The BLM movement gained real traction last year in a way that black rights campaigning hasn’t for decades.
I think that's true but there's also been an enormous backlash. I've seen comments from people in this country claiming it's all just about rioting and communism, and the booing of players taking the knee is only limited by a lack of crowds. Some people booed it from outside a stadium closed to the public!
The BLM movement gained real traction last year in a way that black rights campaigning hasn’t for decades.
All I saw was a few statues being pulled down / removed. I don't recall any real changes happening (but then I'm white, so maybe haven't noticed). Whole thing seemed to get derailled by focussing on statues.
Empire magazine now uses a capital B for Black. So I'm sure thats solved lots of the problems
Empire magazine now uses a capital B for Black. So I’m sure thats solved lots of the problems
Not just statues then, real progress 😉
All I saw was a few statues being pulled down / removed. I don’t recall any real changes happening (but then I’m white, so maybe haven’t noticed). Whole thing seemed to get derailled by focussing on statues.
Really? I am from a liberal, anti-racist, 'woke' type background but I didn't really think until recently about things like unconscious bias and structural racism. I thought that because I'm not 'a racist', as in someone who thinks black people are inferior or whatever, then I wouldn't ever have problematic attitudes and behaviour, because why would I?
I was inspired by BLM to read 'Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race' and it definitely challenged some of my assumptions. I think if you just take it to be just about statues you are being almost wilfully ignorant and perfectly playing into the hard right wing populist narrative.
I think if you just take it to be just about statues you are being almost wilfully ignorant and perfectly playing into the hard right wing populist narrative.
Well if there are any long term changes to society as a result of BLM, then I am definitely ignorant of them, so please feel free to list them...
I don't think being sceptical that pulling the odd statue down isn't the same as addressing structural inequality equates to 'playing into the hard right wing populist narrative', but what do I know, I'm white, so not really qualified to comment on it.
NB On a personal note, I'm fairly indifferent to pulling statues down. Seems a bit of a 'token gesture' to me, but again, who I am to comment.
The footage of that statue coming down in Bristol and being dropped in the river where it belongs was one of the few times I've ever been impressed by the actions of the British public.
Everyone else is just clapping on the doorstep like servile muppets while the Tories run the country like a mafia.
It will get worse. As resources become further stretched due to climate changes and refugees become even more of an issue, any discrimination will be amplified.
Just wait for backlash when the west is no longer dominant.
This is the kind of political fearmongering that drives racism.
Frankly I think in 30 years there will have been a backlash against the current populist driven racism, but I fear how far it will go before that happens.
The real war is being fought, and currently won, by the 1%ers against the majority, the nationalistic narrative is the distraction to cover it up.
The real war is being fought, and currently won, by the 1%ers against the majority, the nationalistic narrative is the distraction to cover it up.
Well given they run 99% of the media, it's unlikely to change as they set the popular agenda.
I think if you just take it to be just about statues you are being almost wilfully ignorant and perfectly playing into the hard right wing populist narrative.
I think that's a bit harsh. The government and certain sections of the media have tried very hard to ensure that it's 'just about statues' because that furthers their culture war, plays well with the gammons, and means they don't have to examine why so many black people die in police custody or from COVID etc etc
Well if there are any long term changes to society as a result of BLM, then I am definitely ignorant of them
We won't know the long-term changes until beyond the scope of this thread.
We're barely even into the short-term since last year's protests & the accompanying cultural discussions.
Well if there are any long term changes to society as a result of BLM, then I am definitely ignorant of them
As eluded to above, long term by it's very definition isn't the change that happened overnight.
It's for example the thousands of HR departments up and down the country quietly re writing their recruitment specs because they realised that the satus quo was simply recruiting people from their background (e.g. must have a degree for a low level position, is inherently biasing your recruitment pool towards the kind of people who go to uni).
And the the uni admissions tutors thinking "well maybe DoE is just something well performing schools in nice areas push the kids through. And doesn't really differentiate them from inner city kids". Again, not a explicitly racist thing. But one of a long list that filters in favour of a white middle class background.
It'll be 20 years before the long term impact of thousands of those small changes is seen in the boardrooms of FTSE100 companies.
We won’t know the long-term changes until beyond the scope of this thread.
