AIBU to think my colleague's anti England comment was rude?

[ProudBlackMomma]

What would you make of this? A colleague declared in front of the whole team in the office the other day that she’d never ever support England in any sport due to their history colonialism. Personally I think it’s rude and fails to read the room. Most people had been enjoying cheering on England in the World Cup so to hear this felt a bit like raining on the parade. This woman is African but living in England and reaping all the benefits that come with that. I’m Black too but proud to say I’m English and happy to cheer on the players, who include plenty of black men who I assume also cheer on England!!

It's not about blaming today's UK population. What it is about is acknowledging that British colonial history is why Britain has long been a wealthy country, to the present, and why it has had the patterns of immigration that it has had. You can't just say, oh let's forget the past that made us the country we are today, because we don't like to remember it.

Capel Celyn wasn't the only village flooded to create a reservoir
Villages were flooded to create Ladybower, Derwent, Kielder and Lake Vrnwy.

I'm sure there are others.

I don't have a problem with remembering the past at all. I have a problem with blaming everyone who lives in a particular country for something that was done by other people of that country when they had absolutely nothing to do with the decision and usually weren't even born.

That’s as a result of Scottish plantations not English, and the soldiers were there to stop religious violence and civil war. You need to attempt some basic research.

It’s clear this will all come to an end at the next general election, I think people just have to grin and bear the disrespect and further disintegration of society until then. It will be a long 3 years though.

OP got what they wanted

I really don’t care about our colonial past. It was far more progressive than other European empires and the fact that African nations are still blaming us for their woes more than 70 years later says more about the corrupt governments that seized power, asset stripped them to line their own pockets and ran them into the ground.

People who hate a country because of its past shouldn’t move to that country. It’s unacceptable.

A football team isn’t a country. It’s a football team.

100% correct.👍

Indeed.

The soldiers were there to stop religious violence hahaha

The UK isn’t perfect but it has:

the rule of law,
freedom from arbitrary detention
freedom of expression
democracy,
the NHS,
a welfare system paying out billions each year in support
free schooling…
etc

Yes, I know it’s possible to quibble with all of the above, and they might not be perfectly administered, but if you seriously can’t the benefits of living in the UK, I suggest that you go live in a typical African country and compare.

That’s bullshit. Historically, the majority of Northern Ireland have considered themselves British… that’s why it was carved off the rest of Ireland.

Yes, it was colonised by Scots hundreds of years ago, but if you want to go back centuries, then everywhere is colonised! Should the English go back to northern Germany?

No one alive today had any active role in the Empire, unless it was part of extricating ourselves from it, or were a young solider sent abroad during National Service, and even those would be mid-80s+

Partition. It's a colonial thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Ireland#See_also

We don’t know the full context of the scenario, of course. My view is that this lady has the right to support any team she wants. If her English colleagues criticised her for that and she was just rationalising her position, OK. If she just came out with this comment amongst a friendly group with no questions or provocation, I’d say she WAS rude.

i have several Irish friends whom I’m very fond of. They know I know about the horrors of Anglo-Irish history so they don’t feel the need to ram it down my throat all the time. I’d be hurt and offended if they kept bringing it up - it would imply they thought I was ignorant, or it might seem like gratuitous rudeness and they wanted to hurt me, which isn’t what friends do. Or it might imply they blamed me personally, which would be crazy.

So, for me, the context is everything here - did the others make this woman feel she needed to explain herself? Or did she just throw in an unpleasant historical point to be hostile?

Yes, but for some reason it’s just not done to bang on to modern-day Germans about the appalling evils of Hitler and Nazism - the countless millions who died as a direct result of WW2? Which was a result of Hitler’s wish to colonise so much of the world with his ‘racially superior’ Germans?

Why is one apparently considered acceptable and not the other?

Northern Ireland isn’t some distant colony. It’s an integral part of the United Kingdom.

It’s no more a colony than Cornwall.

Tongue in cheek here,

I'll not support the:
Germans, because they tried to invade us twice and started 2 world wars.
Italians, because the Romans invaded us.
Denmark, because of the invasion and pillaging from the Vikings.
Argentinians, because they tried to invade the British Falklands.
Netherlands, the Boer War.
Spain, all the invasions during the reign of Elizabeth the first.

As for colonialism, Britain was the first country to actually begin the abolition of Slavery and succeed, which was more rife in every other country then it was here.

Half of the people living there think otherwise.

I think it absoirely does happen to Germans, you just don’t know anyone who does it becuase you aren’t german so you don’t notice it.

that doesn’t excuse building one of the largest and most successful slave economies in human history does it?

Well half the people believe identify as British and want to be part of the UK, and historically that’s been more than half…

I’m not trying to deny there haven’t been massive tensions there - and that a significant number want to be part of the Republic - but it’s not a colony! Nearly half of Scotland want independence… that doesn’t make Scotland a “colony” either!

What society didn’t have a slave economy in the 1700s and before. Africa certainly did!