to feel bad about not acknowledging the George Floyd murder to my employee this morning?

[user47000000000]

One of the girls who works for me happens to be black. I happen to be white. This is only relevant in context of this situation.

We have a great professional relationship and whilst we aren't friends outside work I know I have been a support to her with some personal things and with her professional development.

This morning I asked how her wkend was and she was very flat. I sensed something was wrong and asked her if she was alright, again she was flat and said she didn't really do anything. Her DH is a frontline worker and we have talked lots about her anxieties with this and how she finds it hard to relax so I thought "she clearly doesn't want to talk to me but is clearly not happy" so I said "well I hope you managed to get some down time to relax" to which she replied "well its hard to do that with everything that's been going on this weekend in the world".

I then twigged.

We had a very brief, awkward moment and then just talked about work. She didn't address it directly and neither did I.

At the end of the call I said "Look, I'm sorry if I was insensitive earlier". and she said "don't worry, everyone's the same".

I feel awful as I have obviously been outraged, saddened, angry about everything that's happened and have thought about it loads, what I can do, whether I'm raising my children in a way which fights injustice etc etc but I didn't think to mention it this morning. so is this white privilege? I feel awful.

OP I think it's easy to misstep here and I think the fact that you are questioning what you can do to be supportive is the right thing in itself. I'm the furthest thing from woke you can imagine but I'm reading and researching how to be a real ally and do something genuinely supportive and not tokenisitc. So I think we are all due to learn, you sound as if if you want to be a real support and if she knows you she will appreciate that.

For pp equating it to white women dying , this is truly disgusting. I'm not a drum banger in the slightest but the fact that you use your endemic privilege to try to deflect the issue to gain your own standing is beyond offensive.

If a white woman was killed in public by a police officer in the middle of the day , the world would have gone far more nuts than it already has. This is not a fair equation. We dont lose our damn live because we have white skin , what do you think fucking happens when a black woman is murdered? A lot less than a white woman. Its wrong on so many levels and to try to jump onto this for a fake feminist agenda makes me feel truly sick and reminds me why I avoid the militant feminists ...they do more damage to feminism than anything else.

I imagine @HugoAvril is referencing the other minority populations of SA.

Which is an unfair way to drag them into their ludicrous interpretation of George Floyd's death. A decent person would see victimisation of their own race as part of the single problem to be solved - race conflict - not as a reason to increase race hatred.

No, it's not straightforward - but it's made ten times more difficult when people compete over the pain they are in.

I get your uncertainty OP, and I do think it is white privilege, that in general white people aren't affected to a huge degree by structural racism.
I don't know what to do about it either, I live in a rural part of the country which is overwhelmingly white, I have very few friends of BAME background and the last thing I would feel comfortable doing, or even think was appropriate, would be to 'check in' on them.
Same with the token social media posts.
So it's the ballot box for me, and expressing a desire for an end to racism directly to my political representatives.

Sounds like your colleague is being over sensitive tbh.

Does she tiptoe round you every time a white woman is murdered?

🙄

No wonder she was feeling flat.

No, it's not straightforward - but it's made ten times more difficult when people compete over the pain they are in.

^This. Why even do that? It appears to me that it's an attempt to change the subject because it makes them feel uncomfortable when we're faced with the truth that racism hasn't gone away at all.

I think we can all safely assume there are lots of reasons to be upset right now
But she did say specifically 'its hard to do that with everything that's been going on this weekend in the world.'

Not sure why you’d give it a second thought

Nice.

Do your male colleagues acknowledge every women that has been murdered to you ?

This. Precisely.

Of course we care. We all care. But this 'movement' to make it women's fault somehow is really disturbing.

This. Why even do that? It appears to me that it's an attempt to change the subject because it makes them feel uncomfortable when we're faced with the truth that racism hasn't gone away at all.

It's actually really common for any class of victim to be more sensitive to 'competition' of suffering. I conducted a comparative research project on post-genocide communal reconciliation, and there were a lot of academics belonging to victim communities who wouldn't even contemplate talking to me when I was researching the differing methods of reconciliation strategies, because how could I compare Armenia to Rwanda to the Holocaust etc.