What I was really getting at is there are no programs / projects under way (that I know of) to address any aspects of the deep seated institutional racism which is embedded in UK society.
In the US, Biden is enacting some bills (eg voter rights) etc which at least do address some of the issues and will probably make a change. He's also promoted several people of colour (or whatever the right phrase is) to cabinet posistions etc.
Looking at this as an Engineer, we have 100s of metrics which measure racism from stop and search, % CEOs of FTSE 100s, % with degrees, % home ownership, cancer recovery rates, % incarcerated etc etc
So we have everything we need to measure before and after to measure progress. What we seem to be missing is the bit in the middle where you actively make changes, with the expectation that you'll improve the metrics when you next measure them - unless we only use the metric of 'number of statues of people associated with slavery', but I really don't think that's progress.
It’s for example the thousands of HR departments up and down the country quietly re writing their recruitment specs because they realised that the satus quo was simply recruiting people from their background (e.g. must have a degree for a low level position, is inherently biasing your recruitment pool towards the kind of people who go to uni).
Again, to me, that seems like bolting the door after the horse has bolted. I would wager that part of the reason we don't have black people represented in senior roles is caused by the problems with racial bias in education etc. You need things like Sure Start to target children when they're young and stop them falling behind etc. I don't see any programs like this addressing racism.
What did it ‘look like’ in 2001?
Again, to me, that seems like bolting the door after the horse has bolted. I would wager that part of the reason we don’t have black people represented in senior roles is caused by the problems with racial bias in education etc. You need things like Sure Start to target children when they’re young and stop them falling behind etc. I don’t see any programs like this addressing racism.
Didn't the House of Commons have some kind of awareness training planned last year that caused a massive angry gammony backlash amongst anti-woke, anti-antifa MPs? Real change has got to come from the top.
What did it ‘look like’ in 2001?
From my white, male, secular point of view? "Nothing to see, move along". I'm at the top of the UK privileged demographic tick list, but I hope my eyes are a bit more open now.
Real change has got to come from the top.
Yep, I'd expect to see goverment targets, similar to reducing poverty in children.
Eg by 2025 reduce the lag at Key Stage 2 from XX % to YY % for all black children in England etc.
And then then you'd expect the government to introduce programs to try and attain it etc.
I read the papers every day and can't recall any mention of a targeted intervention for racism since BLM.
It’s for example the thousands of HR departments up and down the country quietly re writing their recruitment specs because they realised that the satus quo was simply recruiting people from their background (e.g. must have a degree for a low level position, is inherently biasing your recruitment pool towards the kind of people who go to uni).
Again, to me, that seems like bolting the door after the horse has bolted.
That's as may be, but those HR departments don't get to set government policy, so they can only do what they can.
Here's the National Trust, post BLM, releasing their report addressing the fact that half their properties were built on slavery and pillage (for which, of course, they got roundly slated by the government as it pursued its policy of culture war and division):
Here's my local university's plan for widening participation amongst ethnic minorities and low-participation areas generally over the next 5 years:
There are no doubt plenty of other examples.
If your definition of 'making any kind of impact' rests solely on actions taken by this government, then you're going to be waiting a long time, and it will be very easy to say that BLM did nothing. We have an openly, enthusiastically racist prime minister, and a Home Secretary so servile she enacts racist policies that would have deported her own parents. We have a racist monarchy and a huge selection of racist press. It's going to have to come from elsewhere.
As above we don't know about long term changes yet, and yes progress has been slow even in the short term and lots of people are paying lip service to the concept, but dismissing it as being about statues is very reductive IMO.
It seems very strange to slate the movement for being ineffective rather than criticise society for not really listening.
Here are the stated aims of the UK BLM movement:
https://twitter.com/AllBlackLivesUK/status/1274295379018821634
Sorry Footflaps but I disagree.
Large scale change might be possible by government intervention in the form of targets and funding for various programs.
But a lot of what I heard was it wasn't just the PM calling people from Africa "piccaninnies". It was often the cumulation of low-level bias by people who didn't consider themselves racist that stack the deck.
It's not down to the government to tell HR departments "employ fewer white people". It's for HR departments to look at the companies employees and figure out why their existing policies have perhaps resulted in a racially biased outcome.
