"Patriots" Hell thread
WhimsicalChristian
Shipmate
in The Styx
I've received some confusing advice from hosts on the patriots hell thread. One to be quiet. One demanding an answer within 72 hours.
What would you like me to do.
What would you like me to do.
Comments
"What is a First Nations white person ? I.e which ethnic group are you talking about ? I am not Australian and therefore maybe unaware - otherwise this looks like racist trolling and I will ban you. Please provide an answer to m question within 72 hours of this post.
Doublethink, Admin"
In Australia a First Nations person is an a person or people who were in Australia first.
So a First Nations white person is a person or people who were in their country of origin first.
This was response to Sighthound talking about racism and the English language.
My question was genuine:
"To continue with the language theme, is there a term that the left would consider acceptable in this day and age for First Nations white people to say they had pride in their cultural heritage without being considered racist?"
I think the hosts responses imply no. There isn't such a term in the English language anymore for the left.
I have a question too. Was Dafyds response in relation to Sighthound discussing racism or was it a response to my question? I'm just trying to clarify whether discussing racism against non white people is ok out of epiphanies, but not discussing racism against white people.
The trigger for my planking last time for two weeks was because Bullgfrog was abusing white people and I pointed out his comment was racist.
So I'm guessing discussing racism against non-white people is acceptable outside ephiphanies but not discussing racism against white people?
And I'm really not trolling. This is a genuine issue. Racism is judging someone on the colour of their skin. Having grown up in Asia, white people definitely suffer from racism too.
The thing about complaining about racism against white people is that it looks massively disproportionate to the effects of racism on non-white people especially in white majority countries, and therefore it looks like an attempt to distract from and play down racism against non-white people. Attempting to play down racism against non-white people is racist.
You came on to a thread in which people are angry about the very real harm and damage caused by far-right riots in the UK, to complain about terminology for some subsection of white people in a different country altogether. That really looks like an attempt to change the subject from the racism of the far-right.
But that wasn't the subject of the Hell thread. It was about racist attacks on immigrants here in the UK.
The murderer of Henry Nowak and those family members who tried to cover for him, falsely accused his victim of a racist attack, which the police initially believed.
Everyone was appalled at that.
Equally, everyone was appalled by the brutal knife attack in Belfast and also by the racist thuggery which followed with people being burnt out of their homes simply on account of their ethnic origin.
Those were the issues, not whether 'the left' (however defined) allows room for pride in one's identity (however defined).
I know people 'on the left' who are proud of their Scottish, Welsh or Irish identity. Fine.
I think it's high time pride in English identity was 'reclaimed' as it's been soured to some extent by its hijacking by the far right.
There was a lot of racist blather a while back when some pundits denied that Sunak could consider himself 'English' in any way.
It's not that you are unwelcome to comment from the other side of the world more a case that you didn't 'read the room' and risked derailing the thread by failing to appreciate the level of concern about racist rioting and thuggery.
Here in this scattered sunburnt land there are many “white” individuals of Aboriginal descent,in particular in Victoria and Tasmania. Tasmanian Aboriginals are descended entirely from sealers ( British) who sired children ( and occasionally married) Tasmanian Aboriginal women. Back in my youth(60+years ago) the received wisdom was that the Tasmanian Aboriginals were extinct ( after the death of Truganini in the 1860s) and that there were not “ fullblood” Aboriginals left in Victoria.
Here in Oz one’s Aborginality is dependent on factors: (1)the ability to trace oe’sancestry (easily done if born and raised in a particular community and identified with a “mob” ( tribe or clan) (2) recognition and acknowlegement as one of a tribe or clan by community elders (in New South Wales known as “ Uncle “or “Aunty”.
It is also important to know that in the bad old days ( well into the60s) that light skinned children were frequently removed from their parentsand adopted out to white familes. They usually were not told about their background. Less white kids ( referred to as “ half caste”) were often also removed and sent to institutions such as the Cootamundra Girls Home ( in the town of that name in southern NSW) or theKinchella Boys Home on the mid north coast of NSW near Kempsey). There they were ill treated , forbidden to speak their native languages and ultimately sent off to work as domestics, stockmen and labourers. There they were whole aim of the exercise ( euphemistically “ assimilation” was to erase their heritage.
However times move on and many “white”Australians have embraced their Aboriginal heritage. Some claims have been disputed ( such as that of Jackie Lambie who is a Federal senator from Tasmania:I don’t know the right or the wrong of that.
So yes, here in Oz there are “white” First Nations people and for them ( especially those adopted or separated from birth families) there can be problems of identity.
I often think of one of my uncles ( of very dark skin like my Dad and both of Anglo-Celtic origin). Bart was a mining engineer up in the Pilbara ( far north Western Australia ) and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan in his views). As far as he was concerned the only “real”Aboriginals were the very dark, nomadic, non Emglish speaking ( unless living at a mission) in the far northand northwest of the continent.
More like twenty dollars’ worth but something for your consideration ( and edification I hope).
@WhimsicalChristian were / are you talking about light skinned people with Australian Aboriginal DNA - or were you using “First Nations” to mean something else ?
By that understanding, white people are unlikely to be subject to racism. Prejudice or bigotry, yes, but not racism.
