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Can white people ever experience racism?

692 replies

LittleRedCourgettes · 05/02/2021 09:14

Following a discussion on this topic with some students, I was reading this article and am interested to hear your honest thoughts on this question.....

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/wherediddwegetttheideaathatonlyywhitepeopleecanbeeracist

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PlanDeRaccordement · 08/02/2021 21:58

@Blackberrycream
I’m sure your son would be a great addition to the Met. Change sticks when it comes from within. I don’t blame you for being nervous. The police in U.K., while not as racist as the US police, still have problems with racism in the ranks, as well as increasing levels of violence and brutality.

Blackberrycream · 08/02/2021 22:17

The Independent reported on it recently ( March 2020) The data is from The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is probably why it is being quoted in government discussions.
Sorry I don’t know how to link which is a bit embarrassing.
@PlanDeRaccordement. Thanks

Flaxmeadow · 08/02/2021 22:31

But they have their own indigenous languages. There is Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish dialects of Gaelic. Just because the majority speak the language of colonisers doesn’t mean they’re the same ethnicity. Surely you can understand that much

Half of Europe spoke these languages, including the area now known as England. What do you mean by colonisers? The Normans?

Have to agree to disagree. There are definitely ethnic groups existing today descended from Celtic tribes as much as today’s Scandinavians are recognised as a a distinct ethnic group. And race includes different ethnicities

I agree but you seem to be under the impression that the English are not descended from Celtic tribes as well. They are and this is my whole point

Yes the name Celt is a modern term to describe the tribes that lived in Western Europe when the Romans invaded. This is because they went by tribal names and all that was recorded name wise are what the Romans called them (the Pictii), not what they called themselves. The Celts had no written tradition, only oral through their druids and barfs

I think you meant to say bards? It's just auto corrected it as barfs for me too Grin

Yes the Roman's recorded Celtic tribes when they came to Britain

Which the conquering Romans massacred methodically. Separating these tribes from their own history and identity.

The Roman's did not specifically set out to massacre them. They established garrison towns and gave some tribal leaders local governance. Some more cooperative than others

But the fact that recent historians call these peoples Celts doesn’t mean they never existed and never had shared culture or ethnicity.

I'm not saying they never existed, I'm saying it is not an ethnicity. It is a time period and language branch. It isn't clear whether it was a spread of people or a spread of culture. The Roman's spread their culture but not all Europeans under Roman culture and rule were actual Roman's. Far from it

It certainly doesn’t mean that the Britons in Britain from 500 BC to 500 AD were the same people as the invading Anglo Saxons.

The Anglo Saxons did not replace the Britains. They invaded, just as the Roman's had invaded and the Vikings and Normans would after them. But the people remained the same. This was one of the findings of the DNA study I linked but had already been suspected. That all these invading forces, conquerors bringing language and culture if you like, left so little DNA trace in the people. Maybe in some places, East Anglia for example, they left more but as a whole not so much

And how could they be? Different language, different cultures, different ancestors, different religion.

Well yes but, apart from ancestors, these are nothing to do with the common man's ethnicity. Rome ruled Britain for 400 years, everything changed, culture, language, religion etc, but the people just plodded along in the fields the same. They were not massacred, but subdued

I said: “Culture and ethnicity go hand in hand. It’s ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.”

Not necessarily and especially not if the new culture is better for people. Architecture, roads, military, laws, weaponary and metal work, pots, farming. This is how Celtic culture is thought to have spread from central Europe. Possibly near Austria area? It was not a race, it was a new way of doing things

You’ve lost me here because an Anglo Saxon style burial is not Christian style at all. Look up Sutton Hoo. That’s an Anglo Saxon burial. And the archaeologists do know the difference between a burial that is Anglo Saxon or Briton or Roman or medieval and would not be led astray by the presence of goods gotten through trade from other cultures.

Yes but that was not my point and they were already becoming Christanised anyway. But there is no evidence of replacement of the people by Anglo Saxons, in burials, even before DNA. My point is, just because a burial is of the style of a time, it does not follow that we can know the ethnic origin of the person buried. DNA studies of Anglo Saxon style/ era burials show that many of those buried were not AS but rather people whose ancestors were pre AS arrival

It isn't clear if Sutton Hoo actually was a burial mound. There are no remains

Sorry but I disagree that there is no difference in culture between Irish and English. I am sure some Irish and English posters would be happy to explain that they are not identical carbon copies. It ridiculous for you to say that given the fact the English attempted to genocide the Irish not once but twice in the past 400yrs.

I didn't say they are carbon copies. I said the culture is the same. What is the difference?
Which genocides are those?

Not exactly. Religious intolerance did exist. So Irish catholics were treated worse than the Irish Protestants, but similarly all Irish were treated worse than all English regardless of religion.