It’s not down to the government to tell HR departments “employ fewer white people”. It’s for HR departments to look at the companies employees and figure out why their existing policies have perhaps resulted in a racially biased outcome.
OK, different example: women in Engineering. Rare as rocking horse shit.
No amount of tweaking our interview process will every change that.
If you want more women in Engineering you have to figure out why they don't take STEM A-levels at the same rate as men and why so few choose to study Engineering at University.
It seems very strange to slate the movement for being ineffective rather than criticise society for not really listening.
I don't think questioning it's effectiveness and focus is the same as 'slating the movement'.
I just think it could become more effective and achieve something substantial rather than very little, which is what I think will be the result based on current progress / tactics.
To enact change you need specfifc measurable goals which are achievable in a realistic time frame. You then focus on those, using metrics to measure progess. You then pressure / lobby the government to adopt them. Not easy by any means, esp with the current government.
OK, different example: women in Engineering. Rare as rocking horse shit.
No amount of tweaking our interview process will every change that.
That's a totally different subject with different challenges, or have I missed something here?
Back to race and recruitment - how about if names were removed from CVs during the selection process? So recruiters were not aware of whether a candidate might have an "ethnic" name.
That's one little, positive thing a company can do by itself. But could also become law for organisations of a certain size.
That’s a totally different subject with different challenges, or have I missed something here?
You missed an Analogy.
Back to race and recruitment – how about if names were removed from CVs during the selection process? So recruiters were not aware of whether a candidate might have an “ethnic” name.
That’s one little, positive thing a company can do by itself. But could also become law for organisations of a certain size.
But if the real problem is that black people are 60% less likely to go to University or 300% more likely to have a criminal record, then you're missing the bigger issue - which was the point of the Analogy...
Blind interviewing only works if the issue was racial bias in the recruiters. If you recruit against absolute criteria and one segement of society is massively disadvantaged when trying to achieve that criteria, you won't end up with a representative cohort of employees....
But if the real problem is that black people are 60% less likely to go to University then you’re missing the bigger issue – which was the point of the Analogy…
I'm not sure that is "the real problem".
But if it is, that needs to continue to be addressed. AFAIK action has been taken to help more BAME pupils get to university. Further action should be focused on all disadvantaged pupils IMO, bringing class under the diversity & inclusion umbrella.
I’m not sure that is “the real problem”.
On just about every measurable metric (inc resussitation in A&E*) black people fair worse than white people. At every stage in education they are behind.
By the time you get to employing graduates (as an example) the pool you have to choose from has been filtered and filtered to remove black people.
Yes, great to have a fair interview process, but it's very late in the game to inact any real change.
* IIRC Their lips turn grey not blue, so all the standard medical training is racially biased which results in more deaths as people miss the symptoms till their condition has progressed to a worse state.
Maybe through crises during and post-Covid people will see that their structural problems are down to class and not identity. Lots of NHS workers are from minority groups. NF and Tommeh have had sfa to say this year. Nonsense like the (Labour commissioned) Parekh Report banging on about Britain becoming a 'community of communities' (aka ghettos) and the press forever pushing identity politics don't help but then I think people have become more skeptical. Incidentally, it's quite amusing to see the Tories winning in the front bench minority identities contest.
Maybe through crises during and post-Covid people will see that their structural problems are down to class and not identity.
I don't think you can disentangle the two - for as long as the current structure disadvantages POC, equality is an unreachable goal.
That’s as may be, but those HR departments don’t get to set government policy, so they can only do what they can.
Some of the biggest employers rewriting those job specs ARE the government, or at least, the public sector.
It will take time, it might not be my generation, but for my kids generation, racism is abhorrent and they see people, not races.
I'm astonished so many on here don't see that slow change occurring. It might not be a perfect instant solution, it might not suit the doom and disaster mongers amongst us, but it's s happening.
I read all those one liners then took a look at other threads.
Found it hard too differentiate for a while 😆
You can get help you know.
It will take time, it might not be my generation, but for my kids generation, racism is abhorrent and they see people, not races.
Being 'colour-blind' and thinking racism is bad isn't enough though.
