Munroe Bergdorf makes George Floyd/Black Lives Matter all about Munroe Bergdorf

It's also how they're trained. Reading about how they're trained to respond to perceived challenges to their authority can be very illuminating. Those who join and don't have the personality type kesstrel is describing sometimes end up finding a way to stay but avoid situations where they're expected to hurt people - there's one locally who seems to be a genuinely lovely person, but she's an animal cop, so she spends her time doing things like rescuing stray dogs and helping to get people who abuse their pets prosecuted rather than harassing black people for having nice cars.

There are also issues with soldiers being hired into police jobs, which are really a very different kind of work. And training in American police forces is very inconsistent - it can be very minimal in some places.

Add a population with a lot of guns, a liability culture, and serious social inequality with all that entails, and it's kind of a recipe for disaster.

Another element people sometimes don't realise is that in the 70s, many black communities asked for more police presence and action in their communities, and this had concrete policy effects, some of which are now seen as evidence of racist policy making.

I've seen seen some interesting suggestion to that the militarisation of the police relates to the change in reference of the middle and upper classes to live in urban centres.

One explanation for the problem of police behaviour in the US is the kind of people who are attracted to the job. Some of them are sadistic/angry/power-hungry bullies, who want the job so they can act on those impulses; and because of the code that you never tell on a fellow officer, the good ones end up leaving in disgust because they can't live with watching such behaviour and not speaking up.

One way of improving the situation might be requiring psychological screening; another one would be requiring bodycams at all times.

Random aside relating to earlier in the conversation: I was today years old when I learned that Barbary corsairs were coming up the Channel and carrying off white British people as slaves as late as the sixteenth century.

Yes, the European slave trade was a real thing, many Americans seem quite unaware of it. Though they tend to know about St Patrick so I'm not sure how they square that.

In the early colonisation period of the US there were white and black indentured slaves, in fact the slave revolt in Haiti included both. Not long after that they divided them into two groups, black chattel slaves and a "free" white underclass.

So more a sort of original sin.

Spiced up with a good bit of Catholic guilt.

And the un-baptised are heading for Limbo?

areomagazine.com/2019/04/25/whiteness-studies-and-the-theory-of-white-fragility-are-based-on-a-logical-fallacy/

If that is your lens, then the answer is that the police behave this way, the authorities behave this way, the police are militarised, because of some sort of psychological propensity to racism.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense of some of my experiences trying to talk to Americans about some of the shit that goes on over there arises. Any attempt to understand how this stuff happens tends to be treated as a why question, and answered with "because they're racist." It was immensely frustrating.

A poster tried to make the point that if you swapped "men" for "white people" in Bergdorf's initial comments that it would all be fine

I don't think this is strictly speaking true.

I've certainly heard some women propose that men are born sexist; they're not. They're born into sexism. There's a difference. Equally, in America everyone is born into racism because it's endemic among their culture.

There's a difference between men/women and white/black though, in that white skin does not confer an inherent physical advantage; the advantage arises because of what skin colour means in a racist society. Thanks to sexual dimorphism, being male does confer an inherent physical advantage, and sociocultural wossnames permit and encourage men to capitalise on that advantage. So while there's merit in the comparison, it's not a perfect fit.

And yes, I do object when I hear women saying all males are born sexist. Our sons and brothers are not born this way; we (collectively) make them this way.

Random aside relating to earlier in the conversation: I was today years old when I learned that Barbary corsairs were coming up the Channel and carrying off white British people as slaves as late as the sixteenth century. The Americans did for them in the end, when the slavers started going after American ships. I gather they were fairly thorough about it too.

I think it translates fine, but it requires both being very careful with the theory, and also understanding how it does and does not apply to non-class situations. Otherwise it's kind of like a machine gun going off with no one controlling it.

I also think viewing racism as
intrinsic to white people (or sexism as intrinsic to men) is a defeatist attitude that doesn't allow the possibility of change

A poster tried to make the point that if you swapped "men" for "white people" in Bergdorf's initial comments that it would all be fine and no-one would have a problem with what she said as it's simply "class analysis" of men being the oppressor class and that all men benefit. A couple of people mentioned that no, it wasn't any better.

FWR loves "class analysis" but it's a very blunt instrument and I don't think one that translates terribly well to the real world.

Am I the only one who is hearing echoes of Calvinism and predestination, where essentially you were born saved, or born a sinner because God determined it.

Well, the first requirement in this particular way of thinking is to admit your fault. How one can be redeemed is less clear - it seems that it may not be possible.

Not too different from Calvinism all round, really.

In those cases where demonstration has moved more towards riot, it's been because the police are so heavy handed and so militarized that they've pushed things in that direction.

This is a really interesting topic that Reed discusses as a problem with looking at police brutality only or even mainly through the lens of race. If that is your lens, then the answer is that the police behave this way, the authorities behave this way, the police are militarised, because of some sort of psychological propensity to racism. Even in places where the police are highly integrated, or where the city government is mostly non-white.

Which is clearly an impoverished answer and gives us zero to work with to change the situation.

To be fair I don't think that's what Bergdorf was trying to say. What was said was basically "they don't learn racism, they (describes the process by which children learn societal attitudes using as many words as possible and trying desperately to sound deep)". Judith Butler would be proud.

I am struggling with the idea that white people have racism built into their DNA.

Am I the only one who is hearing echoes of Calvinism and predestination, where essentially you were born saved, or born a sinner because God determined it.

