To think that if the only black adult in your family says they have experienced racism...

[Overcastcloudy]

... it's counterproductive to send a white man out to say, We're very much not racist?

That just is never going to end well. Ask Ian Murray how it worked out for him.

I couldn't care much either way about the Royal Family. Just baffled at the headline of William saying this.

Indeed it absolutely should be looked into. Harry needs to name the person, how else can it be looked into?

Name the person and make it clear exactly what was said and when and let it be investigated. Provide a written statement to the RF that they can work with and respond to.

Also sit down with M and explain how the hierarchy works and why Harry is a dwindling royal not an ascending royal. Ask her to have a chat with Princess Margaret's children on how Archie will fit into the family in the future. None of it is due to mixed race heritage. Out in open and discuss it.

Deal with their family problems would be the first step surely? As it is Archie will end up with no family on either side apart from her mum.

That would be the fair and grown up way of dealing with all of this, I agree

Why wouldn't you automatically believe someone?

Maybe because motives can sometimes be unclear, which is why I said the key point is to listen - especially on such an important subject as racism.
Certainly biases can get in the way, but surely it's through listening that we learn and can improve where necessary?

Somehow I've staggered into my 60s and only very rarely been accused of racism. The only occasions were where someone didn't get a job, the irony being that because the sector I recruited in was pretty monocultural, the successful candidate would almost invariably be of the same race as the complainer

Another example, perhaps, of unclear motives ...

@Alsohuman

Why wouldn't you automatically believe someone?

Because recent history tells us it’s unwise. Did Carl Beech pass you by?

Yes, I had to google Carl Beech. I'd honestly never even heard of him, and the first google hit came across a religious evangelical pastor. I presume that's not him. The second hit was about a Carl Beech who said he had been the victim of a paedophile ring. I presume that's the one? Not being in the UK and both of these not being reported at all where I am, I didn't know of them.

However, because ONE person falsely claimed (and we don't know that he wasn't abused as a child in some way) to be abused, doesn't mean we don't automatically believe victims who come forward. It would be a cold and sick society if one rarity caused us to automatically doubt victims of sexual abuse or of racism.

My father was a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest when he was in an orphanage. His story was corroborated by other fellow victims. When dad had been part of a class action, he got to know a fell victim who lived close to us. This other man was abused by the same priest. That was also corroborated (both dad and he got 'payouts', if you can call them that; 40 thousand dollars, most of which went to lawyers, but, anyway....). But unbeknownst to us, it was later proven this fellow victim had also gone on to abuse 2 of his daughters. We didn't find this out until much, much later.

Does the fact the guy abused his own daughter mean that he wasn't abused, himself? No, it doesn't. Abused people sometimes go on to abuse themselves.

Anyway, all that rambling aside, my point is that it is so rare to almost be non-existent that people make these false claims. Take rape. Almost no one falsely claims rape. I think the percentage is less than 2%. And at least 4 times more rapes are not reported, than are. Because less than 2% of rape claims are false, does that invalidate #MeToo ?

I don't think it does. I don't think such a rarity justifies not automatically believing someone. Because to automatically believe them is surely the default position.

Forgot to include this graph. Anyway, suffice to say I am not going to stop believing rape victims because of the 2 people at the bottom. It's not rational nor fair in a decent compassionate society, and I think only cynical people would disbelieve after some extreme rare single incident ie Carl Beech. I choose to believe victims, I choose not to let one rare case make me turn against victims. What you choose, is up to you I guess.

@theleafandnotthetree Ok so now we're not allowed dislike someone unless we've compiled a dossier of reasons
No but why would you dislike someone if you didn't have a reason? Have you ever thought you may be wrong in your judgement of her?

