Son and very right wing racist views

[Strawberry33]

My son 14 has been extremely influenced during the past year by stuff in the media that he now calls lefty propaganda and some unfortunate experiences. He now has decided to completely shun our families values and wants to become a right wing politician. He’s very bright but been debating with teachers and pupils today in his online learning and I’m worried he’s going to be punished and silenced which seems to only feed into his views.
Just to add he’s not at all violent, aggressive or nasty towards people of any group. If he was I’d definitely get police involved or counter extremism involvement.
I just want to shape his views but he just digs his heels in more and more! X

[quote BinkyBoinky]@HmmSureJan

Well, generations of black men have grown up being told they're scum/criminals/lowest of the low for no good reason whatsoever.

Now we're supposed to care about the feelings of poor liddle white men just because they can't face up to a few home truths of history? We have to spare their poor hurt feelings because otherwise they'll turn neo-Nazi on us? Really?![/quote]
I don’t think any race can claim the exclusive experience of being told they are scum/criminals/lowest of the low. After all for many generations it was “No blacks or Irish” was it not? And for generations it was also “No Chinese”
Given the know damage this causes, it seems we should evolve beyond this completely and not pretend that doing it to Whites is somehow an improvement. Doesn’t it make us worse than them? After having experienced that trauma, to then turn around and do it to another?

neglect, dismissal and dehumanisation of a whole social group never does to tend to turn out too well
it seems we should evolve beyond this completely and not pretend that doing it to Whites is somehow an improvement

No it's not an improvement but how is it dehumanising? Talking about the truth about slavery/racism/the empire etc is somehow "dehumanising" them, just because they can't take the truth? No one is saying that white men are "scum of the earth" are they, but people ARE speaking up on what they have done to others in history. Why should people shut up about it?

Yes humanity should evolve, but the way to start is by facing up to truths, right? Perhaps this is on them.

If a white man turns to the far right because they don't like being told about their racist past.. well, way to prove us wrong eh!

[quote BinkyBoinky]@HmmSureJan

Well, generations of black men have grown up being told they're scum/criminals/lowest of the low for no good reason whatsoever.

Now we're supposed to care about the feelings of poor liddle white men just because they can't face up to a few home truths of history? We have to spare their poor hurt feelings because otherwise they'll turn neo-Nazi on us? Really?![/quote]
One of the issues with the term "white privilege" is this sort of attitude. Not all white men are privileged (yes I know that isn't what the term is meant to mean) and there are generations of working class white boys in council estates who have been given exactly this message. There is a reason why white working class Summer born boys are the lowest or near lowest attaining demographic.

Remember Michelle Obama, why they go low, we go high. Don't sink to these levels. Two wrongs don't make a right.

*when they go low...

No one is saying that white men are "scum of the earth" are they, but people ARE speaking up on what they have done to others in history.

You seem to be actually. You're not just talking the truth about history - slavery/racism etc. Your tone is contemptuous and vindictive towards them. Towards the great, great, great, great + grandchildren of people who may or may not have held racist views, young men who've never hurt anyone and you're doing it because they are white. You don't seem interested in moving forward, just in payback and revenge and making them ashamed and guilty for historical behaviours they had nothing to do with. You seem to want them to swap places; perpetuate injustice and make them take their turn at the bottom of the pile. There's no other social group you'd talk about like that, correct me if I am wrong? I'll never teach my children to be ashamed for the colour of their skin or that they must accept castigation and contempt for historical events that were nothing to do with them.

Your posts are unpleasant and lacking in any kind of nuance and you should be embarrassed to speak as you do. Might I suggest a book to you "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay". I've found it very helpful in understanding the background to critical race theory and how ultimately damaging much of how it is enacted is. I'm sure you won't read it but you really should.

If you steal someone's land, they will wrench it back, eventually

How do we define who you and they are exactly?

No one is saying that white men are "scum of the earth" are they, but people ARE speaking up on what they have done to others in history. Why should people shut up about it?

If a white man turns to the far right because they don't like being told about their racist past..

@BinkyBoinky
By conflating today’s white men with white men who lived and died hundreds of years ago, you are implying that today’s white men are the scum of the earth.

You say above “white men” referring to today’s white men, but then go on to use “they” which grammatically refers back to white men (today’s white men) “have done to others in history”. Today’s white men haven’t done anything to others in history. You even say in your example of a white man going far right, “because they don’t like their racist past” it’s not their past though is it? It’s the past of other men who lived and died hundreds of years ago who happen to share the same skin colour.

You keep talking about white men today as if they were one and the same as the white men who lived and died hundreds of years ago. They are not the same. That’s what people object to. You conflating the two groups separated by oceans of time.

