Diane Abbott. Is she racist?

rick_chasey

Paulie W wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Paulie W wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

colonialism was terrible

Perhaps I went to the wrong schools, but I always got the distinct impression that the British Empire was our finest hour, and we've gone downhill since those days.

Depends how you measure finest I guess, but by measures of the the way they behaved in the empire towards non-Europeans, it was pretty awful.

The British no doubty committed terrible atrocities but there is also an element of 'what have the Romans ever done for us'?

Not quite sure what you mean.

That western colonialism is now seen as fundamentally a 'bad thing' while in fact there were a number of significant benefits to indigenous populations which post-colonial discourse does not allow for.

Like what?

Paulie W

Infrastructure, for example

MonkeyMonster

yeah, what did the Romans ever do for us?

rick_chasey

Paulie W wrote:

Infrastructure, for example

What makes you think there wasn't any infrastructure before?

Colonialism is a bit like me turning up to your house, watching your TV, eating what I wanted, doing what I wanted to the house, telling you exactly what you should be doing, and if you did anything about it other than acquiesce I'd threaten you with a gun and tell you it's for your own good.

Paul E

Paulie W wrote:

Infrastructure, for example

Most of which is crumbling as it's been used and used and not looked after

SimonAH

Ben6899 wrote:

SimonAH wrote:

"Black people have little history of invention" - inaccurate.
"Americans are all grossly fat" - easily laughed off.
"The French are Cheese eating surrender monkeys" - a commonplace slur, which tends to get laughed off.

And

"White people like to divide and conquer"

Are worlds apart as far as I am concerned.

The first three statements are inaccurate. The fourth statement is a pretty damning one.

So, "white people like to divide and conquer" is accurate, specific and not easily laughed off for the nonspecific, innaccurate, tosh of a statement that it is? Or is it because you are white and not, for example, an American or French that you find it damning and presumably offensive?

What if she had said "White people have small dicks" for example (note, a common place slur and easily laughed off as all Aryans are hung like Secretariat)

Paulie W

Rick Chasey wrote:

Paulie W wrote:

Infrastructure, for example

What makes you think there wasn't any infrastructure before?

Colonialism is a bit like me turning up to your house, watching your TV, eating what I wanted, doing what I wanted to the house, telling you exactly what you should be doing, and if you did anything about it other than acquiesce I'd threaten you with a gun and tell you it's for your own good.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that colonialism was a 'good thing'. What i'm suggesting is that colonialism often changed the socieities being colonised and that the transformation was not uniformly negative for all sections of society. Roads, railways, sanitation, medicine (not to quote Monty Python) had real benefits even if these benefits were not intended or where incidental.

Some societies - or parts of - embraced the British arrival, others resisted passively, others actively. It is a very nuanced story.

roger_merriman

Paulie W wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

colonialism was terrible

Perhaps I went to the wrong schools, but I always got the distinct impression that the British Empire was our finest hour, and we've gone downhill since those days.

Depends how you measure finest I guess, but by measures of the the way they behaved in the empire towards non-Europeans, it was pretty awful.

The British no doubty committed terrible atrocities but there is also an element of 'what have the Romans ever done for us'?

In what way? I really don't think any of the african countries did well out of being conquered and then used by the British Empire. that is the point of the empire to gain access to land and people, and people you could use.

sure they got a few train lines and so on built but the wealth was flowing one way.

As to Diane Abbott, what a stupid racist comment to make.

rick_chasey

Paulie W wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Paulie W wrote:

Infrastructure, for example

What makes you think there wasn't any infrastructure before?

Colonialism is a bit like me turning up to your house, watching your TV, eating what I wanted, doing what I wanted to the house, telling you exactly what you should be doing, and if you did anything about it other than acquiesce I'd threaten you with a gun and tell you it's for your own good.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that colonialism was a 'good thing'. What i'm suggesting is that colonialism often changed the socieities being colonised and that the transformation was not uniformly negative for all sections of society. Roads, railways, sanitation, medicine (not to quote Monty Python) had real benefits even if these benefits were not intended or where incidental.

Some societies - or parts of - embraced the British arrival, others resisted passively, others actively. It is a very nuanced story.

I'll be honest - my expertise in this is in Africa, though the theory is applicable elsewhere (if anything, more so)

Transport was fine for the communities that existed then.

Sanitation has only become a problem in the late 19th and 20th Century.

Medicine was barely better in Europe than it was in Africa. If anything, they brought over more problems.

People have an image as Africa as a place that has always been totally hyper-poor, uncivilised, etc.

That's just not true. It was a civilisation just like any other.

Stories from explorers, colonialists, are at best, exagerations - at their most common, and worst, frabrications.