[quote Cokie3]**@theleafandnotthetree* Ok so now we're not allowed dislike someone unless we've compiled a dossier of reasons*
No but why would you dislike someone if you didn't have a reason? Have you ever thought you may be wrong in your judgement of her?[/quote]
I didnt say I didnt have a reason or reasons, I have plenty but I don't feel the need to do a root and branch evaluation of my feelings and the reasons for them of every single one of the people I encounter in life. As it happens I like most people and I am very polite to this individual. God it would be exhausting to live as you suggest, parsing everything through various filters, continually analysing my motivations, checking I am giving every single person 100% of a chance. I went out with a guy a bit like this years ago, he was so anxious to get nothing wrong that he rarely got anything right and lacked the kind of warmth and spontaneity and ability to really connect with people because he was so po-faced about things

Because to automatically believe them is surely the default position

That’s the position the police took with Carl Beech. As a result a number of innocent men had their reputations tarnished and their health ruined because someone told lies about them.

No, you don’t automatically believe someone, you process what they say, compare it with other accounts of the same event and assess the credibility of what they say. How does automatically believing someone work when other people contradict them?

‘Othering’ is often something we don’t realise ourselves. It is subtle and often rooted in unconscious bias.

We all do it, to an extent. So it is a bit foolish to deny biases that all of us have.

It is only through reflection and acceptance that we can recognise these biases

@Alsohuman

Because to automatically believe them is surely the default position

That’s the position the police took with Carl Beech. As a result a number of innocent men had their reputations tarnished and their health ruined because someone told lies about them.

No, you don’t automatically believe someone, you process what they say, compare it with other accounts of the same event and assess the credibility of what they say. How does automatically believing someone work when other people contradict them?

Yep, due process. Imagine if it was your son or husband who was accused of a serious sexual assault or child abuse and the only evidence initially was the say so of one person. Would you just wave them off to prison because the default position is to believe them. Or if in a work scenario you were accused of racism, wouldnt you want to know exactly what the accusation was, to give your interpretation and then after that, take whatever punishment or otherwise was merited. Even if you were guilty, you still have a right to a defence, this is a cornerstone of justice

@theleafandnotthetree you have 'plenty of reasons' to dislike Meghan but can't offer one?

It wasn't Meghan I was referring to, it was a colleague.

@Alsohuman How does automatically believing someone work when other people contradict them?

This is really bizarre. So if a friend of yours told you they had been raped, would you say to them 'hold up, I don't believe that until I have heard from the boy who raped you'?

Do you actually go around life with that mindset? Because I find that astonishing. Just because the police proved that Beech had been abusing people, doesn't mean their method to automatically believe him was wrong. Did you read my post at all? It shows that regardless, it is STILL best to automatically believe the victim. ONE rarity does NOT justify not believing the victim.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midland#Carl_Beech_(%22Nick%22)
The Carl Beech case was a national scandal

I don't know why rape, sexual abuse and racist remarks are being placed in the same category.

@derxa

I don't know why rape, sexual abuse and racist remarks are being placed in the same category.

See this is part of the problem, that you don't understand that it is about believing the victim. REGARDLESS of it being about racism, about sexual abuse or about rape.

BELIEVE
THE
VICTIM.

I can't believe we even have to have this conversation.

@Cokie3 because MM was welcomed into the RF with open arms. The RF knew Harry’s offspring would be part black. Her and Harry said there were ‘conversations’ about his skin tone and that because of his skin tone he wouldn’t be given a title, this is misleading.

She lied about a few things and I find her very disingenuous. Her claim to know nothing about the RF have been debunked from a blog she wrote in 2014 about Kate.

Their account of racism, if it turns out to be unfounded is an insult to people who have actually experienced it.

I think this thread has shown that despite #MeToo the true problem is women. Women are women's own worst enemies. They would rather doubt, disbelieve, poke holes in a story (or, what they wrongly presume are 'holes'), one poster on another thread that I tried to replied to but the thread was full up, accused Meghan and Harry of having the interview come out 'on a day that nurses will be taking another real world pay cut during a deadly pandemic', as if they dictate the terms of a tv station's rollout, nationally AND internationally. Of all the batshit crazy reasons to attack them, that took the cake, geesus of Nazareth!
Some people are so incredibly desperate to hate them, and I typed out a good rebuttal that got lost because the thread hit 1000 posts in the time I read it and wrote a response.