I'm not sure how true this is and people changed religious denominations all the time, across the British Isles. There are still many English Catholics. Some Irish became Methodists ot other Nonconformists. Protestant was Nonconformist. The Church of England is a reformed Catholic church. Its complicated

It’s just not true that ethnicity played no part in how the Irish were treated by the English.

Who do you mean when you say "the English"? Do you mean the government and what example?

Sorry if the quotes are in the wrong order. I'm on a phone . Thankyou for your replies. Interesting

Greenevalley · 08/02/2021 22:47

My dsis worked in the tax office in Scotland for few years.
She was bullied for being English constantly. Everytime she complained they moved her rather than the aggressors. It was always subtle though.
And even if a bully wasn't particularly liked if they were Scottish then my dsis became the enemy.
Eventually her mental health couldn't take it any longer and she left.
I don't know if its racism but its not right.

HmmSureJan · 08/02/2021 22:47

I don't believe that systemic racism is a real problem in the UK. I would agree that there can be and is racism on an individual level.

I agree. I do think it is more of an issue in the US though and that there seems to be some kind of push for us to believe that our two countries/societies are approaching and have historically approached race relations and racism in the exact same way, which we have not, and therefore we have the same systemic, 'rotten to the core' problems. Of course it follows that we must then carry out the activism supposedly necessary to counter these issues in the same way. I think many people believed this when the ideas were fresher, certainly it was all over this site for a time, and this discussion was near impossible to have.

HmmSureJan · 08/02/2021 22:52

@Blackberrycream

Funnily enough my son wanted to join the police too. He's autistic though and various other additional needs so it's not a possibility for him sadly. I'm hoping he could find some way to work for them in a civilian capacity as he has the perfect nature for it, very methodical and very strong moral code and sense of justice (not social Wink). I hope your son goes for it and makes it.

Hettya · 08/02/2021 23:04

HmmSureJan I agree. 💯 Good post.

Blackberrycream · 08/02/2021 23:09

@HmmSureJan
Good luck to your son too. I hope he finds the role that suits him.

Afromeg · 09/02/2021 05:18

Aww this has surprisingly ended on a lovely note. @Blackberrycream and @HmmSureJan I wish your sons the best and hope they're happy in what they choose.Smile

PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 05:26

@Flaxmeadow

But they have their own indigenous languages. There is Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish dialects of Gaelic. Just because the majority speak the language of colonisers doesn’t mean they’re the same ethnicity. Surely you can understand that much

Half of Europe spoke these languages, including the area now known as England. What do you mean by colonisers? The Normans?

Have to agree to disagree. There are definitely ethnic groups existing today descended from Celtic tribes as much as today’s Scandinavians are recognised as a a distinct ethnic group. And race includes different ethnicities

I agree but you seem to be under the impression that the English are not descended from Celtic tribes as well. They are and this is my whole point

Yes the name Celt is a modern term to describe the tribes that lived in Western Europe when the Romans invaded. This is because they went by tribal names and all that was recorded name wise are what the Romans called them (the Pictii), not what they called themselves. The Celts had no written tradition, only oral through their druids and barfs

I think you meant to say bards? It's just auto corrected it as barfs for me too Grin

Yes the Roman's recorded Celtic tribes when they came to Britain

Which the conquering Romans massacred methodically. Separating these tribes from their own history and identity.

The Roman's did not specifically set out to massacre them. They established garrison towns and gave some tribal leaders local governance. Some more cooperative than others

But the fact that recent historians call these peoples Celts doesn’t mean they never existed and never had shared culture or ethnicity.

I'm not saying they never existed, I'm saying it is not an ethnicity. It is a time period and language branch. It isn't clear whether it was a spread of people or a spread of culture. The Roman's spread their culture but not all Europeans under Roman culture and rule were actual Roman's. Far from it

It certainly doesn’t mean that the Britons in Britain from 500 BC to 500 AD were the same people as the invading Anglo Saxons.

The Anglo Saxons did not replace the Britains. They invaded, just as the Roman's had invaded and the Vikings and Normans would after them. But the people remained the same. This was one of the findings of the DNA study I linked but had already been suspected. That all these invading forces, conquerors bringing language and culture if you like, left so little DNA trace in the people. Maybe in some places, East Anglia for example, they left more but as a whole not so much

And how could they be? Different language, different cultures, different ancestors, different religion.

Well yes but, apart from ancestors, these are nothing to do with the common man's ethnicity. Rome ruled Britain for 400 years, everything changed, culture, language, religion etc, but the people just plodded along in the fields the same. They were not massacred, but subdued

I said: “Culture and ethnicity go hand in hand. It’s ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.”