I spend years studying, deconstructing, analysing the the process of colonialisation by Africa of Europe - specifically the way in which Europeans came to 'know' Africa - in a way that allowed them to conceive and act out 'colonialism'.

I looked at how and why the notions of the 'white-man burden' and the 'civilising' mission came into being, and why in the mid 17th Century there was little or no discrimination towards Africans, yet by the late 19th Century, they considered them, in some cases, less worthy of life than parasites.

It was a syncretic process, and eventually, through domination, those ideas are appropriated in their own way by the locals. The best example would be the current nationalism - after all, these boundries were drawn up by a load of Europeans in Europe. They cut across existing communities, boundaries, trade routes etc.

This Abbott stuff is just that colonial experience echoing, and echoing.

Ben6899

SimonAH wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

SimonAH wrote:

"Black people have little history of invention" - inaccurate.
"Americans are all grossly fat" - easily laughed off.
"The French are Cheese eating surrender monkeys" - a commonplace slur, which tends to get laughed off.

And

"White people like to divide and conquer"

Are worlds apart as far as I am concerned.

The first three statements are inaccurate. The fourth statement is a pretty damning one.

So, "white people like to divide and conquer" is accurate, specific and not easily laughed off for the nonspecific, innaccurate, tosh of a statement that it is? Or is it because you are white and not, for example, an American or French that you find it damning and presumably offensive?

What if she had said "White people have small dicks" for example (note, a common place slur and easily laughed off as all Aryans are hung like Secretariat)

No "white people like to divide and rule" (it was "rule"; not "conquer") is inaccurate as well. And it's not offensive because I'm white. It's offensive because it is offensive. I would take the same offence with "Black people like to carry guns" and "German people like to invade smaller European nations"... I am neither black nor German.

To suggest I only find the statement offensive because I am white is quite an insult. Well done.

tailwindhome

Anyone see Zulu over Christmas?

rebs

Well looking through history... I think it's fair to say that the super power of each age has treated people slightly better then the previous super power. Lets hope our soon to be Chinese overlords abide by this in the future:D

EKE_38BPM

Paul E wrote:

Paulie W wrote:

Infrastructure, for example

Most of which is crumbling as it's been used and used and not looked after

Have to agree with Paul E here. My grandad cried after seeing the state of the roads and rail network in Jamaica after 25 years of independence. The roads were awful and the rail network non-existent.

I know that much of the infrastucture colonial Britian built was so that the goods grown and mined in the colonies could be exported to make money for Britain and that without the money to maintain them they will fall into disrepair, but its still sad to see. The lack of an exit strategy left behind managers and heads of government who were not up to the task or just plain greedy.

How many former colonies are there who have negotiated rubbish contracts for the exporting of the goods that made the colonialists want that colony in the first place (sugar, oil, wood, ores) so that not as much money as has should have went into that country's coffers (resulting in poor maintenance) but the heads of government live in big houses, drive big cars and have their kids educated in the best foreign schools?

I'll tell ya, many!

rick_chasey

TailWindHome wrote:

Anyone see Zulu over Christmas?

A good example.

We've got a depiction of a load of locals, who's only lines in the whole film are 'zulu' and are the bad guys, and you've got a handful of brits who spend most of the film killing an enormous amount of them on the grounds that the zulus want their land back.

tailwindhome

...

DonDaddyD

I never understand the British shame and regret over it's Empire. Ok from a modern day moral standpoint yes it was bad maybe even evil, but if we consider it for what it was, an Empire, in and of itself it was something quite special.

Yes you subjugated a few dozen countries, bulldozed over their culture. So? What Empire hasn't? That's the arena they operate within. We marvel and praise the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire and they weren't without their necessary evils and their conquests. The British Empire was amazing.

You think if in another lifetime where I conquered and ruled Africa and then colonized Europe I wouldn't have whitey picking my corn while I slept with your women and drunk your mead/ale/beer?

It would be glorious.

Paulie W

Rick Chasey wrote:

I'll be honest - my expertise in this is in Africa, though the theory is applicable elsewhere (if anything, more so)

Transport was fine for the communities that existed then.

Sanitation has only become a problem in the late 19th and 20th Century.

Medicine was barely better in Europe than it was in Africa. If anything, they brought over more problems.

People have an image as Africa as a place that has always been totally hyper-poor, uncivilised, etc.

That's just not true. It was a civilisation just like any other.

Stories from explorers, colonialists, are at best, exagerations - at their most common, and worst, frabrications.

I spend years studying, deconstructing, analysing the the process of colonialisation by Africa of Europe - specifically the way in which Europeans came to 'know' Africa - in a way that allowed them to conceive and act out 'colonialism'.

