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

The point is using minority groups in history such as There were quite sizeable black populations in London and many of the port cities from the late 18th century onwards, albeit still smaller minorities in percentage terms than now. is missing where the vast majority of people with black bodies were in the countries which Britain founded and had very deep economic ties to and still do. Noone is denying the diversity in British history but to not talk about the macro movements is much more of a whitewashing. Some black people within the USA were always free and there were free towns of colour even in the South but noone would seriously use them as examples of American and British race relations for the majority of what black people experienced.

@TangibleTuTu
BLM was an specific response to a specific American context. If you are actually in America, presumably you are clearly aware of the significant differences between policing in the UK and policing in the US. To suggest there is a legitimate comparison between the two is deeply disingenuous. I think your post is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the origins of BLM. And why its Tranatlantic journey strips it of much of its original meaning.

We seem to be talking past each other Tangible. Though I'd argue that the "we didn't have to worry about race relations because we were ethnically homogeneous till the late 20th century" view (not saying you espouse it, but many people do seem to) is in itself a white-washing of history. There were quite sizeable black populations in London and many of the port cities from the late 18th century onwards, albeit still smaller minorities in percentage terms than now.

Apologies,Bovary,I was responding toTangiblesaying "if only Brits knew what I knew having moved to America.

That is not what I said but I am on this side of the Atlantic and there is often a self-righteousness on MN without acknowledging not just the slave trade but American society itself was created from English colonies and continued British and European immigration. Where does policing of black people's bodies come from? 400 plus years of oppression. We know there was not a significant population of people of African descent in the UK until late in the 20th century so acting as if the UK is so enlightened when overseas British colonists were creating all white armies and police for the majority of modern history is disingenuous.

There is a whole group of conservative black American writers who talk about police violence, I am not seeing them being posted about. There is a whole group of leftist black American writers, I am not seeing them being posted about.

Would you be able to recommend some of them please, Goosefoot?
I'd be interested in reading some blogs or articles that are not from the Critical Race Theory angle.

I think it would be great if there were public debates between the conservative black American group vs the CRT group.
I've always wanted to see more diversity of opinion within minority groups expressed publicly, open disagreements and discussions.

I watched a clip of a UK programme a few months ago. Think it was the Big Questions or something like that. I can't remember the topic - might have been along the lines of Is Britain a racist country..... there were two black men in the audience.
One was a US academic who moved to the UK and was definitely in the CRT camp by the way he was talking about the subject of race. The other man was of mixed race heritage... I can't recollect which African country his father was from... I think his mum might have been Polish. And he had some very interesting and different viewpoints from the first guy. It was so refreshing to see diversity of opinion and disagreement instead of the standard tropes around the 'black community' as if they all agree on a certain perspective.
There's a similar pigeon holing with terms like South Asian community, Muslim community, LGBT community etc. It's so simplistic and infantile and doesn't allow the variety of opinions to shine through.

immigrationtounitedstates.org/393-british-immigrants.html

Slavery is barely mentioned in this link except here:
In 1689, the British population of New England was about 80,000. The middle colonies had some 40,000 immigrants, not all of whom were British; and the southern colonies more than 80,000. By 1760, immigrant numbers had increased to some 165,000 in Virginia alone, plus some 150,000 African slaves. Other colonies saw similar increases

It skirts around the South and focuses on New England. Just as many place names in the South are from the British Isles and English laws, language, culture were all imported including the class system in many colonies. You can quibble over numbers while refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room, people of British descent and newly arrived British were directly involved in creating the structures of enslavement.

Apologies, Bovary, I was responding to Tangible saying "if only Brits knew what I knew having moved to America."

As for collective guilt - no, I don't buy into that. But I do buy into the idea that reparations are arguably due. When you look at the legacy of the British corner of the triangular trade in cities like Bristol, with disproportionate numbers of its black population in the poor areas, and huge amounts of inherited wealth still in the hands of people whose wealth was first made in the slave trade, I certainly wonder whether anyone in British politics has ever "tried hard enough." For instance, in the immediate aftermath of abolition, all British slave owners were given government compensation for having owned slaves. No compensation was given to the people formerly enslaved.

Of course people aren't responsible for events that happened centuries ago. But they are responsible for taking the time and effort to learn the historical context to our present day inequalities before they sound off about things like race riots (for instance, on one of the AIBU threads, the one discussing Trump's tweeting of the quotation "when the looting starts the shooting starts" there are dozens of posters prepared to say "sounds fair enough to me" without actually taking the time to look into the origin of the phrase, or even continuing to defend its use once its origin has been explained to them).

We're not all ignorant of our ancestors' role in this

@CaraDune

Speak for yourself. Don't make assumptions about the ethnic background of other posters. By the way, your belief in collective guilt? That people are responsible for historical events they never participated in which happened centuries ago? How very progressive....

Next stop, how the slave trade destabilised Africa making European colonisation possible, and how we (collective we, Europeans) fucked Africa over in a big way, and how a lot of the political instability there now is a legacy of colonialism.

We're not all ignorant of our ancestors' role in this.

the number one place new immigrants came to the South from between 1900 and 1950 was the UK
That may include Irish immigrants until 1922 - it's worth checking out, for accuracy's sake.

@TangibleTuTu

My post is about the significant difference between US and UK policing. It is not comparable. To suggest otherwise requires industrial quantities of false equivalence.

Quite. BLM was created as a response to the specific context of the US' racial history and its policing.

Yes, but I think it's important to realise it is not thesrefore necessarily the only way to think about race in America, either.

