gfamily » Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:35 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:22 pm
Shocked. I am shocked that this blatant, shoddy, dismissive, offensive report is *somehow* falling apart around their f.cking ears just over 24 hours since it’s publication.

It’s almost as if, say, including academics in the list of stakeholders who have not actually been consulted, is a move that will be called out f.cking immediately.
We're seeing it fall apart; what I'm not sure is whether readers of the Mail, Express, Times, Telegraph and Sun are seeing it fall apart. To them, it is quite possible that the country is a paragon of 'how it should be done' and anyone that still thinks it's an issue is 'playing the race card'.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:56 pm

But but but they're jailing neo-nazi cops. What more proof do we need that everything's alright now?
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:09 pm

This is an excellent piece on the report.
Perhaps the most blatant issue is the report’s reliance on tactics that the government appears to have employed time and again: using Black and Asian representatives to minimise the credibility of racism in its many forms.
...
Singling out white underachievement in education throughout the report is striking... Pitting white underachievement against outcomes for ethnic minority groups also echoes arguments often touted by the extreme right. Race equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, describes this as playing “into cultural readings of inequality, which pitch [white people’s] interests squarely against those of ethnic minorities, and simultaneously allows middle class commentators to blame the ‘underclass’ for their own misfortunes”.
I recommend reading the whole thing, it's not long, is well-written and summarises the main problems with the report succinctly.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:22 pm

Doreen Lawrence is speaking out against the report,
"You are giving racists the green light"... "it has pushed [the fight against] racism back 20 years or more". “I think if you were to speak to somebody whose employer speaks to them in a certain way, where do you go with that now? If a person is up for promotion and has been denied that, where does he go with that now?

“You know, all these things we’ve been working for and showing that structural racism exists – we talk about the pandemic when you look at how many of our people have died, all the nurses, the doctors, the frontline staff, of Covid, and to have this report denying that those people have suffered?

“They are denying that the likes of my son was murdered through racism and the fact that it took 18 years to get justice for him. The report is denying all those issues.”
It was part of a talk she did for De Montfort University. It looks like the event is available to view here.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by nekomatic » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:48 pm

According to the people who inexplicably take on the task of monitoring LBC like some volunteer metropolitan élite GCHQ, Iain Dale thinks she’s irresponsible for saying so
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Little waster » Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:13 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 6:03 pm
Rosie Holt tells it like it is: https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status ... 55970?s=20
Conveniently all the commentators who didn’t like the vid have been highlighted with little St George’s flags and Union Jacks, I assume this is some new time-saving feature of twitter? ;)
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:32 am

Gfamily wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:35 pm
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:22 pm
Shocked. I am shocked that this blatant, shoddy, dismissive, offensive report is *somehow* falling apart around their f.cking ears just over 24 hours since it’s publication.

It’s almost as if, say, including academics in the list of stakeholders who have not actually been consulted, is a move that will be called out f.cking immediately.
We're seeing it fall apart; what I'm not sure is whether readers of the Mail, Express, Times, Telegraph and Sun are seeing it fall apart. To them, it is quite possible that the country is a paragon of 'how it should be done' and anyone that still thinks it's an issue is 'playing the race card'.
I had a brief glance at the Mail front page so you don't have to.

The Mail does have one article which: a) reports Doreen Lawrence's criticisms; b) Boris Johnson stating that "I don't say the Government is going to agree with absolutely everything in it, but it has some original and stimulating work in it that I think people need to read and to consider" and c) it states that "children from many ethnic minorities do as well or better at school than white pupils" and "white British boys from poorer backgrounds are among the most disadvantaged".

In another article I learnt that an academic who is a person of colour and a critic of the report had falsely accused Tony Sewell of faking his Dr title and then compared him to Goebbles. And in another article that a nationally prominent person of colour believes that "Asian culture has held her back more than racism as she credits Britain for 'encouraging her to make the most of herself'".

Mail readers are going to be aware that there has been some criticism, but they're not getting the impression that the report is falling apart.

Don't forget that, for Johnson, outrage from Guarding reading lefties is a bonus. Every article from them criticizing the report is a signal to his supporters that Johnson is on the right track. If only the left was even half as effective at manipulating the public.

