To wonder why it's so controversial to talk about white behaviour throughout history?

Can’t say I love being referred to as ‘the blacks’ rather than black people but anyway…

It’s not about who the individual great grandparent was. It’s about the cultural identity.

Does your parent’s job/personality/choices affect how you feel about your nationality? Like if you hate your mum does that make you not proud to be English/ Irish/ Swedish or whatever else? Probs not.

If you don't know your ancestors then you cannot mourn what you never had. I could find my forebearers were royalty but not from the current line (a distinct possibility) or I could find they were marauding murderers who stole from the poor (another distinct possibility depending if I look through my mother or fathers line).

Would you be as proud of your heritage if you did find that eg you were descended from an African tribe leader who was renowned for capturing slaves from other tribes?

What if you found your great x 5 granny was actually the secret lover of plantation owner and treated the other blacks like crap?

I think what is infuriating for black people (although I can only speak for myself) is the denial of the racism that was created by transatlantic slavery.

I don’t think slavery was itself motivated by racism - like you said it was motivated by money. But the result was lots of black people in originally white countries who were seen and treated as less than white people.

In order to justify the history, black people were criminalised, portrayed as aggressive, over sexualised etc etc.

I've never personally heard anyone deny it, so I'm not sure what that looks like, but I'm sure it happens.

I like to think that black history week and movements around that have now embedded those issues in school history teaching and understanding is getting better with every new year of children that pass through schools. My children and their friends all seem really aware.

Maybe as someone proudly from an African country with a rich history and culture, I find it sad that some don’t have that because of slavery.

I think what is infuriating for black people (although I can only speak for myself) is the denial of the racism that was created by transatlantic slavery.

I don’t think slavery was itself motivated by racism - like you said it was motivated by money. But the result was lots of black people in originally white countries who were seen and treated as less than white people.

In order to justify the history, black people were criminalised, portrayed as aggressive, over sexualised etc etc.

There wouldn’t be generations of traumatised black families.

There wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of black Americans who don’t even know which country they’re originally from.

Slavery was ended in 1807 in the UK and was abolished in America in 1865, We have around 7 generations pass in America and 9 in the UK. I'd challenge most of us to say who our great great great great great grandparents were and where they originated from.

Yes this is an important part of why Britain, which is a pretty small and not very populated country was able to operate as it did; money and commerce. The desire for money cuts across all people. It is the money that enabled the English city sponsored companies to even start the process of Empire. It’s making money not just for those companies but local power too. Later Britain becomes obsessive about “white man’s burden” and “moral improvement” with a harsh military edge. But the initial offer? Money. It’s the easiest route to power there is and everyone wants some.

Same thing with how Israel is genociding Palestinions....

Well I don't think race is a particularly clear concept scientifically speaking. Genetically humans are all quite similar to one another in comparison to other animals and most genetic variation occurs within populations in Africa (who would be considered one group according to the desire held by some people on this thread to divide history by skin tone)

I suppose the treatment of Jews in Europe is considered racism because much of their persecution was done on that basis. So the Nazis considered Jewish people to be a separate race and it was of no interest to them whether or not a given Jewish person practiced their religion or not only how ethnically Jewish they were based on their number of Jewish grandparents.

Most ridiculous post I've seen...

All I was taught at school was how evil white countries where in history and how all white people have privilege ...

Thanks - I get that Judaism exists as an inherited identity so lots of people consider themselves Jewish but not religiously.

Interesting.

I mean - yes, the present is impacted by the past - but the African slave trade in Africa is also responsible for today's situation. That's the thing, it wasn't a trade that was only controlled by white Europeans. It was controlled by wealthy Africans and wealthy Europeans to send people to the Americas, or in the east, to the Middle East.

You can go to Africa today and the tribal conflicts and relations that were behind the slave trade, and the class differences, have incredible impacts on people there. The idea that this is unique to the US is quite a narrow perspective. There are still people in Africa who look down on their neighbours, because their ancestors enslaved their neighbours ancestors. You can see this among people in India, or Asia, even the people of New Zealand had their own pre-existing class hierarchies.

The other element here is that this kind of situation is not actually unique to black people. You can look at migrations within Europe, and class differences, and these too are related to things like past migrations and invasions. Poor white people today are in many cases poor because their ancestors were poor and oppressed, by people from some other group.

You can also find that in many cases, especially here there was already a fairly developed social and political culture, when the British came to a place, often looking for trade relations, the people there were keen to use the British not only to increase their own wealth through trade, but to gain allies against their enemies. They had agency, and goals of their own, and conflicts of their own. There wasn't some kind of blank slate.

No one wants to deny the history of the UK, but it's one part in a much larger history of peoples with their own goals and historical arcs. And not generally especially better or worse, although it did, uniquely, abolish slavery for ideological reasons, and attempt to stop the trade of slaves outside of their own country.

Correction.

That should be "there is NO requirement in Judaism to convert people in" (or however I phrased it).

Why is prejudice against Jewish (or Muslim) people considered racism rather than xenophobic when there are Jews and Muslims of so many races?

