Black people don’t really matter but the loss of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy.

[QOrion]

I posted this in response to a short thread on Feminism and Women’s Rights but I want more people to see it. I want to have my say, even if I’m late to the conversation, and even if most people don’t care. I don’t expect many replies but maybe I’ll make some people think about what I’m saying.

I guess none of you are black. It’s the only way you can go out of your way to highlight this man’s ’virtues’. I don’t believe anyone is born bad or is irredeemably bad, I guess that’s my Christian upbringing, but I also don’t understand the deification of this man and the need for many people on this website to paint him in the best possible light. He’s not the first public figure to be shot and killed, even this year. If those deaths were even mentioned on Mumsnet, they certainly weren’t given much attention.

I’d never heard of Charlie Kirk before he was shot and his death had little impact on me. I have serious issues in my own life, people are shot and killed in America every day and there is a lot of suffering going on around the world, a lot of atrocities committed. It didn’t seem to be an incident that affected me in any significant way, even when I discovered his position on transgender ideology. I share essentially the same position on transgender ideology with many people I don’t want to be associated with.

Then I read his comments about black people. I can’t wax lyrical about how Charlie Kirk was ‘decent’ and ‘respectful’. How, ‘Isn’t it nice he gave his political opponents a platform’. And I can’t feel any kind of kinship with people who, knowing what he’s said about black people, still feel compelled to highlight his good qualities.

Let me be clear: I don’t believe he should have been killed. I don’t even support the death penalty in any circumstance, so I can hardly support Charlie Kirk being killed. But I am learning, not for the first time, that Mumsnetters in general, and users of this subforum (FWR) tend to ignore black people and our concerns, until we are useful. Whether that is taking cases to court when much is made of the claimant’s ethnic heritage (why?) or the perennial ‘transgenderism is womanface, it’s offensive like blackface’.

You have no idea and I think it is possible you will never understand just how much slights about my ethnic heritage cut deep. Slights to my womanhood are pretty trivial in comparison. I think this is something white women will never understand. So, you go on singing the virtues of Charlie Kirk. We’ll be here the next time you need to exploit us for your own purposes.

If you read this thread, you will see that the US air industry is not employing under qualified black pilots, they’re giving more black people the opportunity to learn in air academies to bring them in some semblance of an equal footing for opportunities with white people.

Kirk and Trump cynically exploited this to claim that some black pilots are under qualified.

I find it peculiar that you didn’t fact check what Kirk was claiming and just swallowed it whole.

I didn't say the root cause was a problem with POC. I said that one of the root causes for the rise in more extreme views was people not feeling heard, feeling that their views and needs were somehow seen as not valid and are taboo. So they then take these views into more extreme echochambers, and what started as mild discontent becomes amplified into anger, frustration and extremism.

We need to be able to have open conversations about how we can become more cohesive as a society, and this requires an ability to not shout people down and call names when we disagree with their views, but to explore the root causes of those views. I think very few people have their opinions changed by just being told 'you are wrong' 'X is right listen to them' and much more is acheived by saying 'OK, what experiences led you to believe this, and unpicking this'.

However, this thread now seems to be dominated by people telling others they are wrong and that their views and experiences are not valid.

White people can also be immigrants, the 2 things are not mutually exclusive. My husbands family are white and immigrants and experienced discrimination - although I'm sure I will soon be told that is impossible.

Where have I said POC can't exercise free speech? My ongoing point is that we all have the right to exercise free speech. I have never told anyone that they aren't a victim of racism - as that would be impossible, I have not lived their life nor walked in their shoes. I have only taken issue with people saying they know my experience well enough to be able to say I or my extended family have never experienced any discrimination.

What you’re saying is that if someone like @BollyKnickerz says black people didn’t help a victim of a stabbing, then we should say ‘what experiences led you to believe this?’. But people have tried this and got no response. So what you’re saying is that we shouldn’t question what Bolly is saying because that shuts them down?

Or when posters like NaicePanda says Kirk was saying black pilots were hired to fill a diversity quota, we shouldn’t say they’re wrong? Because posters like her have been repeatedly asked for evidence but haven’t provided any. So we shouldn’t ask for evidence because that shuts them down?

I completely agree. I have repeatedly asked people saying things on this thread i disagree with to share the evidence that has formed their view. Not one person has provided any.
If when asked for the evidence behind their doubt of the competence of women working 'on planes' for example, people cannot provide any proof their doubts are valid, then I'd hope that would give them pause to reflect on whether they were correct. However this does tend to be a triumph of hope over experience.

I'm not sure this is what I see. For example, blue collar jobs like trades and construction command higher average salaries than office/graduate jobs nowadays. Average trade salary was £45k and average graduate salary £35k in last study I read.

I think the issue is that things are actually far from utopian. There was a poster on a recent thread talking about how her sister was in a serious crash with a lorry. She was lying at the roadside with both feet detached from her body and the ambulance service said they could only dispatch an ambulance if the victim was unconscious. Thankfully the man who had called them had the sense to call back and say she was now unconscious, otherwise she'd have died.

No doubt an extreme example but it's pretty standard now for old people that have a fall to lie on the floor in pain for 12 hours with a broken hip before they can be attended to. Adding more and more people is only going to worsen matters. Especially demographics that on average have almost twice as many children as western women and arrive needing housed, supported, etc.

Most people would help somebody if the personal cost wasn't untenable. However, many now feel we're at the point where we need to either prioritise ourselves or accept that things won't ever return to any semblance of how they once were. Others don't yet feel this way, but they often seem to be those not at the pointy end of it all. Obv I'm speaking broadly here and there will be exceptions.