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by jimbob » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:11 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:32 am
Gfamily wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:35 pm
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:22 pm
Shocked. I am shocked that this blatant, shoddy, dismissive, offensive report is *somehow* falling apart around their f.cking ears just over 24 hours since it’s publication.

It’s almost as if, say, including academics in the list of stakeholders who have not actually been consulted, is a move that will be called out f.cking immediately.
We're seeing it fall apart; what I'm not sure is whether readers of the Mail, Express, Times, Telegraph and Sun are seeing it fall apart. To them, it is quite possible that the country is a paragon of 'how it should be done' and anyone that still thinks it's an issue is 'playing the race card'.
I had a brief glance at the Mail front page so you don't have to.

The Mail does have one article which: a) reports Doreen Lawrence's criticisms; b) Boris Johnson stating that "I don't say the Government is going to agree with absolutely everything in it, but it has some original and stimulating work in it that I think people need to read and to consider" and c) it states that "children from many ethnic minorities do as well or better at school than white pupils" and "white British boys from poorer backgrounds are among the most disadvantaged".

In another article I learnt that an academic who is a person of colour and a critic of the report had falsely accused Tony Sewell of faking his Dr title and then compared him to Goebbles. And in another article that a nationally prominent person of colour believes that "Asian culture has held her back more than racism as she credits Britain for 'encouraging her to make the most of herself'".

Mail readers are going to be aware that there has been some criticism, but they're not getting the impression that the report is falling apart.

Don't forget that, for Johnson, outrage from Guarding reading lefties is a bonus. Every article from them criticizing the report is a signal to his supporters that Johnson is on the right track. If only the left was even half as effective at manipulating the public.
I think they might have got away with it, but the authors overreached with their 15 yr old Edgelord take on slavery, which is a short and memorable quote. It will reduce its influence massively. Even more than claims of consulting people who weren't.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Vertigowooyay » Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:13 pm

Yeah, this.

Everyone believes the tinpot dictator when they ‘win’ 70% of the vote in an ‘election’. It’s when they claim they got 98% that people start thinking it’s b.llsh.t. This report overstated its nonsense in the same way.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by monkey » Fri Apr 02, 2021 3:51 pm

jimbob wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:11 am
I think they might have got away with it, but the authors overreached with their 15 yr old Edgelord take on slavery, which is a short and memorable quote. It will reduce its influence massively. Even more than claims of consulting people who weren't.
The optimist in me hopes this is the case, and that it will mark the end of (not) dealing with problems by having an inquiry. This report being so terrible highlights how they can be used to just cover up problems, avoid confronting them, or avoid admitting guilt. More people might start realising that because of this. That might lead the way to actual stuff being done to make people's lives better.

But I bet next year I'll be reading something by some right winger, or hearing them on the radio, and they'll say something like "Last year a Government report showed that institutional racism doesn't exist in the UK", then PM Sunak will announce an inquiry into whatever horribleness made everyone talk about race for that week.

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by jdc » Fri Apr 02, 2021 4:49 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:31 pm
The data also revealed many instances of success among minority communities. These have often been ignored or have been seen to be of little interest (to the media). But we wanted to understand the reasons for the success and whether there were any lessons to be drawn.
Successes are important, but this feels like an attempt to diminish any problems - individuals can succeed so if you don't it's because you didn't try hard enough and you're just blaming your failures on your race because you don't want to admit you didn't. I don't doubt that the media have ignored success stories in minority communities and I would be interested to know if they examine why this is. Could it be, possibly, that institutional racism makes these stories less appealing to editors and publishers?
That looks like a rhetorical question. I'd better answer it.

Yes. There's a longish thread here: https://twitter.com/StopFundingHate/sta ... 4074407936 about the racist UK media.

Includes this classic from Nick Davies (Flat Earth News) - "While I was writing this book, I spoke to a local news agency who had just had the Daily Mail news desk on the phone, checking out a murder on their patch & asking if the victim was white or black so that they could decide whether they wanted the story". There's a Davies story that I can't find right now about a good news story the Mail were planning to run that was cancelled when it turned out the hero of the tale was black.