Judaism/Jewishness considers itself a race as well as a religion. It has different branches, but it's an inherited identity. There is suggestion in Judaism that you should convert people into Judaism, for example, because Jewish law views Jews & Judaism as a "chosen people" not a belief system.

So that's what anti-semitism is a form of racism. Also demonstrated by the fact that organised anti-senitism (Nazis, Ku Klux Klan etc) don't care whether Jews are religious either - they're hung up on heredity.

I'll let someone else address the Islam part of the question as I'm not quite as sure of the details.

A genuine question and not a denial at all of the atrocities Jews have faced or face currently.

Why is prejudice against Jewish (or Muslim) people considered racism rather than xenophobic when there are Jews and Muslims of so many races?

I feel like this is a way of viewing the world we have imported from the US. It has led to confusion like Diane Abbott saying that Jewish people can't experience racism because they are white (even though Jews were persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years)

Oh don't get me started. I like DA. She has a long history of achievement. That was an absolutely needless trap for her to waltz into.

Exactly. Slave trading is wrong and clearly Britain and other European countries made a lot of money from it over an extended period of time which was also wrong.

But there isn't a genetic mutation that goes with having white skin that turns you into a slave trader so this isn't white behaviour or white history.

I feel like this is a way of viewing the world we have imported from the US. It has led to confusion like Diane Abbott saying that Jewish people can't experience racism because they are white (even though Jews were persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years) because everything is viewed in relation to US history.

It is not a half thruth at all. It is entirely wrong that we traded in African people. There are no buts needed.

Absolutely it is. Even the "couple of generations" of slave keeping and slave trading mentioned represents incalculable human suffering and trauma. There's a lot there to study.

But you can't call slave trading, though, is "white behaviour", as it wasn't practised by most white people, not all the people who practised it were white, white people haven't persisted in the behaviour. "White behaviour" doesn't doesn't make sense as a label for it.

What you can say, for example, is that colonialism was a big trend for most European nations for about three hundred years. So if you want to identify bad behaviour from western civilisations at great cost to other non-European societies, it's very easy to do.

Which makes this unexplained determination to shoe horn the word "white" in somewhere whether it makes sense or not even stranger.

You know people's actions aren't determined by their skin colour, don't you? Politics and culture and societal norms are what influence behaviour, and even then, people from the same time and place behave very differently from one another.

Look I think it's controversial to talk about white behaviour or white history because I don't think the amount of melanin present in some one's skin is a useful lens through which to consider history.

To do so might be considered racist as it pre-supposes that all people with the same white skin colour must have some thing more in common with one another than an ability to absorb more vitamin D which is useful when living far away from the equator. What really does the history of the Inuit people of the artic have to do with the history of France?

I think that nation states or geographical regions or empires or groups with the same ethnicity, culture or religion can all at different times be useful ways of considering history. So depending on the context we might talk about English history or European History or Russian history or the history of the Roman empire or Inuit history or Jewish history or African American history or Native American history.

Any race or creed of people that enslave any of their own or other people is obviously wrong. Yes Africans enslaving their own people is wrong.

But it is ridiculous to deny the global impact that transatlantic slavery had on the world and on black people.

I don’t think 1 white individual who had slaves is worse that 1 African individual who did the same thing. But I think the impact of African slaves being trafficked by white people had a larger impact than any Africans enslaving their own people.

I think it’s nuances like this that some people deny and for black people it’s irritating.

If there had been no transatlantic slavery, black people wouldn’t make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population in traditionally white countries.

There wouldn’t be generations of traumatised black families.

There wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of black Americans who don’t even know which country they’re originally from.

I could go on and on.

It’s like my husband who is lovely refusing to acknowledge that the historical behaviour of men has had a huge impact on women. It’s not his fault personally and of course women have also treated women badly but that doesn’t mean he should deny the role that men have played or seem to minimise the impact.

Isaw a really interesting interview a few months ago on Trinngernoratry, about why business struggles in Africa. The woman they were speaking to, who is a business owner, argued that it was largely because when the newly independent African nations developed their bureaucracy and business regulations, they mainly copied examples from the Soviets and Chinese, which are extremely difficult for businesses. This was mainly because they were looking to try not to use the models that came from the western European countries.

One example she gave was that if she wanted to hire someone, it involved days worth of bureaucracy to get it approved - and then it was almost impossible to ever fire anyone.

It's quite interesting and worth watching.

I accept all your reservations, and share them. But there will be a tipping point, at which african energy could surge. I want to see it happen. I don't want to see more of the same names just hoovering the money into their private Swiss accounts.

Gosh how hard is it to accept that Africans enslaved their own people since before records began - and still do.

There is so much history and modern day info on this.

While I love the history classroom @FrippEnos , nobody hired me to teach in it. I was too old (NQT at 55) and not moving from beautiful Cornwall to anywhere uglier. Even before I mention my Dh's business.

Wistfully, I still quite fancy a few hours teaching as a volunteer.

Yep! This thread is just going round in circles! No one seems to actually taking on board people like me who work in the History classroom!