MNHQ Racism policy

[ThePigOfHappiness]

Hi,
I was just wondering if you could let us know when the racism policy has been amended? I'm sure following today's discussions on NI that it needs to be looked at.
It's clearly breaking the equality act to discriminate based on nationality as it is racist, yet MNHQ don't acknowledge this?
Ta

I agree with much of this post but think it is shaky ground to compare prejudice against Geordies with prejudice against the Irish.
I would never class myself as Irish, but am well aware of the levels of racism they have experienced historically within the UK and in Ireland. Such a comparison suggests a bit of a lack of understanding of this, imo.

The issue of threads discussing the political situation in NI and how they seem to be moderated with a heavy hand still hasn't been addressed IMO.

Though I do agree with the above post regarding judgement from case to case of perceived colloquialisms. Its just that that issue came well after the first one.

Yes, I was going to say that there hadn't been any reference by MN at all about certainly my thought that MNHQ did appear in general to panic about NI & therefore delete or post deletion messages in a headless chicken manner.

Thank you sarah- i agree with you wrt dealing with each incident on a case by case basis rather than a blanket ban, however i also agree with iggi that the comparison with being a geordie shows a lack of understanding and this is something i think HQ should think about. This isnt about making fun of an accent and never was. I hope that is clear however that would go some way to explaining the lack of action on HQ's part.

I think its clear from all of this that HQ need to update their folder on some of the specifics of what is happening and has happened in NI recently. Im not sugesting a degree in irish history is necessary but enough understanding to realise why people are upset. At the minute it seems like HQ are and scratching their heads saying "i dont see what the issue is"

@wigglesrock

I was going to say that there hadn't been any reference by MN at all about certainly my thought that MNHQ did appear in general to panic about NI & therefore delete or post deletion messages in a headless chicken manner.

Hey wigglesrock, sorry we haven't responded to your point. It seems, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the majority view on this thread is that we don't delete enough when it comes to NI threads, rather than that we delete too readily? We've looked at what we've been doing in light of that, rather than the other way round...

@YoureBeingASillyBilly

Thank you sarah- i agree with you wrt dealing with each incident on a case by case basis rather than a blanket ban, however i also agree with iggi that the comparison with being a geordie shows a lack of understanding and this is something i think HQ should think about. This isnt about making fun of an accent and never was. I hope that is clear however that would go some way to explaining the lack of action on HQ's part.

I think its clear from all of this that HQ need to update their folder on some of the specifics of what is happening and has happened in NI recently. Im not sugesting a degree in irish history is necessary but enough understanding to realise why people are upset. At the minute it seems like HQ are and scratching their heads saying "i dont see what the issue is"

YoureBeingASillyBilly and BrandNewIggi - apologies if you felt the geordie comparison was trivialising; that wasn't my intention at all. Of course I realise there's a world of difference between NI and the north-east of England, and I can absolutely see why people have been upset - this is recent (in some regards, ongoing) history; the GFA's only 15 years old. What I was trying to do was to use another example to respond to the particular questions people had raised about the jokey title of the 'Top of the morning to ye!' thread on Dublin - which obviously isn't in NI anyway. In our view, this sort of lighthearted reference to an accent is the kind of thing that ought to be allowed to stand.

I'm really confused now, as your example clearly referred to a jokey remark aimed at Irish people, not Northern Irish - this is why I made it clear that my own background is not that of a racially Irish person. You seem to be using the two terms quite randomly. I think this is representative of the problem actually

No, I think my point is that there is a whiff of the cluelessness re NI & MN in general which to be honest has maybe been made more evident in the past few hours.

Anyhoo it's all done now, pity it took the guts of 3 weeks to be at not really much of a conclusion.

Sorry BrandNewIggi ! In my first post, I was referring to prejudice against the Irish (as in the Dublin thread). In my second, I referred to NI because YoureBeingASillyBilly said "I think its clear from all of this that HQ need to update their folder on some of the specifics of what is happening and has happened in NI recently." - I thought he'd misread my original post! Because I was reading both of your posts at once, I conflated them in my response; careless reading on my part. Apologies for further muddying the waters.

Sorry 2 weeks not 3! God, doesn't NYE seem longer than 2 weeks ago ?

See, I think this is where everything has got a bit muddied. This thread was started on NYE in the afternoon, in response to a goady, nasty little thread that was badly dealt with by MNHQ, the original deletion was a joke & then there was a huge delay in MNHQ responding. In the meantime the "top of the morning" thread happened. There was also a few other issues on NYE which seems to have been dealt with quicker & with more MNHQ response.

Maybe if MNHQ read this thread from the start again, it might become slightly clearer as to why we are a bit pissed off

Hey wigglesrock, sorry we haven't responded to your point. It seems, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the majority view on this thread is that we don't delete enough when it comes to NI threads, rather than that we delete too readily? We've looked at what we've been doing in light of that, rather than the other way round...

My personal experience of NI threads is that no one is able to have a discussion about NI politics because we get the few posters coming on making sweeping generalisations that are inflammatory and do make it look as though a bunfight is starting, but instead of just those posts being deleted, as happens on other threads, the whole thread gets pulled. Its like a big red panic button.

People from here are more than capable of having a reasonable discussion, we might not agree with each other, but posters on ff/bf threads and wohm/sahm threads don't agree with each other and their threads aren't being pulled.

The main issue for me on the original thread that this thread was started about, is that it really took so long for HQ to see that the thread shouldn't be deleted for being a bunfight.

Its all well and good saying it eventually got deleted for the right reasons, but the problem is, it took pages of us all saying it before it was heard. That is a fundamental problem that hasn't been addressed properly yet.