I suspect MB is not a wee free, or even a wee wee free.

[quote RoyalCorgi]This is a very good article (I don't think it's already been posted) about why racism in Britain is different from racism in America. (The writer is British-Nigerian.) It doesn't say that British racism doesn't exist, simply that it's different and we need to be alert to that and not draw inaccurate comparisons:

unherd.com/2020/06/british-and-american-black-experience-are-not-the-same/[/quote]
That's a really good article. Thanks for sharing!

I have not come across Ralph Leonard before. Some of his other articles were interesting too.

unherd.com/2018/10/clr-james-rejected-posturing-identity-politics/

unherd.com/2018/12/the-best-weapon-against-hate-speech-is-free-speech/

This is in fact racist, because it presumes that the full range of human behavioural capacities are the province of white people, and that people of ethnic minorities are essentially cardboard cutouts rather than fully three-dimensional individual human beings.

If you wanted a good argument in favour of the horseshoe theory this is it. The far right believe black people to be subhuman and lacking in the qualities present in white people, but apparently so do large sections of lefty progressives, they just phrase it differently.

I can’t think of many nations who don’t have some other nation/race that they look down on/consider ‘less than’ themselves.

And the thing is that even under the racism is prejudice plus power definition you still end up with people who're not white being able to be racist. My best friend is Japanese and will openly admit that the Japanese right wing is virulently racist, mostly towards other Asian people, particularly Koreans. Japan colonized Korea, so it's pretty hard to argue that that's not prejudice plus power that's going on there.

DS (mixed origin) has had a little bit at school - by Indian and Chinese born children.

Deleted for quoting Pratchett? That's a first. Though I can see how those not familiar with the the canon might have misinterpreted.

But how is it hypocritical on the one hand to say the support BLM, and on the other to not support MB's statements that all white people are racist in their DNA?

It's not hypocritical.

The Left has a problem with putting oppressed minorities (except women, naturally) on a pedestal. Championing their rights is good, but if it's a minority we don't actually have much personal experience of, we have a habit of assuming every member of that group is a saint.

I would suggest that those who think L'Oreal's position as outlined here by Goose is hypocritical, are working on the assumption that in order to support BLM one must elevate everyone covered by that B and not hold them to the same standards of civilised discourse expected of everyone else.

This is in fact racist, because it presumes that the full range of human behavioural capacities are the province of white people, and that people of ethnic minorities are essentially cardboard cutouts rather than fully three-dimensional individual human beings.

Perhaps I should have found a more obvious quote from Jingo, in which Vimes comes up against this cognitive dissonance within himself.

Interesting article.
I actually think housing policy and the cost of housing in general affects the British experience of race relations. In expensive areas like London "white flight" just isn't possible to the same extent as in the USA, either for middle class or working class. You can't "other" people effectively if they are your next door neighbours or in your class at school or football team. In areas with cheap housing, like big Northern cities, housing can end up segregated because its easier for people to move but that situation also has different cultural drivers in the mix.

I have lived in Asia. I can say with complete confidence that racism exists in Asia. I have also observed racism amongst people from Africa, and indeed amongst Europeans: Jews, Romanies.

Racism needs to be addressed. Assuming though that it is just white and black is simplistic.

This is a very good article (I don't think it's already been posted) about why racism in Britain is different from racism in America. (The writer is British-Nigerian.) It doesn't say that British racism doesn't exist, simply that it's different and we need to be alert to that and not draw inaccurate comparisons:

unherd.com/2020/06/british-and-american-black-experience-are-not-the-same/

Britain certainly has issues with racism, but viewing them through an American filter can be distorting. I suspect for example that while people of Asian and Afro-Carribean origin both experience racism in the UK, it's worse for Asians due to perceived religious and cultural differences.

I also think viewing racism as
intrinsic to white people (or sexism as intrinsic to men) is a defeatist attitude that doesn't allow the possibility of change.

Any recommendations for writers covering race from a specifically British or European framework?

I am naturally rather sceptical about any kind of cultural , political, sociological theory, because theories are just that theories, not impirical scientific truths and if people are struggling to understand or accept them it is not always because those who don't get it are ignorant it's sometimes because the theory has been developed in a particular time and place and doesn't actually make as much sense in a universal context. If that's the case, no matter how often you repeat it, you will never make it stick and people will fail to "get it" regardless of how much truth it contains or how much it makes sense to a section of the population. People and populations don't fit neatly into boxes and attempts to make them fit lead to frustration.
Theories dont always overlap neatly either, as illustrated by MBs hypocrisy about sexism/feminism.
I admit I have not waded through any books about critical race theory, i probably would if I was a student, but what I have read about white supremacy and white fragility leave out too much about the class system to work in a UK context, either historically or contemporaneously.
To me it's still very much a work in progress and therefore discussion should be encouraged not disallowed.

That clip does work in the UK for me Kittens and I plan to watch it tonight. Thank you for posting it and please don't ever apologise for the length of your posts. Which are always top.

A great post kitten.

We were shocked by the black/white divide when we made a short trip to Milwaukee a few months back. We visited two restaurants 5 blocks apart, both with good reviews. One was BBQ and all white. I think a black person, even with a British accent would have felt very uncomfortable. The other was soul food. We were the only white people there and everyone stared when we entered. Attitudes changed as soon as we spoke, and people were really welcoming.

The US is very different. Which does not mean that we don't have anything to learn.