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.

More than 2 probably. My ILs were there we handed back their country. Right around the same time period as segregated schools closed as the other poster mentioned. The nation is still paying off debts undertaken by British rule. It's really not that long ago. We will have to drop the world wars long before we can drop the colonist label.

My lot have been in Australia about five generations and we were far from the first of the European immigrants/colonists, and the country has been independent since 1901. I don't think it would go down too well calling anyone here colonists now - whatever their background.

Unsure: but I can tell you happened to me last year. Colonial is a living insult! I had no idea until that stage that it could be a thing. So some people do attribute character to race and or nationality. Which is dodgy, but I shrugged it off.

Have you actually looked at a modern school curriculum? Picked up a textbook? You can access the National Curriculum on line, for a start. Then look at the books used in school. I taught a bit of KS3 History for a while. No whitewashing there.

Australia is far from the youngest country we released though.
And I am not suggesting that you be labeled colonizers, but that the United Kingdom can't be so quick to shrug off the label. It is not anything close to ancient history, it is within living memory.

‘White’ history is taught overwhelmingly in schools because school principally teach the history of the British Isles which is overwhelmingly white - up until the 1950s, despite what the BBC portray, the population was over 99.5% white.

Blimey!

Same problem as the premise of this thread, in a way - sweeping generalisations. If it's not "white behaviour" it's talking like the histories of a great number of countries are comparable.

You are right and there continues to be racism in the US today. I was not arguing at any point that African American history is not different from the history of other Americans.

I do feel however that economic inequality is another hugely underplayed issue in the US. I am not an expert but I imagine this has much to do with crime rates. Again it might illustrate the dangers of always considering race rather than poverty.

Of course black people in the US are poorer in general because of history and ongoing racism and a lack of social mobility. But if the US was a more equal society in general things would surely be better.

I think on many points we agree. I was trying to say that we should not divide all global history into white hIstory and black history and talk about white behaviour as it is hugely simplistic, US focussed and is in itself racist and angers people.

For example the Dallit caste in India, formerly known as untouchables, on paper now have equality, but in reality are still treated very badly and are much poorer. A skin colour based analysis of history would be lost to explain this as both groups appear to have the same skin colour.

For what it is worth I think that racism exists in all societies and can occur at different times between people of any skin colour or the same. I think it must be some basic human psychological flaw that goes back to living in small tribal groups. It's extremely dangerous and we have to be careful to guard against it, educate against it, and treat people as individuals rather than representatives of their ethnic group.

Completely agree and I don’t see the purpose of labelling anything white or black history. It is all world history. Labelling slavery black history in itself is stupid as it involved so many other races. Why call it black because we were the victims of it? We don’t call the holocaust Jewish history.

I think the issue with the curriculum is that it is so dependent on the school and level of competence of its staff.

I’m an Assistant Headteacher of an academy. We have designed our own History curriculum as most schools do. It happens that we have a great history lead who has done great research, other schools don’t necessarily.

I often work with other schools in our academy chain to support their curriculum development and the level of ignorance or awareness of other cultures is shocking sometimes.

It takes great effort on a school’s part to deliver a balanced WORLD history curriculum. Some schools prioritise it and some don’t. Yes the National Curriculum is there as a guide but it is open to interpretation.

This is everything the KS2 history curriculum says should be taught in relation to non European history :

‘A non-European society that provides contrasts with British history - one study chosen from:

• early Islamic civilization, including a study of Baghdad c. AD 900;
• Mayan civilization c. AD 900;
• Benin (West Africa) c. AD 900-1300.'

Can you imagine how varied the interpretation of that statement is within different schools?

Different races doesn’t mean different species. We are all human, and behaviours associated with being human is universal across the races. The good and the bad.

Imagine having access to thousands of years of documented global human history and thinking there is such a thing as “white behaviour”.

Do you know what the North American tribes were doing to each other before Europeans showed up?

Do you know what the empires of the South Americas were up to?

Who do you think built the pyramids?

What about the Ottoman Empire, or the dynasties of China? How Islam came to be. Or the Persian Empire?

It’s clear you haven’t accessed any of that information OP. Point to somewhere on the globe at random and pick up a book and read. If you do that often enough, you’ll start to see the same patterns of behaviour, repeated over millennia, with mixed successes and carried out on various scales. When humans have the capabilities, they will do terrible things. That isn’t isolated to one race, it is proven throughout our history.

It isn’t that it’s a controversial thing to discuss, it’s just completely ignorant, at best. A bit like choosing not to engage in a conversation with a flat earther.

This is a great post

For me, one often entirely neglected aspect is the poor. During Britains slave trading years, the percentage of people that owned slaves was tiny.
The majority of the wealthy were very happy to exploit the poorest in Britain (plus Ireland). The lifestyle of Britains poor was truly horrendous, the working mans salary from the factories even in the early 1800's was not actually enough to pay for all the bills. Their children were badly malnourished, rarely owned a pair of shoes and could often be mangled in the machinery of the factories the children worked in. This was the life of the vast majority of British people during the slavery period - and after it.. decades after it.

It is wrong and racist to associate the evils of Rotherham with all Asian men. Talking about white history as if slavery was part of the everyday life of all white people, even all white British people is to ignore the realities of the overwhelming majority of white British.

Indeed, why do we not hear about the Africans who captured and supplied the slaves for the transatlantic, African and Arabian slave trades?

Such a 'gotcha'. 🙄

We have heard a great deal about them on this thread at least @Sloejelly . It’s been covered!

If you read the thread you’ll find some really interesting and knowledgeable posts. I’ve really enjoyed reading many of the posts on this thread. It has helped me better formulate how I will talk about this in my class/lectures.
(Promise I’m more eloquent than on here; have to use my mobile phone with its tiny screen, bloody autocarrot and ridiculous keyboard).

We were fortunate as children as again having good history teachers. While we looked at the Industrial Revolution we were also shown the poverty and life risking work they did. We have a visitor centre in Scotland that shows up close what these people suffered. I also remember they were paid 'company money' that could only be spent in the company store with it's inflated prices.