Not necessarily and especially not if the new culture is better for people. Architecture, roads, military, laws, weaponary and metal work, pots, farming. This is how Celtic culture is thought to have spread from central Europe. Possibly near Austria area? It was not a race, it was a new way of doing things

You’ve lost me here because an Anglo Saxon style burial is not Christian style at all. Look up Sutton Hoo. That’s an Anglo Saxon burial. And the archaeologists do know the difference between a burial that is Anglo Saxon or Briton or Roman or medieval and would not be led astray by the presence of goods gotten through trade from other cultures.

Yes but that was not my point and they were already becoming Christanised anyway. But there is no evidence of replacement of the people by Anglo Saxons, in burials, even before DNA. My point is, just because a burial is of the style of a time, it does not follow that we can know the ethnic origin of the person buried. DNA studies of Anglo Saxon style/ era burials show that many of those buried were not AS but rather people whose ancestors were pre AS arrival

It isn't clear if Sutton Hoo actually was a burial mound. There are no remains

Sorry but I disagree that there is no difference in culture between Irish and English. I am sure some Irish and English posters would be happy to explain that they are not identical carbon copies. It ridiculous for you to say that given the fact the English attempted to genocide the Irish not once but twice in the past 400yrs.

I didn't say they are carbon copies. I said the culture is the same. What is the difference?
Which genocides are those?

Not exactly. Religious intolerance did exist. So Irish catholics were treated worse than the Irish Protestants, but similarly all Irish were treated worse than all English regardless of religion.

I'm not sure how true this is and people changed religious denominations all the time, across the British Isles. There are still many English Catholics. Some Irish became Methodists ot other Nonconformists. Protestant was Nonconformist. The Church of England is a reformed Catholic church. Its complicated

It’s just not true that ethnicity played no part in how the Irish were treated by the English.

Who do you mean when you say "the English"? Do you mean the government and what example?

Sorry if the quotes are in the wrong order. I'm on a phone . Thankyou for your replies. Interesting

Thanks for replies. I think part of problem is we are jumping about in over a thousand years of history so I will put in dates so we can be sure when we are referring to. :) your statement make more sense now you’ve expanded ie mentioning Methodist churches which didn’t even start sprinting up until the mid1800s.

-what I mean by Roman massacres were specifically of the Bards and Druids of the Britons. Not the regular people, although several tribes like the Ordovices were “exterminated” (Tacitus words not mine). Both were keepers of the religion, history and identity of the British tribes. They underwent formal training and learned it all orally. Their centre of learning was the sacred island of Anglesey of the coast of Wales. The Romans knew this and thought a good way to subdue the regular people from uprisings like the one Queen Boudicca led in which she razed London to the ground, would be to kill all the Druids and Bards. This they set about and did. The survivors fled to Anglesey and in 77 AD Agricola decided to end the druids and bards once and for all to fully terrorise and subjugate the Britons. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Anglesey

  • what I mean by colonisers are the Anglo-Saxons, historically after the Romans left Britain in 410AD, the Anglo-Saxons invaded en masse by 450AD and by 500AD the indigenous Gaelic languages of lowland Britain, was replaced with Old English language and Anglo-Saxon culture. Lowland Britain became named Angle-Land, then shortened to England. The Normans also invaded but not for another five hundred years in 1066 to the last stand in Ely in 1071.
cliffehistory.co.uk/saxon_invasion.html

-The English today are a population that has intermixed Angle and Briton ancestry. Which is why their DNA is different from the DNA of people today in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall who have more Briton/Celt ancestry and very little Angle. Part of the reason why their DNA is “closer” to that in Western Europe is because many Britons fled the Anglo Saxon invasion and settled in France in Brittany which even today has its own Gaelic dialect of Breton.

-While most of the Britons in 450 AD had been Christianised by the Romans, but the invading Angles or Anglo Saxons were not converted to Christianity yet and invaded, colonised and lived in England as pagans. King Aethelberht was the first Saxon king to be baptized, in around 601 AD. The large kingdom of Mercia officially became Christian in 655 AD, following the defeat of King Penda in battle. primaryfacts.com/8118/the-anglo-saxons-and-christianity-facts-and-information/
This is 200yrs after they invaded and colonised before even one kingdom officially became Christian. I think the Christian burials you are thinking of are the ones from the 700s AD onwards in which the Anglo Saxons and the conquered Britons had been inter-marrying for a more than 250yrs. So yes, the DNA would be well and truly blended by then.

-Irish and English culture is not the same. I could put a dozen links here to differences but I think perhaps you should read up on it a bit or agree to disagree with me on this. The two genocides were: Cromwell’s invasion in 1649-1653 in which an estimated 200,000-600,000 civilians were massacred as the Army swept through cities and put all inhabitants man, woman and child to the sword. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland
The second one was the Great Famine from 1845-1852 caused by the potato blight but while the Irish had also grown corn to eat, the British overlords forcibly exported their corn, leaving the population to starve. On purpose. And 1 million starved to death and another million fled the island as refugees to the US.