I looked at how and why the notions of the 'white-man burden' and the 'civilising' mission came into being, and why in the mid 17th Century there was little or no discrimination towards Africans, yet by the late 19th Century, they considered them, in some cases, less worthy of life than parasites.

It was a syncretic process, and eventually, through domination, those ideas are appropriated in their own way by the locals. The best example would be the current nationalism - after all, these boundries were drawn up by a load of Europeans in Europe. They cut across existing communities, boundaries, trade routes etc.

This Abbott stuff is just that colonial experience echoing, and echoing.

I recognise all this but my own 'expertise' lies in the history (and historiography) of colonisation, ancient and modern. The current (and perhaps natural) dominance of the post-colonial discourse has led to a widespread rewriting of 'colonial history' in all eras, just as the dominant colonial discourse did in the past. They provide very different perspectives on the colonial experience but is one necessarily right and the other wrong?

rick_chasey

(response to DDD)

Because of things like the mau mau uprising, and the general nature of the colonial rule.

Concentration camps, etc etc

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience. The large structural and social problems in Africa and elsewhere are a direct result of colonial rule.

It's wasn't part of the UK Empire but it's no coincidence that the Congo is one of the worst places to be right now.

The Rwandan genocide was a genocide between groups who were arbitrarily created by Belgian colonialists.

The 19th Century colonial experience was, by today's standards, shocking. What went on wouldn't be out of place in Germany in the late 1930s.

EKE_38BPM

DonDaddyD wrote:

...I slept with your women...

We're doing that bit already! Its much less usual to see a black woman with a white man than a black man with a white woman.

SimonAH

Ben6899 wrote:

SimonAH wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

SimonAH wrote:

"Black people have little history of invention" - inaccurate.
"Americans are all grossly fat" - easily laughed off.
"The French are Cheese eating surrender monkeys" - a commonplace slur, which tends to get laughed off.

And

"White people like to divide and conquer"

Are worlds apart as far as I am concerned.

The first three statements are inaccurate. The fourth statement is a pretty damning one.

So, "white people like to divide and conquer" is accurate, specific and not easily laughed off for the nonspecific, innaccurate, tosh of a statement that it is? Or is it because you are white and not, for example, an American or French that you find it damning and presumably offensive?

What if she had said "White people have small dicks" for example (note, a common place slur and easily laughed off as all Aryans are hung like Secretariat)

No "white people like to divide and rule" (it was "rule"; not "conquer") is inaccurate as well. And it's not offensive because I'm white. It's offensive because it is offensive. I would take the same offence with "Black people like to carry guns" and "German people like to invade smaller European nations"... I am neither black nor German.

To suggest I only find the statement offensive because I am white is quite an insult. Well done.

Ah, apologies, no insult intended - it was rhetoric only (I am also white if that is not as broad a term as black BTW). However I would have thought it wouldn't be hard to locate a lot of deeply offended Frenchmen at the surrender monkey flippancy was my point.

notsoblue

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

DonDaddyD

U'all are making me want to go to the Morpeth...

Rick, colonial rule wasn't great for the subjgated colony. Colonies being the means that an empire extends its reach and infulence. That said Empire's are not without their necessary and unnecessary evil. But Empire's exist and in judged upon their merits as an empire the British Empire is one of the greatest.

It's like saying that Britain had one of the best naval fleets in the World. That fleet was designed to bring death but judged on it's merits as a naval fleet it was pretty spectacular.

EKE_38BPM wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

...I slept with your women...

We're doing that bit already! Its much less usual to see a black woman with a white man than a black man with a white woman.

Their hair (white women) does still fascinate me...

DonDaddyD

notsoblue wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

If Jamaica and India (examples) weren't colonies would the people who lived there be invited to England for work (wind rush era)? Subsequently, would they have been subjected to such levels of racism and accused of stealing all the jobs when they arrived frightening the natives because they were capable of speaking English, able to drive on the left, fully adopt British middle class customs as well as they're own?

EKE_38BPM

DonDaddyD wrote:

EKE_38BPM wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

...I slept with your women...

We're doing that bit already! Its much less usual to see a black woman with a white man than a black man with a white woman.

Their hair (white women) does still fascinate me...

Its just a mild irritation to me. I find it EVERYWHERE.

I would like to know why women don't seem to be happy with what they've got, hairwise. If its naturally straight, they want it curly, if its curly, they want it straight. If it naturally blonde, they want it dark, if they are a brunette, out comes the hair bleach. If its short its only because they are in the process of growing it again after cutting it all off when they split from their bloke/got a new job/slimmed down to fit into 'that' dress. Then when its long they will cut it short because they split from their bloke/got a new job/slimmed down to fit into 'that' dress. Its a never ending process of change (and the grief and stress that that change causes/is caused by).

rick_chasey

notsoblue wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

Pfft, I've written 10,000 on less. Erm. Let me find a way that a) I can remember and b) is correct and not to covoluted.

