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See all MNHQ comments on this thread

MNHQ Racism policy

337 replies

ThePigOfHappiness · 31/12/2013 15:17

Hi,
I was just wondering if you could let us know when the racism policy has been amended? I'm sure following today's discussions on NI that it needs to be looked at.
It's clearly breaking the equality act to discriminate based on nationality as it is racist, yet MNHQ don't acknowledge this?
Ta

OP posts:
YoureBeingASillyBilly · 09/01/2014 12:56

Hmm- just checked my email and there is a response from MNtowers saying they are looking at it today and should get back to us soon.

Either backonlybriefly is psychic or has access to information from HQ that we dont.

YoureBeingASillyBilly · 09/01/2014 12:53

If they have they have answered them in invisible writing.

BackOnlyBriefly · 09/01/2014 12:28

Perhaps they have answered your demands, but you missed it. :)

wigglesrock · 09/01/2014 10:54

I think they're busy encouraging MN Local which is ironic. To be honest they could be sitting making daisy chains for the all the use they've been in the past week.

It's just shit communication, I'm not saying a policy needs to be shown now but for fucks sake its just rude now.

brandnewiggi · 09/01/2014 10:44

It's the 9th of January now Confused Sad
Biscuit

YoureBeingASillyBilly · 09/01/2014 09:39

Totally agree fanjo- i have seen that too. Ive also seen anti american studf aswell. Its all just sort of 'accepted' here that its ok to say these things and have these 'jokes' about these countries. Like its common knowledge that we are the butt of a joke and are being 'hypersensitive' to have a problem with that.

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 09/01/2014 09:26

Please do also consider a firm line on anti Scottish comments on independence threads too, MNHQ. Sorry to butt in here.

YoureBeingASillyBilly · 09/01/2014 09:15

Checking for response from HQ which i'm sure is about to happen any minute now.

BookroomRed · 08/01/2014 21:11

Squoosh, I just looked it up and the Orson Welles comments were from just before he died in the mid eighties. His friend Henry Jaglorn taped their regular lunches, but the tapes were lost for years.

I'm not particularly surprised or appalled he held those opinions, but yes, I was taken aback R4 aired them at such length. He wasn't discussing Ireland as a nation, either, he was making slurs about Irish immigrants to the US, and comparing them negatively to other ethnicities of migrant. It was the length of airtime the R4 edit gave it that surprised me.

SquirtedPerfumeUpNoseInBoots · 08/01/2014 20:49

Ah found it. Just place marking again for the MNHQ response on their considered response of the deleted thread on NYE.

squoosh · 08/01/2014 20:35

Thanks BookroomRed, apologies for misinterpreting your initial post.

Re. Orson Welles and Radio 4, yes, you’re probably right, or if they did air clips in relation to another country, it would probably be done after much discussion and with the expectation of garnering a lot of negative publicity. The fact though that it was recorded in the 40’s or 50’s or thereabouts (I’m assuming) does give an historical edge to the opinions that distances it somewhat from being seen as inflammatory. It would be different if they had say, Phlilip Seymour Hoffman for example saying similar. Also I’d imagine Radio 4 would be generally confident about another nation being discussed as long as the country in question was a largely white one and the opinions were written/recorded a comfortable enough distance ago time wise.

I know the UK/USA thing is different as in the main being Irish in America isn’t seen as a handicap, quite the opposite, as demonstrated by the politicians you refer to desperate to find an Irish ancestor no matter how tenuous the link. The Irish American chunk of the electorate and political world are seen as someone that it's beneficial to get on side.

Anyway, my point is that Oirishism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, every country in the world suffers hackneyed cultural stereotypes, some of them harmful, some of them like today’s, that I see as cheesy but harmless. What I would say is that the casual racism demonstrated on Mumsnet towards America and Americans is far more evident to me than anti Irish feeling. It seems as though nothing is off limits as being described as ‘don’t like it, it’s so American’.

Pan · 08/01/2014 20:31

Nice try. I'll report a post I made on another thread about the English which was awful and I am deeply ashamed of....... and ask them to have a look over here.

Pan · 08/01/2014 20:21

I think the OW note was a comment on what is and isn't acceptable to be broadcast. Doesn't matter when it was actually recorded.

YoureBeingASillyBilly · 08/01/2014 20:20

I have reported one of my own posts and asked when we can expect a response from HQ.

BackOnlyBriefly · 08/01/2014 20:19

and err Orson Welles was saying this recently was he?

Pan · 08/01/2014 20:14

The OW interviewer was obv being "over-sensitive".

wannabedomesticgoddess · 08/01/2014 20:13

No I'm not being purposely impossible, it's called 'having a different opinion'. It happens.

Then accept that we have different opinions and stop trying to prove you are right.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 08/01/2014 20:12

I fear Bookroom that your well written post will just go whoosh, right over squoosh.

squoosh · 08/01/2014 20:11

No I'm not being purposely impossible, it's called 'having a different opinion'. It happens.

BookroomRed · 08/01/2014 20:08

Squoosh, it was in no sense an analogy. It was a demonstration of a continuum between stereotyping and outright discrimination. I do not personally see Oirish stereotyping, no matter who engages in it, as as benign as it confidently believes itself to be.

Nowhere did I say that there was an equivalence between the two situations. Though of course there's a long history of colonial literature written from both Irish and English perspectives which constructs precisely this Female Ireland/Male England paradigm, down to and including some of Seamus Heaney's poetry.

I can't comment in any depth on American attitudes because it's so long since I lived there, and it's bound up with expressions of Irish-Americanness, which has established 'types' of its own. I think that as a country with a very different attitude to immigration, and a very assimilative notion of Americanness, it's not like English attitudes, and in many ways, it's a deeply romantic stereotype. Irish ancestry is prized and celebrated, albeit often in stereotypical (alcoholic/pugilistic) ways. Hard to imagine David Cameron sinking a pint in Ballyporeen to celebrate his Irish ancestry.

Though I lived in Massachusetts for a year, and the continuing cultural imprint of the Kennedys alters things there a bit.

I will say, though, that there was one of a series of clips of recordings of interviews with Orson Welles on Radio 4 in the last week or so, in which he expressed at length his visceral hatred of Irish immigrants to the US. The interviewer kept gasping and saying 'You can't say that', but he he did. Obviously one man's prejudices are neither here nor there, but I don't think Radio 4 would have allowed equivalent airtime to such fulsome abuse of another ethnic group.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 08/01/2014 20:04

*wasnt

I give up. Honestly, you really are being purposly impossible.

Pan · 08/01/2014 20:04

IF someone reported a post it could attract a bit of response on the thread from HQ? Though that ambition is fast receding.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 08/01/2014 20:03

Didn't say I was offended just pointing out that you can hardly claim to be a paragon of virtue and then deem me to be the baddie.

Seriously, you need to calm down. No one is the goodie or the baddie. All I asked is that you would actually read my post and take it in. But you didn't and I too was "exasperated."

However, I want the one turning it into something personal. My obtuse comment was to posters who are dismissive in general, if you read it and thought it was to you then maybe that tells you something.

squoosh · 08/01/2014 20:01

Please do report my posts if you think they have no place on this thread.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 08/01/2014 19:59

No I'm not deliberately stirring, not my scene.

You could have fooled me.

I'm just a bit exasperated that I'm deemed to be talking 'shite' because I don't agree with people's view on today's thread.

Go do it on that thread then. This one isn't about that one specifically.