(In that twitter thread there's also a warning from 2010 that hostile UK media coverage was fuelling a rise in anti-Muslim hate crime, evidence from Rich Peppiatt to Leveson, and some research by Liz Gerard on the increase in anti-migrant headlines and "a surge in hate crime on UK streets - with experts from the University of Leicester warning that these attacks had been 'fuelled and legitimised by politicians and by the media'")

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:24 pm

jdc wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 4:49 pm
There's a longish thread here: https://twitter.com/StopFundingHate/sta ... 4074407936 about the racist UK media.
Very interesting thread, thanks for sharing :)
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:38 pm

This is a f.cking excellent piece on the report. I learned a lot reading it. A few snippets which will hopefully whet appetites and encourage you to read the whole thing. Honestly, you won't regret it.
The Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities is the latest and perhaps most important component of the government’s strategy of denial and disavowal. It fleshes out, suspiciously neatly, the narrative that Boris Johnson first drafted as a direct riposte to the Black Lives Matter movement in June last year.[6] It appears to be not just a response to the Black Lives Matter protests, but part of a well-orchestrated backlash.
This was a point I hadn't registered when doing my dissection of the introduction but it's so obvious once pointed out,
“There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain.” This would not be a new story at all. British slave traders and owners told a similar story when they sought to resist abolition and emancipation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Africans could only ever be culturally transformed and improved, they claimed, if they were extracted from the mire of savagery in which they were sunk in Africa, and exposed to the better example of British owners on Caribbean plantations.
I had no idea about any of this,
Enslaved Indians were exempt from the Abolition Act and their indenture enabled post-abolition labour shortages to be met in the former slave holding colonies.[13] Whilst destroying and sometimes enslaving Aboriginal communities, Britons also kidnapped Pacific Islanders to transfer sugar production from the Caribbean to Australia.[14] Nevertheless, the supposition that Britain was an antislavery nation became its excuse for the aggressive expansion of its empire through the conquest and subjugation of African societies during the second half of the nineteenth century.[15]
This gets to the heart of the problem with the report,
Rather than seizing the opportunity to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and provide a more reconciliatory history, it seems intent on reassuring resistant white Britons that they need not take the trouble to understand Black Britons’ experiences of racism. Racial discrimination, just as they long suspected, is all in the minds of Black people, especially those of Caribbean descent. Even worse, it is just a cynical strategy of self-advancement – “playing the race card”.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Apr 02, 2021 6:48 pm

Yes fishnut, that was good.

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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Herainestold » Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:28 pm

It seems the report had a foregone conclusion and its authors were selected in the same way. The whole point being to maintain the status quo, pretend slavery was actually good, stop any further progress in race relations, and spare the feelings of white people. After some years of progress, racism is getting worse in almost every way. As far as systemic racism is concerned this report is proof of the concept.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:13 pm

Another consultant on the report has criticised both the running of the consultation and its findings. Dal Babu, former Metropolitan police chief superintendent and one of the UK’s most senior British Asian officers until leaving the force when he was rejected for promotion, has said that the consultations were "a Fawlty Towers-like experience" which were "shambolic", according to The Guardian.

David Olusoga has a great piece on the failings of the report while Ian Dunt looks at the media narrative the government tried to create before its release.

Meanwhile the report writers are claiming that people are being mean about them and should stop.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by Fishnut » Sat Apr 03, 2021 4:41 pm

Business chiefs say their advice ignored in No 10’s race report. The report is called "patronising", "tokenistic", "muddled" and "laughably simplistic".

Some interesting stuff further down the article:
A source close to Downing Street confirmed that no other government report in recent memory has had its evidence and analysis so comprehensively discredited across a wide range of topics and domains. They said there had been “a failure to grasp the issues” and that No 10 “was clearly not motivated into looking into what can actually be done. The success of the gender pay gap reporting, for instance, started a positive national conversation; this report has taken a culture war direction. It’s done a great disservice to the country”.
and:
Dozens of organisations are planning a coordinated formal response with requests to be removed from the report, as they say they were included without being consulted.
That response should be very interesting reading.
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Re: Good news! Britain has solved racism!

Post by discovolante » Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:44 pm

I'm amazed at the energy of the people who take the time to deal with this stuff. I know probably most of them feel they have no choice but jfc. It's like a not funny version of having to explain the difference between small sheep and far away sheep, over and over again, for decades, while getting punched in the face at random intervals. And then getting pounced on by the Daily Mail for showing the slightest bit of anger or frustration.
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