I would argue that the reason they are so unable to understand that there are differences in how race operates in other settings is very much because of their own ideology. It's not that they just mistakenly assume that other places have a similar history, according to the ideology they have developed, that must be true.

They are race essentialists. The idea that racism against dark skinned people is in the DNA of white people is not really a metaphor for them.

As a Brit living in the USA for 24 years may I remind you that the USA was built on British Colonies, that the White Supremacy and race relations that you accuse Americans of was imported directly from Europe and very much from the UK. Even the Quakers (English in orgin) had slaves until they had a change of heart. All those White people in the Deep South that introduced the Black Codes and Jim Crow to keep Black people in indentured servitude for another 100 years after the Civil War, were of majority British descent. And British people didn't just emigrate hundreds of years ago, British immigrants came in large and steady numbers all the way until the 1950s into the USA. The number one place new immigrants to the American South came from 1900-1950 was the UK. The history of our two countries are different but let's disabuse anyone of the notion that the British were not deeply involved in the development of and directly benefited from, the slave trade in North America, before and after the creation of the USA.

Sorry only read the first page. The discussion seems to have moved on!

I can't abide MB but I agree with her on this issue. The backlash is just the race equivalent of 'not all men'

There was no point in getting involved

Dido, I think many people come to the same conclusion. Because if you challenge any of this, there is just a torrent of abuse. Antifa may well be instrumental in getting Trump reelected.

I'm hoping this was in a context of trying to get better at not offending anyone by assuming everyone from that area of the world is Chinese.

Nope, just general making chit chat as they passed through various areas of town. "Online" America may be very vocal, er, online, but I didn't find it was representative of real life. Much like anywhere!

It's kind of like how many Americans will never get our concept of class and how pervasive it is. Obviously we have racism here, massively, and there will be lots of common factors, but culturally it has a great many differences to an American experience.

On the other hand, that's just my single experience as a non-BAME person!

Meanwhile, there are Brits on this forum actuallydefendingthe violent looters who are smashing up Manhattan and chucking petrol bombs at cops. Many of these are white Anfifa thugs

There is a thread in AIBU where someone was going on about how awful it was to be opposed to Antifa because it's anti- fascist organisation and how can anyone oppose that? "Antifa" is apparently no different from what her grandfather was fighting for in WWII. There was no point in getting involved.

I'm feeling this too. A lot of doubleplusgood talk from people who are mostly white and mostly live in Europe

Quite. BLM was created as a response to the specific context of the US' racial history and its policing. There is zero equivalence between the UK and the US in the context of police. At the same time as George Floyd was being killed in the US, there was yet another massacre in Burkina Faso. Scores of poor people have died in Burkina Faso during a sequence of attacks in 2020 in an ongoing insurgency. Why are people in the UK focusing on the former and ignoring the latter? Meanwhile, there are Brits on this forum actually defending the violent looters who are smashing up Manhattan and chucking petrol bombs at cops. Many of these are white Anfifa thugs. A black retired police captain has been killed trying to defend his buddy's store against looters. Yet white Brits on Mumsnet are defending behaviour which is destroying black property and businesses. Obama correctly described looters as thugs and criminals back in 2015. Antifa's involvement in this will increase support for Trump. There is a simplistic, Manichean narrative in which 'racism' is limited to the West and the sectarian, racist realities for millions in the world beyond the West are completely ignored. I don't know what the intention is of some of these abusive, inflammatory posts, but it sure as hell isn't to educate anyone about racism.

how you could e.g. tell Chinese from Japanese origin people.

I'm hoping this was in a context of trying to get better at not offending anyone by assuming everyone from that area of the world is Chinese.

Do they also talk about how to distinguish between different "white" groups? I've only experienced Americans online - and only really communicated with 'liberal' ones at that - but they've shown a distinct unwillingness to accept that white Europeans aren't all one homogeneous mass.

*context, not 'correct'

... so I have since assumed it is that kind of thing ppl are fighting against - whether it has its place or not.

It's yet another of those things that drives me mad about the dominance of the American narrative. I'm supposed to not notice that there are slight differences amongst features that give clues to the general geographic location one's recent ancestors lived in, because white Americans think that's racist.

That's interesting because my experience is the opposite. I've spent time in a lefty US city and some Americans I met in a semi- professional correct were talking about exactly that and how you could e.g. tell Chinese from Japanese origin people. All very politely but it definitely shocked my English sensibilities to hear it. This was a few years ago but talking "matter of fact-ly" about race was extremely common. Even in schoolkids.

It has some relation to ethnicity which is a real if difficult to pin down thing.

Not helped by the fact that attempts to pin it down open one up to accusations of being racist.

It's yet another of those things that drives me mad about the dominance of the American narrative. I'm supposed to not notice that there are slight differences amongst features that give clues to the general geographic location one's recent ancestors lived in, because white Americans think that's racist.

Those same white Americans are the ones who tell us off for cultural imperialism etc when we care about the injustices faced by our sisters of colour in other cultures, and accuse us of trying to impose our colonial narratives on other cultures.

There's some very hypocritical projection going on there, and I fail to see why I should be expected to champion the rights of my English-speaking black sisters while turning a blind eye to the systemic denial of women's rights when the recipients don't speak my language.

Sorry, I may be ranting slightly.

The phrase "educate yourself" comes up again and again.

Mm. I'd quite like to do this. But when it comes to book recommendations I'd like to know a bit more about any given author than simply their skin colour. Because I'm going in blind here, and it strikes me as a bloody stupid (and racist) idea to assume all black political writers hang around the same point of the political spectrum, and I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking "this author's black so their interpretation is the obviously correct one".