I love Cathy Burke

[Karensalright]

What a woman just watched her about young women and the pursuit of beauty

she is fantastic

I don't agree with Kathy Burke on her views on TWAW but I still like her. I don't believe someone has to agree with me in order to like them.

I am trying to understand User and Karen's posts.
I would greatly appreciate it if they could read my thoughts and correct me where I have misunderstood them.

So you are saying that this definition (below) of 'racist' is incorrect because it doesn't include that racism always flows from 'whites' to 'non whites'? Is this because -in your opinion- the only pertinant physical trait that groups people into 'races' is their melanin level? Is this becuse you define 'racism' as something that needs difference of skin colour to exist?

'Coming from or having the belief that people who belong to other races are not as good, intelligent, moral, etc. as people who belong to your own race.'
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/racist

So you don't believe that in the entire history of the world (on every continent), in the present or right up until all humans are extinct in the future, that racism can ever flow from someone/people with more melanin towards someone/people with less melanin?

So you would consider none of the following 'racism' but the lesser crime of 'discrimination'? Do you agree that discriminition is a less loaded word because to dicriminate is not always negative, where as 'racism' is always negative? For example, if you discriminate between people who can walk and people who cannot walk by directing the peole who can walk to the stairs and the people who cannot walk to the lift, that is not negative. I do understand that discrimination can absolutely be used in an extremely negative and damaging way, but my point is that the word doesn't carry the same weight. Do you agree or disagree with this?

User and Karen.
To continue with some examples.

When someone with more melanin, calls someone with less melainin a 'blue-eyed devil' this cannot be racism in your opinion because the slur is being used in the wrong direction? This opinion would be upheld even if the person saying the slur says that it is racially motivated and that the group of people that have less melanin -who are also the group of people where blue eyes occur- are lesser than their own group of people?

You would agree that Armenians and Kurds are different groups of people or races? However, you would not agree that the bad treatment of the Armenians by the Kurds has a racist element because the skin pigmentation is the wrong way round? Plus when the Armenian genocide took place during WW1, it was impossible for there to be any racist element due to the fact that the Armenians are 'white' and the Turks and Kurds are not?

In Rotherham, Telford etc. where the grooming gangs were (or should I say are?) you would say that there was no racial element in how the perpetrators selected their victims. This is because the victims had less melanin than the perpetrators? This is despite the victims, the Police Woman whistleblower and the perpetrators own words saying that there was a racist element?

Back in 1930's Germany, the 'Aryan race' and 'Jewish race' were discussed (in the translation I saw when I studied History, the phrase 'Jewish race' was used in Mein Kampf) and racial purity was an important concept. Propaganda was produced that was horrible, racist caricatures of Jewish people. Awful dehumanising language was used by one group against another group. People were catagorised based on these racial ideas and one group was put in ghettos, then as time went on concentration camps and the final soulution and all the unspeakable horror happens in the 1940's. However, in your minds, there cannot be a racist element to this as both groups had similar melanin levels? So the people committing the atrocity declare a racist element, but they are wrong in your minds?

I will be interested to read your replies where you let me know where I have been correct and where I have been incorrect. I hope to understand your thinking more clearly.

Has anyone listened to Elvis Costello's song 'Oliver's Army' recently?

The use of 'white ............' to refer to Irish people is in it.

”I love being ‘woke’. It’s much nicer than being an ignorant fucking twat.”

She is such a disappointment.

When someone with more melanin, calls someone with less melainin a 'blue-eyed devil' this cannot be racism in your opinion because the slur is being used in the wrong direction?

When I first started dating my now husband, a black man, his mother called me a white devil. She knew nothing about me apart from my skin colour, I doubt she even knew my name at the time and I'd never met her.
No one will ever convince me that it wasn't racism. It's ridiculous to say that racism can only be done by white people.

It's less coherent than that. According to critical race theory, racism can also be done by certain non-white people to certain other non-white people. In figuring out where racism can happen you have to create a racial hierarchy and use that to figure out:
racism - present
racism - not present.

It's irrelevant the terms of abuse that might have been used.