Maybe through crises during and post-Covid people will see that their structural problems are down to class and not identity.
It's both. Poor black and asian people are doubly disadvantaged.
But if the real problem is that black people are 60% less likely to go to University or 300% more likely to have a criminal record, then you’re missing the bigger issue – which was the point of the Analogy…
That was the example I gave.
If you write a job spec and say "must have an (unnecessary*) degree and no criminal record**" you're writing something that isn't racist but has a racially biased outcome.
*Lots of jobs don't need a degree, even my old lab job needed a chemistry degree when in reality an A-level would have been just fine. I'd argue that if you recruit people with degrees into a lot of them they'll be bored and want to leave, which was true of that lab it has quite a high turnover of people going to work elsewhere.
**Especially in a world where people like to say "H&S gone mad". Why does this statement always exclude speeding etc. I'd argue that points on your driving licence is just as good an indication you're not likely to be able to follow simple site rules than being caught with small amounts of drugs, graffiti, having a knife or other stereotypical crimes.
It will take time, it might not be my generation, but for my kids generation, racism is abhorrent and they see people, not races.
Another point that was made repeatedly (and I'm not sure whether I entirely agree with it either though, so this is a bit of devils advocacy). Is that you absolutely should see peoples races. Being 'colourblind' and ruling out a candidate for not having a degree and having a criminal record as mentioned above has just the same outcome as ruling them out on more overtly racist grounds. You should infact look slightly more closely at an individuals background and cut them some slack if that background meant they were less likely to have a degree.
Yes, great to have a fair interview process, but it’s very late in the game to inact any real change.
That was one granular example.
Your general thrust seems to be that small improvements are pointless because it's such a big problem (which I agree it is)?
I have a view on this despite not being affected by racism directly.
I think that humans are indeed predisposed to distrust and think negatively of out-groups. If a country is totally white, would everyone love each other? Of course not, they'd find something else. In the same way that we aren't species-ist, because there's only one developed species on the planet.
In the last few centuries we've moved on from racism as a pseudo-scientific theory that black people were somehow inherently less evovled or more primitive than whites, for the most part. What we're left with is racial discrimination and it's joined the general barrel of shittiness along with sexism, xenophobia (plenty of shite directed at eastern Europeans after all, who're as white as us), Islamophobia and the rest.
If we can work towards dissipating that by 2050 we'll all be in a far better place. And for all the shittiness we see on a daily basis, there are also good people doing the right thing - don't forget that.
This is the kind of political fearmongering that drives racism.
Frankly I think in 30 years there will have been a backlash against the current populist driven racism, but I fear how far it will go before that happens.
The real war is being fought, and currently won, by the 1%ers against the majority, the nationalistic narrative is the distraction to cover it up.
No it isn't.
It's a reality that the west is going to become increasingly irrelevant over the next century, China, India and South East Asia were always the strongest economies in the world and western imperialism was blip in that narrative.
Now either the west can start to think about that now and interact with the newly developed world and it's myriad of non-democratic cultures in a healthy manner or they can - as I suspect they will - resort to petty nationalism.
What a lot of people on here seem to think is that racism is a one way street, i.e. 'whites' victimising 'blacks'. It actually can go both ways.
I grew up in inner city Manchester in the 80's and blacks actively persecuted whites and vice versa, Indians fought with ****stani's (over stuff that was happening in their countries would you believe?!) and occasionally everyone would fight with everyone in one way or another ....there were areas that were a no go for white lads or anyone who wasn't black. The Irish were also thrown in the mix at the height of the troubles too. There were awful problems and tensions in schools, on the streets and in the pubs / clubs. You get the gist.
That said, i've still got a great bunch of mates from school...Caribbean lads and girls (incidentally, they do great wedding parties!), ****stani lads, Indian lads and caucasian....some fell by the way the wayside in terms of crime and prison...others who saw that if they segregate themselves they'll be stuck in the hood, a few did, many didn't....
To me, what it boils down to is the media love to create these divisions and people either knowingly or unknowingly buy into for whatever reason. In my experience of life and i've been fortunate enough to have a life where i've travelled, broke out of working class Manchester via education and a change in city... Melanin is irrelevant, education is key, a small percentage of people are truly nasty and bitter and the large majority are generally nice, but can be swayed and some people are just absolutely sound.