This thread shows that there is so much more work to do on educating people about racism, unconscious and casual, not just obvious racism. It also shows the need to educate women to bring us together, to support one and another, and a big push or education campaign needs to be launched to stop women vs women bullying, and encourage women to support and BELIEVE one and other, because if women don't men certainly won't!

She is not lying about how much she knows about the royal family. Her blog proves nothing.

If my family member tells me she knows everything about parenting based on tv and internet but never changed a diaper before. Is she telling the truth about knowing how to parent a child?

Carl Beech everyone in the UK is aware. Cokie it is weird to keep telling us why we are wrong about everything and you have absolutely no awareness of current affairs in the U.K. or how the royals in fact work. Time after time your misunderstanding of UK culture yet you tell us we should listen to you. It is getting silly now. You said I look for argument - it is people endlessly explaining why you assuming racism at every point of this thread is ridiculous.

To say to a person from the U.K. that Beech is just one person, good god I am lost for words.

See this is part of the problem, that you don't understand that it is about believing the victim. REGARDLESS of it being about racism, about sexual abuse or about rape. I didn't say I didn't believe her about racism but we have no information about who said what and when. I meant that rape and sexual abuse are extremely serious crimes which carry a jail sentence. You knew exactly what I meant.

Much more work on educating yourself would be a good start 😀

I don’t think she does know what you mean. Racism is a serious accusation and should be treated as such. Investigated.

Evidence is investigated - a world where everyone is guilty by someone else saying so wouldn’t really go too well would it? Carl Beech?

[quote Topmum66]@Cokie3 because MM was welcomed into the RF with open arms. The RF knew Harry’s offspring would be part black. Her and Harry said there were ‘conversations’ about his skin tone and that because of his skin tone he wouldn’t be given a title, this is misleading.

She lied about a few things and I find her very disingenuous. Her claim to know nothing about the RF have been debunked from a blog she wrote in 2014 about Kate.

Their account of racism, if it turns out to be unfounded is an insult to people who have actually experienced it.[/quote]

1. You don't know for a 'fact' she was welcomed into the RF by the entire RF with open arms.
2. I think it's clear that the intention to change the title after Charles ascends is due to racism, and I believe those other black people who say that's what they believe too. You can choose to believe it isn't. I believe that in the context of the RF regarding their racist history if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.....it's not likely to be a cat. And I believe those that supposedly welcomed her did so in the knowledge that Archie would not get a title.

1. She has not lied about anything, and you nor anyone else has yet to prove she has. You know, repeating the same lie over and over without any proof whatsoever, is still a lie.

1. Her writing a blog (can someone give me a link to this, PS please don't make it be from the Daily Fail, Tellmecrap or any tabloid, I wouldn't put it past them to have fabricated the blog - if BBC or a reputable site has a link, I will sincerely read it) doesn't prove she knew the ins and outs of the royal family. You are flailing about finding something to attack her with, casting aspersions on her aims, her actions, yet you have not provided one, not even one sliver of proof. You can't just say "she lied about a few things" and leave that hanging out there with no proof at all, whatsoever. If she has, you will have proof and you will put it up (oh and I did say proof, and I mean from actual reputable sources).

Of course we are supposed to believe people and support them if they come to us and make a personal claim of victimisation. That is the decent thing to do.

But when powerful people go on television or other media platforms and make allegations and counter allegations, and the consequences of their claims have an impact on politics, money and power at a national or international power, then of course they have to be questioned. Otherwise everything political just descends into salacious mud slinging.

That said, the royal family have a history of racism so it seems highly likely that their dislike of Meghan was fuelled at least in part by racism.