For example, even though I grew up hearing from my grandparents about the great aunts and uncles killed by the Japanese during their invasion and occupation of China, I would not speak of “Japanese men” with “their raping and child murdering past” in the same sentence like you have done with “white men.” Nor do I think it my mission to put a burden of guilt and shame on any of today’s Japanese men for what happened in history.
Of course we should all learn history and try our best to understand the truths of it, but it is nonsense to hold people of the same ethnicity born years and years after events in contempt or to have complete disregard for their feelings. It’s not justice in any sense of the word.

You should educate him with facts. You’re reacting with emotion and flapping around in a panic over nothing.
Your son is still a child. Children go through phases. Don’t report him to “the authorities”. This isn’t east Germany.

[quote BinkyBoinky]@HmmSureJan

Well, generations of black men have grown up being told they're scum/criminals/lowest of the low for no good reason whatsoever.

Now we're supposed to care about the feelings of poor liddle white men just because they can't face up to a few home truths of history? We have to spare their poor hurt feelings because otherwise they'll turn neo-Nazi on us? Really?![/quote]
I was thinking more that I don't want to be blamed for things I haven't done

So I can understand others feeling the same.

When my dad came here, the first real mate he had was Irish. They used to joke about getting a dog. Okay, I know why that's funny and I know why it's not funny.

But how does it benefit anyone to set up a blame game between different groups according to family history?

Plan "You even say in your example of a white man going far right, “because they don’t like their racist past” it’s not their past though is it? It’s the past of other men who lived and died hundreds of years ago who happen to share the same skin colour. "

Exactly. My grandma had her first child at thirteen. Am I to blame for my grandfather marrying and impregnating a child? You might as well blame me for Jimmy Savile!

I think he is expressing views but unfortunately these days with social media etc people are taught to see differences rather than similarities. Get him to take an ancestry test - you both may be surprised at where your ancestors come from.

@independent98

It is highly concerning that in 2021, extremist views are still prevalent in our next generations society without an understanding of how history generally repeats itself with those views. I am glad that as a parent you are recognising and acknowledging that your son's views is no reflection of the way how you raised him however his views is based on his experience ( you mention that he is a minority in a black majority school) he does not feel like he fits in which is a huge part of youth identity. Prevent is a great external organisation to contact however I would suggest a subtle approach. Do you have multicultural friends as I found that having people from different backgrounds around you generally teaches your son acceptance. ( I am a black person who has had friends parents who were extremely racist however once they got to know me, thier views changed)

Dear God Are you seriously saying the OP should report her son to Prevent because he comes down as more right wing than her?

What do you think of Black right wing people?

Or are all black people supposed to be left wing?

All this talk about all white men having a racist past needs to stop as well. The reality is that a group of exploitative men put themselves in a position where they made money from trafficking people and they made it legal to do. That is not the majority of men in this country. Men women & children in this country were also exploited. Coal mining and weaving industries were often extremely harsh and the company in the 19th Century controlled many aspects of people’s lives. People need to reframe it is a struggle against rich and powerful and poor and powerless. Not in the ruling classes instead to say this though, even today. Much better that some people hate others so the actions of the ruling class aren’t questioned too much.

The reality is that a group of exploitative men put themselves in a position where they made money from trafficking people and they made it legal to do

I agree with your post @Ritasueandbobtoo9 but have small correction. Slavery was already legal and endemic long before the first ship sailed from Western Africa to the Americas. In fact, slavery had been legal and used in every culture around the world as far back as historical records go...so to 8,000 yrs ago.

Yes, true, there is little talk of slavery from this island to Iceland for example!

@Ritasueandbobtoo9

All this talk about all white men having a racist past needs to stop as well. The reality is that a group of exploitative men put themselves in a position where they made money from trafficking people and they made it legal to do. That is not the majority of men in this country. Men women & children in this country were also exploited. Coal mining and weaving industries were often extremely harsh and the company in the 19th Century controlled many aspects of people’s lives. People need to reframe it is a struggle against rich and powerful and poor and powerless. Not in the ruling classes instead to say this though, even today. Much better that some people hate others so the actions of the ruling class aren’t questioned too much.

This. That small contingent are the ones who created and normalised and justified this treatment of black people in order to profit. They made it "acceptable" and they created narratives and assigned imagined traits onto those people in order to feel comfortable about doing so - racism. I entirely believe that our society profited from slavery and that it operates and appears as it does in a significant part because of the economics and social acceptance around slavery of the time. I will never deny that. But there is no value whatsoever in blaming young white boys/men, and girls for that matter for that, or in teaching them shame and to accept guilt over it. Attitudes such as that of @BinkyBoinky make no sense, only reverse the pain onto another group and in fact, smack of half baked ideas picked up elsewhere on social media. They simply do not stand up to rigorous discussion and rationality. I don't believe for a moment that the majority of those youngsters would turn far right, that is not my main concern. When I speak of damaging outcomes in my posts, personally I am speaking of irreparable breakdowns of race relations and re-racialising an admittedly imperfect but getting there society. Education, education, education is the way. Not shame, blame, revenge or disgust projected onto young people who are probably the best of us already and the way forward to a truly non racist society.