The minute one starts putting race in as an argument, both parties have lost. How can people expect to move on when the race barrier is immediately placed as an obstacle. BLM has been proof of this, you can never have equality when people put subsets into anything.
Assuming the Chinese haven't got us under control in the next 20-30 years, i'd like to think that people will wise up about this segregation, history is history...the only thing we can do is ensure stuff that caused problems doesn't happen again. If we stick to these political groups who advocate division albeit subtly we won't have moved on much at all.
I do believe things have gotten better over the last 20 years....don't read the papers, stay away from the news and just be sound with people. Thats my input!! 🙂
Lamp I agree with a lot of that, racism is endemic in all parts of society. To truly move beyond racism and race politics we need to move beyond grouping people. BLM has been a fully understandable reaction to horrific institutional racism in the states which might actually reduce a little bit of a result, it's also deepened some divides and increased the them and us mentality as well.
We're in period of regression in the West which will eventually turn back into progression, hopefully the back sliding will not be significant in the face of improvements since the 60s. It might have woken up a few in cost bubbles with the realisation a significant part of our population is still very sexist, racist and generally bigoted.
Assuming the Chinese haven’t got us under control in the next 20-30 years
Hasn’t that been the sentiment in the West for centuries now?
Or is it finally at our door?
It’s a reality that the west is going to become increasingly irrelevant over the next century, China, India and South East Asia were always the strongest economies in the world and western imperialism was blip in that narrative.
That's an extraordinarily simplistic view in my opinion.
or they can – as I suspect they will – resort to petty nationalism
Well given the EU goes from strength to strength, especially without us, I think this is exactly what they are not doing.
Or is it finally at our door?
It's fine as long as they don't all jump at the same time.
The experience I'm going to share here isn't perhaps totally relevant today, but was only 10-12 years ago. I grew up and live in a very rural county where you didn't, and still don't very often meet people from other ethnic backgrounds than 'white British', particularly so in the very rural circles I mostly mix in. Some may point at that as an issue in itself, which perhaps it is, but that's a very complex matter to address, and it must be taken into account that there is a lack of opportunity and disparity between average wages and property price here already, which affects an awful lot of people. Rural poverty and deprivation are very real.
Anyway, having grown up among farmers, grand parents, tradesmen, and generally rural folk who'd had little contact with people of ethnicities other than their own, ignorant use of racist language, and perhaps some prejudice was always present. You'd hear (and still do) the odd outdated term used, you'd hear talk of someone seeing a black or Asian person for example as it was unusual. Essentially the countryside seemed to be stuck a generation behind urban areas, or so I thought...
In 2008 I started a course at a technical college in the Midlands, perhaps an hour out of Birmingham, and what I heard astonished me. For all my expectations and assumptions that a lot of the other lads on the course would have had a much more diverse and multicultural upbringing than my own owing to their respective locations, and would, as a result have much more liberal and tolerant views on matters of race and ethnicity than a lot of my peers, the reverse was in fact true.
These were lads who'd grown up all over the West Midlands, gone to multicultural schools and had a far broader experience than my own. But on the whole they held the most racist views and shared their active dislike for certain races races or religions in a manner I'd never heard before. I was frankly stunned, I thought I'd need to watch my tongue, but what they came out with made the lazy and outdated terminology I'd heard up until then seem like nothing. They passionately disliked certain groups, one lad was even convicted of a race related crime after a taxi scam turned nasty on a night out and he was heard to make some remark on video during the ensuing fight with the taxi driver (and his associates in the following car).
I still don't really understand how people who'd lived in integrated and multicultural communities for 20+ years could hold such actively negative views towards people of different race or religion, because they weren't ignorant, isolated or living in monocultures. It did seem that some groups perhaps isolated themselves (maybe through fear?) and created their own closed communities, even no-go areas, which may have exacerbated issues.
Now mixed groups are forced together in towns, I don't think that means they integrate much at all.
When its a struggle to get by in life, any outsider will be seen as a competitor. Its easy to find someone or some group to blame for life's problems.
But if mixed groups share a common experience or goal, then things are likely to be better. Each side is not seen as Other.