Ironically it was a lot easier to find contributions from academics whose background was on the side of the perpetrators.

What?

The only people who are entitled to special treatment following this tragedy are George Floyd's family.

Assuming every black person will need a softly softly approach after what happened is discrimination. Every decent person should be equally outraged.

If she came to you to talk about it, that would be very different.

White people have not been bullied, forced to be slaves and had their basic rights stripped away from them.

What are you talking about? White slaves were common in the Roman and Ottoman empires. As early as 590 Bede records Pope Gregory the Great seeing some fair-haired and fair-skinned slaves in a slave market in Italy.

As far as I can see she isn't discriminated against.

White privilege in a nutshell. There is much that you probably don't see.

I don't actually think you've done anything wrong in the conversation with your employee. But if your attitude is that a black woman does not face discrimination in her daily life, then I would suggest that you lack awareness of reality. And that may be glaringly obvious to your employee.

I feel it would have been highly patronising to "sympathise" with the woman at work op.

Why all the hostility to hugoavril? She makes a highly valid point albeit in a blunt manner. The msm is highly selective in which stories they give air time to, and the plight of whites in South Africa and Zimbabwe is certainly not one of them. It seems only a very narrow range of views is acceptable on mn.

@Boogiewoogietoo

White people have not been bullied, forced to be slaves and had their basic rights stripped away from them.

What are you talking about? White slaves were common in the Roman and Ottoman empires. As early as 590 Bede records Pope Gregory the Great seeing some fair-haired and fair-skinned slaves in a slave market in Italy.

Oh so are you saying black people forced white people to be slaves? Because that would be the only way you could compare the two. Get a grip!!

@WhatCFeryIsThis

What?

The only people who are entitled to special treatment following this tragedy are George Floyd's family.

Assuming every black person will need a softly softly approach after what happened is discrimination. Every decent person should be equally outraged.

If she came to you to talk about it, that would be very different.

Yes every decent person should be outraged but as a white woman I don't have the fear that someone black has that it could happen to them.

It is truly abhorrent what happened but although I have feelings of disgust etc I will never know what it is like to be in that position.

We are all too quick to say how it is the same for everyone. It isn't. Equality isn't treating everyone the same it is about giving everyone the same opportunities .

@thecatsthecats

Actually, you make a very good point. My F grew up in Prague during the Second World War and his family really suffered at the hands of the Nazis. His father was shot for being in the Czech resistance and his uncle died in a concentration camp.

(Slavs were victimised by the Nazis and there were many in concentration camp. So you shouldn't generalise too much about whites never having faced persecution and victimisation, admittedly those doing the victimising were also white.)

You would expect someone like that to have compassion, but not a bit of it. He was misogynistic and homophobic and was a very bitter man. And he was emotionally abusive and controlling towards my DM and my siblings and me and sexually abusive towards my DSis and me.

@MagentaRocks well as a POC my concerns about how safe I feel are based on the country I live in, the UK. I don't have any right to start moping around at work because the police in Minnesota are so corrupt. I can petition and continue to make sure all the right voices are heard for the sake of the victims. If somebody took me to one side tomorrow and said 'how do you feel after George Floyd', I'd be livid. I'm not part of an endangered species, I'm an individual with my own concerns and feelings.

She is not being oversensitive, it's completely understandable that she would be upset when a person is killed because of a characteristic that she also shares. If she did mean the killing of George Floyd.

It also won't feel like something that happened around the other side of the world because social media surrounds us and brings it all to us. Into our consciousness and into our homes. How is that not personal?

If you think she is still upset you could ask her to be specific about what has upset her and ask if there is anything you can do 1) to support her and 2) is there anything your organisation can do to support her and other BAME employees. Is there a BAME employee group in your organisation? If not could you facilitate the establishment of one?

Meant to say, after re reading, BAME support offered only if she is indeed upset about racism related issues.