The point about critical race theory is that the deeper you look into it, the more it looks like it is itself based on racism. Which is rather ironic.

I don’t buy into critical race theory or other academic gobbledygook.

The EHA is very clumsy. And it gives TRA’s the ammunition to call GC believers “racist bigots”

I was not really talking about the law or tribal war fare, in other countries.

As a matter of scientific fact it has been proven by the study of genes that there is no such thing as different racial groups.

So there is no such thing as “race”.

There is however different ethnic groups, or as Darius Howe once described those living in the UK living in different tribes”

Racism has its origins in the slave trade, and the various writings of victorians trying to prove that white people were superior to all other “racial group”

In recent history we have seen Apartheid, segregation in America, all based on the colour of a persons skin.

The Lawrence enquiry exposed racism within the police.

We still have people grouping on the very far right who believe in white supremacy, we have the KKC still active in the USA

We still have people of colour being stopped because they are in a fancy car.

Children of colour sporting an Afro being sent home for not having a correct hairdo.

That is what racism is to me. Chucking everyone else in the bag does not address the fact you are at an immediate disadvantage if you are born not white.

I didn't realise she was TWAW
Very very disappointed, I thought she was brighter than that.
Definitely no longer a fan.

Thank you for replying Karen.

'Chucking everyone else in the bag does not address the fact you are at an immediate disadvantage if you are born not white.'

Does this apply in majority non-white countries too? Even rich countries such as Qatar?

How does the Barbary slave trade figure in your thoughts?

I would greatly apreciate it if you would consider replying to my previous examples too.

I think that many people (although not all) agree that race is socially real, and not biologically real.

I thought i had explained my point of view and all the stuff you have cited are examples of tribalism, not racism. Barbary slave trade (whilst hotly debated on how many and from where) was not on the basis of the colour of their skin.

Slavery was a common feature of empires throughout our human history, consider Greek, Roman, Egyptian, none of these slave built nations were at all particular about the colour of the skin of captives, nor as far as i am aware is there any writings in such times to justify said slavery on the grounds of skin colour making you more or less superior.

In fact slaves could become fully fledged citizens.

This was not true of African slaves. And the discrimination and segregation of Africans, until recent times.

My perspective is Marxist BTW.

OK, so there was no racism in regard to the Armenian genocide, Rotheram et al grooming gangs or 1930's/40's Germany? It was tribablism.

I guess I don't understand your point of view, but thank you for trying to explain it.

Yes you are right. People are humans and there are no genetic sub sects of ‘race’. However, as your examples show, in reality, the fact we perceive race has a very real world impact on people. And the word racism describes when someone is treated or perceived differently due to their perceived race.

What you have not done is evidence why when white people feel this impact, and they do, it’s not racism, even though it is based on their perceived race.

You talk with ( justification) about how people of colour experience more racism, more often. You can talk about structural issues that cause this. But all that does is create a hierarchy, and that is justified in terms of where to place anti-racist efforts and resources. But none of that means white people don’t experience racism. None of that means that the only sensible definition of racism is being treated differently based on your ( perceived) race.

You are factually incorrect.

In UK law, racism can happen to anybody.

It is the academic USA definition that explicitly excludes white people from having any racial protection.

I'd like to know how the thousands and thousands of underage white girls gang raped and abused in this country did not suffer from racial prejudice. Or the two Scandinavian girls slaughtered in Morocco as revenge for other unrelated white countries' military actions.

The Barbary slave trade was based on victims being non-Muslim and non-Arab. So yes it was racist, and anyone not of the in-group was subjected to it. Mostly white people and Africans. If a white person was racist to absolutely every other race, nobody would use that to deny the racial victimization of any particular race they targeted, which is what you're doing here.

Africa had historically always been targeted for the slave trade, because they had constant tribal warfare with each other, and they would enslave and sell their own prisoners of war to outsiders. The currency of Africa was said to be "slave". This is as far back as all recorded history, and only ended with European colonialism. There is no mystery as to why they were always considered slaves but their own people's participation in it is completely glossed over.

In the USA and other colonies, there also existed free black people, a substantial minority of which owned their own slaves.

There were also white slaves, such as the red legs of Barbados.