Hiring of pilots:

"Alaska Airlines has committed to hiring more Black female pilots by partnering with Sisters of the Skies, a nonprofit committed to supporting future black aviators through mentorship, professional development, outreach and scholarship.28 Feb 2024"

"Black Pilots of America, Inc. (BPA) is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), charitable organization with a nationwide mission to introduce and educate underserved and underrepresented youths to the exciting world of aviation. BPA also promotes aviation excellence and safety among its membership."

https://www.captechu.edu/blog/new-pilot-diversity-initiative-aims-level-playing-field-women-people-of-color#:~:text=Alaska%20Airlines%20has%20committed%20to,professional%20development%2C%20outreach%20and%20scholarship.

I have no idea about what CK said about black pilots. Ive had a really quick.google and found numerous articles on DEI iniatives.

The DEI doesn't say they are less competent just they they are own affordable more opportunities and openings based on sex and colour.

What do you mean 'ourselves'? Immigrants pay taxes, should they not be using the NHS? 25% of the NHS is staffed by non-white people. If you deported them, the NHS would collapse so the ambulance waiting times would be even worse.

Being concerned about adding additional people to our population and asking questions about the viability of supporting them within already stretched services is a very long way from the views being expressed on this thread. The concerns you've described are being used as a trojan horse to reintroduce racism back into the mainstream. Immigration has barely had a mention on this thread, its all been about white versus POC.

They are offered 'mentorship, professional development, outreach and scholarship', to give them a more level playing field with white people. Very different to Kirk saying black people are underqualified.

@QOrion

"I think this is something white women will never understand"

Although it's not "all" white women (*insert wry laugh) I totally agree with you. (with respect to these boards)

And you don't even mention the number of "I'm white" who feel they can/should invade the Black Mumsnetters board!

Even whilst offering support it's both arrogant and patronising, to me. Just keep off.

Us white people CANNOT possibly know the experience of a black person in the UK, naïvety or ignorance?

Yes DEI initiatives have sought to recruit Black pilots among other things. The problem comes in when that is assumed to mean, as CK apparently did, that standards are lowered. The US aviation authorities have been very clear that that is not the case. And frankly anyone who thinks the aviation authority is going to risk planes falling out of the sky because of woke is thick as.

I suspect whatever I'd say, you'd find it angry.

He had 2 daughters who he and his suitably blonde wife were going to bring up to despise people different from themselves.

I'm not talking about skilled Polish people coming here to be tradesmen/work in construction. I'm talking about mass unskilled migration from the Middle East.

The rhetoric is always about xenophobia towards them but tbh it doesn't exactly help when they do things like sexually assault 1200 women in one night as happened in Germany. In spite of all the people saying "white men do it too" there's nothing else really comparable in our lifetimes. It's very common in the middle east, however.

This is why people have issues with these men and not with Ukrainian refugees. It's about culture not skin colour.

That may or may not be the case but I believe the issue still remains. When it isn't addressed people will then turn to whoever will address it, which is often those with more sinister motives.

Like, I doubt GC feminists would be aligning with the far right as some are if there were more people on the Left that were happy to have the discussion on women's rights.

But to be clear, I don't like racists. I live in a very multicultural part of the country and my last two employers before this one were Sikh. I work with a lot of Pakistani/Indian/British Jamaican/Polish/Romanian people in the construction sector - that's just the most common nationalities. It's far more diverse than any white collar job I worked in previously, probs partly because having good written English isn't a priority. Oftentimes passable spoken English is sufficient.

The irony is not lost on me that the same posters who keep repeating about the need for free speech and how people are trying to ‘shut them down’ by challenging their views, are reporting posts to get deleted because they don’t like the views expressed.

It just demonstrates the hypocrisy so clearly.

I don't think anyone can complain about being silenced over being called racist. Those who call out racism are the ones who have been silenced for centuries and continue to be with the pitifully lazy appropriation of the word "woke" to shut them down.

Anyway, you won't read this, because you've allegedly left the thread!

Absolutely. Also what the PP describes about Irish people (which was indeed absolute appalling and lingers on in some areas) is xenophobia not racism.

You do all realise that this shit is what his murderer wanted?

Charlie Kirk was right wing, if not alt-right. He was a clear racist, homophobic, misogynist who wrapped it all up in a more palatable decency so people overlooked his well dressed, middle class bigotry.. same as Farage, same as most of the Republican party.

His murderer was a Groyper, one of the Nick Fuentes fanboys who're even more Right Wing than Charlie was.
The entire point of killing Charlie the way that he did, and the shit he carved on the bullet casings was to sow discord and unrest.

Stop feeding it.

It's not been said in court that the murderer was more far right and a fan boy. Indeed, he reportedly hated Charlie Kirk and lived with his boyfriend who felt he was a woman, again, not hot to court yet. Whether he's left or right he's a murderer. There is so much online winding up mentally unstable people, lots of polarisation.

I agree, we should all shut the fuck up about it until we know the facts.

Don’t bother OP. Racism-denial is the default mumsnet position.

The same posters that jump to criticise people who bleat “not all men” in response to instances of sexism and male violence, will pull the “not all white people” card when it comes to discussing racism.

The same people that recognise that sexism against men is not the same as sexism against women, will argue that racism against white people is the same as racism against ethnic minorities, and claim white people are oppressed by other races.

Did these posters cry for Sonya Massey, gunned down by the police officer she called to protect her in her own home? Did they cry for Adriana Smith, who was kept on life support to give birth, despite being declared brain dead at 8 weeks pregnant? They did not weep for the many countless victims of Charlie Kirk’s destructive views and the victims of systemic racism in the States. But they weep for the perpetrator.

These same people would likely have cried for the white “martyrs” slain in Mandela’s fight to free SA from the chains of apartheid. They would have criticised the actions that caused a racist to be killed for their views, while ignoring the daily harm and suffering inflicted on minorities and the vulnerable because of despicable views held by those in power.