To wonder why it's so controversial to talk about white behaviour throughout history?

[BeachParty]

It's an interesting discussion to have, and makes you think.
Why do so many immediately go into "how dare you!" mode or "why are you being racist towards white people?!"
Instead of actually listening to what people are saying? History is whitewashed in this country, we usually learn it from a "hero" viewpoint.

Race isn't a scientific concept, it's a social construct.

At one time people often considered different European groups to be different "races". Really, it just means a different people, so it recognizes some kind of cultural and usually familial integrity among the group.

Different places can define race differently even now. A simple example is that in the US, generally people who have even one black parent are considered black, whereas in the UK they are much more likely to be defined as mixed race. In other places you will find other lines drawn.

Did I refer to what you said as racist? I just said I don’t like the phrase.

And I think you misunderstood my point. You asked if finding out my great (x5) parents were bad people would affect how I feel about where I’m from. And I explained why it wouldn’t.

Different places can define race differently even now. A simple example is that in the US, generally people who have even one black parent are considered black, whereas in the UK they are much more likely to be defined as mixed race. In other places you will find other lines drawn.

Oh definitely. For instance in the US now, Lebanese and Chilean people would be considered "brown" (i don't love that terminology but it seems to be popular) whereas in apartheid South Africa, they would have been classified (very officially) as white.

52% of murders in USA are committed by African American males....
African Americans make up 13% of the nation. half that and 6.5% of responsible for committing over half murders in USA.

You can't call that "black behaviour" either, though.

There are huge slabs of multi generational poverty and disadvantage colouring those figures. African Americans don't get a fair shake in the IS justice system, either. More likely to be denied bail; More likely to be convicted; Are given higher sentences compared to Caucasian defendants convicted of the same charge, including higher risk of death sentence....

My apologies and thanks for your answer. But it does bring us back to your post about the generations of 'traumatised' black families who don't know what country the came from you described.

Why does what happened 8 generations prior affect them in your mind?

I don't think this is really controversial. Racism, which is to say a kind of race essentialism, is a product of slavery and the desire to be able to justify it. And later on, that idea really dovetailed with scientific racism which was in some ways even nastier, imo, even though it really came into its own after slavery was abolished.

But it's not a fundamentally different, or worse, process than the way other groups justify their domination of others. You can hear some pretty awful things by Africans about why other Africans from different tribes deserve to be lower in the social hierarchy.Or go to India - there is some pretty awful stuff of the same kind going on in their politics today, and it also could be traced back to historic migrations and invasions which have nothing to do with Europeans.

I think what gets people's back up is partly that it's treated so differently from the same process in other places, and also the fact that it was dismantled as a legal system or acceptable ideology in a way that hadn't happened anywhere else.

But also the way that has been turned on its head with this very weird narrative around "whiteness" as a kind of reified thing, and actually creating a new kind of race essentialism that simply has a different hierarchy - and those white people who don't accept this are racists.

I think it's rather had the effect of setting back work done around racism by decades. To the point that people who really grew up with no I'll feelings around race at all are finding themselves thinking about people more and more as members of a race, and often feeling angry in an unspecified way.

And I’m not saying the statistic is untrue. I’m asking why that is the case. I would argue that being the descendants of slaves and having generational trauma is a root cause. Plus systematic oppression that developed after slavery.

It wasn’t like they just abolished slavery and then the next morning everything was instantly equal for black people.

I don’t agree negative racial stereotypes are only based on slavery though. There are negative racial stereotypes about every racial group.

That's the danger though. If you accept this ideology of "whiteness" as a problem, by the exact same logic, what are you going to say when you look at the figures around crime in the US, for example?

That’s the same for Jewish people and every racial group. Same too for minorities in non white countries who can be overtly and covertly discriminated against.

Different to when I was at school in the 80s/early 90s then. If it's more balanced now than then I think that's a good thing

I think to establish this you would want to look and see what that crime rate actually looks like over time.

I have some doubts. Black communities in big American cities back in the 40s or even 50s were far safer than they are today, without the crime problems they have now. I think that makes it a lot harder to tie it directly to slavery.

What trauma is it you think they have suffered by being a grandchild 7 times removed from somebody who was a slave?

Would it be an excuse and persecution eg for me to carry out a violent crime because a long dead relative was a child mill worker who died at age 28?

Lol - teaching “all white people are evil” isn’t a balanced view

Exactly - we must take responsibility for our own actions in the here and now. Many people have ancestors who had a rough time- perhaps everyone, really when you consider how difficult life used to be.

Erm, I didn't say that, if it came across that way I didn't mean it to.
Just meant if it's being taught "both sides" viewpoint now then that's a good thing.

It is what you said if you check your post. And no one mentioned “both sides”. Both sides of what?

That's the danger though. If you accept this ideology of "whiteness" as a problem, by the exact same logic, what are you going to say when you look at the figures around crime in the US, for example?

Well I've been arguing about using any complexion-based analysis for some time now, so yeah.

Thank you. I suspect if you were to ask anyone today. The majority of us will either ourselves, our parents or grandparents will have had some major trauma in their/our lives. That doesn't excuse any of us to behave outside of society norms.

The last segregated school in America closed in 1958. That is the same year my mum was born. There are probably people on here born around that time.

Why were the schools segregated? Because people believed that black people weren’t good enough to go to school with white people. Why? Because they were seen as less than because of the history of USA ie: slavery.

The time line isn’t just pre abolition of slavery (oppression) then post slavery (freedom and equal opportunities) Things happened along the way.

Im going to have to bow out now though because this is exhausting.

So the very last pupils to face segrated education on America (not the UK) was around 4 generations ago.

I barely missed the Scottish grammar school entrance exam given to primary school aged children in the 1980s. This seperated the well above average from the rest of us. Does that give my friends who did have a reduced education the right to complain about there lot? Does it give them an excuse for criminal activity? Does this give them a platform to claim they have been persecuted due to the majority coming from poverty?

Yes, I was agreeing with you.

I get the sense some people don't really understand that this approach is a two edged sword.

It's not about "both sides."

History tells us that most humans who obtain power and status behave like fucking arseholes to other humans.

How many generations have to be born in former colonies before we're not referred to as "the Colonialists"?