-religious intolerance versus ethnic racism. I’m speaking more from older historical stand point whereas you seem to be speaking of more recent history because the time periods I’m thinking of- 1600s to 1800s.

PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 05:32

@Blackberrycream

The Independent reported on it recently ( March 2020) The data is from The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is probably why it is being quoted in government discussions. Sorry I don’t know how to link which is a bit embarrassing. *@PlanDeRaccordement*. Thanks
That is fine, you’ve given me enough to run a search for it so I can update myself. Because all I could find was 2016 studies. :)
PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 05:37

[quote HmmSureJan]@Blackberrycream

Funnily enough my son wanted to join the police too. He's autistic though and various other additional needs so it's not a possibility for him sadly. I'm hoping he could find some way to work for them in a civilian capacity as he has the perfect nature for it, very methodical and very strong moral code and sense of justice (not social Wink). I hope your son goes for it and makes it. [/quote]
They do have many staff jobs. My DH works in criminal justice and works with British police/has friends who do etc. So anyway, staff jobs exist where he’d never have to be a bobby? You know a police officer who patrols in uniform, goes out on calls, arrests people etc. These jobs include things like IT specialists who investigate business crime, fraudsters online, and so on. It’s pretty much another office job but for a constabulary and usually at their headquarters.

PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 06:14

@Blackberrycream

The Independent reported on it recently ( March 2020) The data is from The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is probably why it is being quoted in government discussions. Sorry I don’t know how to link which is a bit embarrassing. *@PlanDeRaccordement*. Thanks
@Blackberrycream

So, I found the Independent March 2020 article by Paula Allan which does state
www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-schools-gcse-level-universities-predicted-grades-a9418471.html

“A 2016 Study carried out by University College London’s Institute of Education found that just 16% of predicted A-level results are correct; only one in six university applicants will achieve the grades they were predicted. Nor is this inaccuracy distributed equally across different racial groups. 2011 research by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills found that black applicants had the lowest predicted grade accuracy, with only 39.1 per cent of predicted grades accurate, while their white counterparts had the highest, at 53 per cent. Furthermore, the study found that black students are most likely to have their grades not just mispredicted, but underpredicted.”

The 2016 study she has linked to is the exact same study I posted upthread!
www.ucu.org.uk/media/8409/Predicted-grades-accuracy-and-impact-Dec-16/pdf/Predicted_grades_report_Dec2016.pdf

She’s reported it wrong!!! According to the study, black students are most likely to be overpredicted not underpredicted.

From study:
“Finally, in Figure 5, I examine predicted grade accuracy by ethnicity. Here we can see that, among all ethnic groups, Asian and Black applicants are more likely to be severely over-predicted. White applicants are most likely of all groups to be accurate (though at similar levels to black students) and are also most likely to be slightly over-predicted.” p8 have attached figure 5. Please note the overpredict bars are on the left and underpredict bars are on the right of the chart.

On pages 9-10 they do a regression model and found that
“We can also see that, all else being equal, white applicants are most likely to be under-predicted than all other ethnic groups, and boys are less likely to be under-predicted than girls.”

Can white people ever experience racism?
PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 06:15

*Paula Akpan stupid autocorrect!

PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 06:25

So, the 2011 study she refers to is here and uses 2009 data:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/32412/11-1043-investigating-accuracy-predicted-a-level-grades.pdf

p6 “51.7% of all predictions were accurate, 41.7% of all predictions were over-predicted by at least one grade, and only 6.6% of all predicted grades were under-predicted.”

p8. “Ethnicity
 Excluding those in the Unknown ethnic group, White applicants had the highest grade prediction accuracy (53.0%) and the lowest over-prediction rate (40.4%)
 Black applicants had the lowest percentage accuracy with only 39.1% of grades accurately predicted. This group also had the highest over- and under-prediction rates (53.8% and 7.1% respectively).”
Table 14 from p25 attached

Can white people ever experience racism?
PlanDeRaccordement · 09/02/2021 06:39

So if it were 2012, and all we had was the 2011 study based in 2009 data, Paula Akpans assertion that black students would suffer the most from underprediction would be true, although slightly misleading because she omitted the fact they’d also benefit the most from over prediction as well.

Fast forward to 2020 and her assertion is demonstrably false because the 2016 data is clear- black students are most likely to be overpredicted and white students to be underpredicted. Perhaps that’s why she stopped quoting the 2016 study and transitioned into presenting the 2011 study.

That’s awful deceptive journalism to be honest. It generates divisiveness and makes people think other people are in denial. Well must head off to work now.

Hettya · 09/02/2021 09:56

PlanDeRaccordement good post, and detective work.

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