Basically, racism is about identity. Right? Long story short, people create their own identity through binary comparisions. For example, I have pale skin, they have dark skin - ergo I'm white and they're black. Things that are the same (1 head, 2 arms, 2 legs) are pushed by the way side. They're gay I'm straight, you're male I'm female, etc etc.

in 17th C, with the first explorations (in Africa anyway), you get some literature which, if I can remember right, was pretty egalitarian re-difference ethnicities. They were all humans, whatever the colour, complexion, etc.

As Europeans began to explore the world, they began to create a new global identity for themselves.

The process of exploration, combined with a basic technology/weapon advantage, began to create an epistemological space to consider themselves superior. There was political gain for that. Europeans could exploit the world outside of europe for their advantage. It then made sense to start identifying themselves as superior (who wouldnt? and they had the technology to enforce it), which, by turn, identifies the other as inferior. If I am, say, civilised, the other must, by definition, be not.

It's a pretty complicated process. Bits of it get argued over and over, and it gets really super theoretical and abstract. Can't really remember any of that anymore.

This develops and develops, and reinforces itself.

It turns out, for reasons to do with it's permanence, combinations with Darwinian theory etc, ease of recognition, race is a great way to create the difference. After all, race is a pretty arbitrary definition. Why not, say, hate on blue eyed people? So that's how it begins to occur. So by the 19th Century you get stuff about uncivilised barbarians, white man burdens and the like. Race ultimately becomes a way to justify colonial rule by Europeans, and, even, brutal (convenient) ways to rule.

That's kinda brief, and I hope it makes sense. Took me weeks in the library to get all that straight in my head and it was a while a go. It was the subject of my dissertation and my specialist subject & final exam.

rjsterry

notsoblue wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

The idea that certain races are inferior (in various ways) to others is invoked to justify colonialism: it's for their own good/their no better than animals, so it doesn't matter. Once that idea has been embedded in a society, it's quite difficult to get rid of it.

FWIW, I don't think racism was 'invented' by Europeans in the 17th century - if you read some of the Roman writings about 'barbarians' it suggests that the same thing was going on 2000-odd years ago.

EKE_38BPM

rjsterry wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

The idea that certain races are inferior (in various ways) to others is invoked to justify colonialism: it's for their own good/their no better than animals, so it doesn't matter. Once that idea has been embedded in a society, it's quite difficult to get rid of it.

FWIW, I don't think racism was 'invented' by Europeans in the 17th century - if you read some of the Roman writings about 'barbarians' it suggests that the same thing was going on 2000-odd years ago.

Probably written about a Thracian. You know what they're like!

rjsterry

EKE_38BPM wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

As I said before, the racism experienced now is a direct result of the colonial experience.

Really? Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong, just wondering what the rationale is.

The idea that certain races are inferior (in various ways) to others is invoked to justify colonialism: it's for their own good/their no better than animals, so it doesn't matter. Once that idea has been embedded in a society, it's quite difficult to get rid of it.

FWIW, I don't think racism was 'invented' by Europeans in the 17th century - if you read some of the Roman writings about 'barbarians' it suggests that the same thing was going on 2000-odd years ago.

Probably written about a Thracian. You know what they're like!

Nah, Thracians were very much considered to be barbarians - a significant proportion of Greek slaves were Thracian

Ben6899

SimonAH wrote:

Ah, apologies, no insult intended - it was rhetoric only (I am also white if that is not as broad a term as black BTW). However I would have thought it wouldn't be hard to locate a lot of deeply offended Frenchmen at the surrender monkey flippancy was my point.

No need to apologise, I've thicker skin than that.

I agree the French monkey cheese quote wouldn't be accepted with open arms by a French person, but it doesn't conjure up the evil, divisive picture that "divide and rule" does, in my opinion. It's an abhorrent way to carry on and I don't want to be associated with it... even if white folk in the past were doing so.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Read literally, it was a racist statement, because it paints all white people with a common characteristic. Is she really a racist? No, I don't think so. I put it down to careless use of language. What she meant, I suspect, was something more like "When put in charge of other people, [white] western Europeans often get their way by dividing and conquering". Hardly revelatory or insulting, or for that matter, a tactic uniquely attributable to that demographic group.

I'm afraid I don't go in for Empire-bashing. The Industrial Revolution moved the world forward by a considerable step. That's not a bad thing. And in something like 18 of the last 20 centuries the dominant economic nation has been China. England and the US get one each. Again, not something to be ashamed of.

Rick: I see that you read Western European Guilt at degree level. No wonder you're so fcuked up.