Obviously I am speaking of the Atlantic Slave Trade in my post.

@HmmSureJan

I think people also have this concept that poorer people had a say in these things. My grandparents were told how to vote and if they voted otherwise they would be put out of their tenancy - that is only 100 years ago. No one in my family had a say about anything until the war years.

Do you mean the Danish Vikings? Yes they used some British slaves when founding Iceland.
Or the Barbary Pirates of North Africa? Yes they raided coasts of all Europe as far north as Iceland for slaves.

The difference between those and the trans Atlantic slave trade is the scale. They were much smaller in terms of numbers of slaves carried off. So its right they are not talked about often, but it would be wrong to erase them from history and never mention them. What baffles me though is the fact most people have never heard of the East African slave trade. This was only slightly smaller than the Trans Atlantic slave trade, but was done for longer by the Arab and Mughal empires of the Middle East and India.

You may not like his views, but most of them are expressed in the perfectly legal right wing press on a regular basis. It sounds more like you think there is only one "right" set of opinions we are allowed to express, namely that we must all beat ourselves up for slavery 300 years ago, and just pretend there's nothing wrong with what China is doing right now? I can only assume there's more to it.

@HmmSureJan
I don’t think it was a small (British) contingent who “created, normalised and justified” the slave trade, or that they “made it acceptable”. The powerful and rich from then had inherited all that mindset from the thousands of generations before them. Slavery was normal to them, it had always been practised and to them, was something that would always be practised so why should they not also profit as many others were and had done before them? Similar to how society today views war as a necessary evil, do we not? We argue about just and unjust wars. And the majority pity the world peace activist as hopelessly idealistic. That’s how abolitionists were viewed for a good two centuries before humankind finally started to abolish slavery (an objective the world has yet to reach btw, but I have hope).

In addition, the reason the Spanish started the Atlantic slave trade was to replace the Native Americans they had enslaved and then genocided. Their religion prohibited enslaving fellow Christians- so that meant Europe, Scandinavia and Russia was off limits, they often lost their own people to slavery to the Barbary Pirates who plagued the Mediterranean so that put Middle East and N Africa as too risky to attempt, so next closest nonchristian land mass was West Africa. It was a decision driven by religion and geography, not skin colour.

He sounds honest. The views he expresses would have been fairly standard about 50 years ago. Thinking on such matters has been radically altered in the intervening period.

Black Roman soldiers would have been unlikely in this part of the world, but more so in North Africa. So what? We have white kids playing the part of middle Eastern people in nativity plays every Christmas.

Take the case of white people living in Africa - are they African? Conceivably, but not quite as African as actual African people.

I'd say he's fairly perceptive. Not everybody has to agree with immigration, and indeed people normally don't over substantial swathes of the planet.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@HmmSureJan
I don’t think it was a small (British) contingent who “created, normalised and justified” the slave trade, or that they “made it acceptable”. The powerful and rich from then had inherited all that mindset from the thousands of generations before them. Slavery was normal to them, it had always been practised and to them, was something that would always be practised so why should they not also profit as many others were and had done before them? Similar to how society today views war as a necessary evil, do we not? We argue about just and unjust wars. And the majority pity the world peace activist as hopelessly idealistic. That’s how abolitionists were viewed for a good two centuries before humankind finally started to abolish slavery (an objective the world has yet to reach btw, but I have hope).

In addition, the reason the Spanish started the Atlantic slave trade was to replace the Native Americans they had enslaved and then genocided. Their religion prohibited enslaving fellow Christians- so that meant Europe, Scandinavia and Russia was off limits, they often lost their own people to slavery to the Barbary Pirates who plagued the Mediterranean so that put Middle East and N Africa as too risky to attempt, so next closest nonchristian land mass was West Africa. It was a decision driven by religion and geography, not skin colour.[/quote]
I suppose I am speaking in a less general way and focussing specifically on the part that Britain played in that particular time and place in history and how that trickles down to our society and our white young men today. This thread has made me focus on my own children who attend very diverse schools she colleges in a major city. You're right of course but I am not as informed as you, or as I should be, but like I say Education, education, education so thank you for your very informative and wider angled post

Sorry what’s all this about white people being blamed for everything? Don’t think it’s part of the national curriculum. White men still run the country and the current government does not want critical race theory taught in schools so I’m baffled as to these comments talking about an alternate universe where white boys are being held responsible for all of society’s ills.

If OP’s son goes to a mainly BAME school then seems like there’s some personal issues where perhaps he’s translating feelings of social exclusion into xenophobic attitudes and that’s being fanned by right wing social media.