[quote WhatCFeryIsThis]@MagentaRocks well as a POC my concerns about how safe I feel are based on the country I live in, the UK. I don't have any right to start moping around at work because the police in Minnesota are so corrupt. I can petition and continue to make sure all the right voices are heard for the sake of the victims. If somebody took me to one side tomorrow and said 'how do you feel after George Floyd', I'd be livid. I'm not part of an endangered species, I'm an individual with my own concerns and feelings. [/quote]
I didn't say that the op was wrong if you look at my earlier post. The above was in response to another point. I wouldn't think to ask someone how they were feeling about what happened to someone based on their skin colour but I do think unless someone has been on the receiving end of racism they don't know how it feels and I am not just talking about overt racism.

@Mittens030869

It's not universal, though. Humans are highly complex critters.

@Boogiewoogietoo and@Forumqueen

White slavery is an interesting area of discourse.

I'm of Celtic and Viking ancestry. My Celtic ancestors were kidnapped, raped and pillaged by my Viking ones. My Celtic ones were also oppressed by the Viking ones (the Viking stuff comes in on my dad's side) - northern English ancestors oppressing my Welsh and Irish ones and being richly rewarded for it.

On top of that, layer the harrying of the north by the Normans (who, for fun, were also Vikings...). Then get to the long running thread about the North vs the South, a domination that has lasted centuries...

Wrap up to now, and no, there's no immediate ancestral pain of what my Viking ancestors did to my Celtic ones. But is there a lasting effect to this day of the suppression of the North after the fall of the old British kingdoms? Quite probably. And I get the triple whammy of being north English, Welsh and Irish. If you ignore my skintone, there's a huge difference between my socio-economic cultural background and a white person whose history is anchored in the south.

My ancestors have cross-oppressed each other. And some of them were really rather privileged (including slave owners, unfortunately).

If nothing else, it's given me an appetite for the nuance of these things...

Do we actually even know if George Floyd was killed because of his colour or if he was killed because he fell into the hands of a power riddled psychopath?

3 other officers, one Latino, one black and one Asian stood by and let this happen. I don't know why they did this but they work with the murderer and allowed it.

When someone gets raped, we never say 'they raped you because you have blue eyes'. Infact, it would be seriously insulting to say that to anyone. We always say that to murderers/rapists, victims have no face. It's about the power and control. Why isn't that the case here? Unless we have hard evidence that the police officer was racist and had an underlying hatred for black people, we can't actually say that this was carried out in the name of racism. We can say that George Floyd was a victim of police brutality and he was murdered. People seem to have taken their own view on this and instantly think because George is black and his murderer white, that it must have been a racist crime. We have no idea if this police officer has done similar things before and who he did those things too. If he has done it to an Asian person and a white person, we can't then claim it as racism and there's reports surfacing that he have infact used force and done underhanded things in the past. He was happily working with other officers of all races and seemed to have created a ring with them so that they did not step in so to me, he is a murderer, he would murder anyone if he felt like it or angry enough.

There's a huge problem with power in the police forces across the US. It does seem to be unbalanced and more directed towards black people so to me, yes there is systemic racism going on but it's not the whole problem. The whole problem seems to be that police officers, especially one's that carry guns, have too much control and too much respect. I've seen a lot of videos of police brutality, some are so bad that you could literally cry afterwards, just like this one but no one cared. None of the celebrities were putting their tuppence worth in and people were not gathering to get justice for those people.

A massive assumption has been made about the whole thing and it's gone from trying to stop rogue police officers using undue force and their authority to conceal violence and murder to a BLM movement. What will that do? The rogue officers will just get clever, they know there might be a bit more focus on them when it comes to handling black citizens so they'll just start beating up more Latino's, Asian's and white people for a while instead. It should be a movement to help everyone. We're always screaming about not forgetting about minorities and giving minorities the same justice as majorities but here everyone seems ok with only focusing on part of the problem

WhatIsLife20, I think it has a lot to do with the police officer being charged with only 3rd-degree murder and manslaughter.

PS I do think you make very good points about the wider issue.