I can’t say how widespread this particular understanding of “racism” is among those in the social sciences, but I have definitely encountered it, primarily in the context of it being inappropriate to describe prejudice or bigotry of people of color against white people in the US as “racism.”
But you're in Australia, talking about Australians.
Elsewhere on these boards @Alan Cresswell has related an incident when canvassing politically in Scotland and being told to 'go back where he came from' and stop taking jobs off local Scottish people. I assume that Alan is of English heritage and living north of the border.
Is that 'racism' or is it simply 'bigotry' or 'prejudice'?
As a Welshman, well, Anglo-Welsh if we want to make that distinction, I've sometimes received jibes about a predilection for physical relations with sheep.
Is that racist?
It's unpleasant and unwelcome- as well as boring and unimaginative - but it's nothing compared to what many people of colour put up with. There's no comparison.
I can think of instances where Welsh Nationalist types have said very offensive things about English people. That's equally wrong.
FWIW we had a discussion here recently about Scottish identity. I observed that if I moved to Scotland I wouldn't consider myself Scottish but British of Anglo-Welsh heritage who happened to live in Scotland.
I'm pleased though, that some Shipmates would extend the epithet 'New Scot' to people from elsewhere who'd settled there.
We could get into 'civic' as opposed to ethnic or cultural considerations.
These things are complicated and can be contentious but as long as we don't start 'othering' others and harassing them then sure, it's fine to take a pride in one's origins.
If 'proud I am of Welsh blood' as Henry Morgan the pirate is ventriloquised as saying in a song my father sang, it doesn't mean someone can't be proud of being Croatian or Chinese or Walloon.
Morgan was a nasty piece of work, mind.
I think @WhimsicalChristian's comments could be germane to a discussion about cultural and ethnic identity in general terms - but for my money they felt inappropriate and irrelevant in a discussion about racist violence. It could have implied sympathy with the rioters.
'What other recourse have they but to riot?' sort of thing.
A Methodist minister whose church abuts the spot where the bus was torched said on Radio 4 how the young lads who were rioting told him, 'They're slitting our throats ...' to which he replied, 'C'mon, you know that there was only one guy involved in that...'
Nevertheless, he did say that these kids felt they needed someone to 'listen' to them - which is a fair point but not one that justifies racist violence.
The far right is adept at stoking up divisions and exploiting them. That's what's going on here.
From Wikipedia: The Métis[a] are a mixed-ancestry Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They have a shared history and culture, deriving from specific mixed European (primarily French, Scottish, and English) and Indigenous ancestry (primarily Cree with strong kinship to Cree people and communities), which became distinct through ethnogenesis by the mid-18th century, during the early years of the North American fur trade.
In Canada, the Métis, with a population of 624,220 as of 2021, are one of three legally recognized Indigenous peoples in the Constitution Act, 1982, along with the First Nations and Inuit.
From a Canadian perspective, "First Nations white person" is nonsensical. There is no such category.
The most charitable construction I can place on WhimsicalChristian's post concerns a lack of vocabulary. I can think of two terms in Canadian conversation which may be useful.
HarryCH had already noted one: Métis (although as a side note, I'm not sure what the qualifier "attractive" has to do in this context.) The Métis are a distinct indigenous people. A small example of Métis culture can be seen in beadwork: beads were used in floral patterns drawn from French embroidery/jacquard weaving. It's truly its own third thing, a culture borne of European and indigenous influences.
Another useful word may be settler, which is often used to describe non-indigenous people. This recognizes that not all non-indigenous people here are 'white'.
Sojourner's comment is true of Canada's current state as well. DNA has nothing to do with indigenous identity, and it's borderline gross and offensive to introduce that to the conversation. (It reminds me of when "legitimate" and "illegitimate" used to be categories on birth certificates.) Indigenous identity is conferred by recognition by a First Nation. If they say you belong, you belong. DNA results or ancestry charts are not seen as meaningful indicators of indigenous identity.
If so that would seem to fundamentally misunderstand the differences in history, power, and sheer numbers between colonised peoples and European countries that did the colonising and associated genocides.
Just to note that applying that in the Jewish/Israeli context has caused real problems!
I've mentioned I think before on these boards a lady visiting from New Zealand I met some years ago in Northumberland who was very excited that later in the week she was going to Scotland for the first time, the country from which her forbears had emigrated a hundred years or so previously.
It was quite obvious from what she was saying that she imagined that about 5 miles north of Berwick-on-Tweed the tarmac stopped, water came from pumps rather than taps, there was minimal sanitation and that everyone lived in conditions like on some sort of reservation. The notion that they might be just like the people in Northumberland but with a different accent and sense of identity was quite alien to her.
In Africa I remember hearing someone from either the USA or Canada ask an Irish couple working there where they had came from. They answered, obviously, "Ireland'. To that the other person then asked 'No, I meant, where did you originally come from, before that?' to which they replied, somewhat non-plussed, 'Nowhere. We've always been there'.
Europe is natively full of identities, majority and minority populations and ethnic tensions but there is not the cultural chasm between cultures that are seriously and fundamentally different from each other that you get in countries where there has been European settlement. These topics look different here from how they look to shipmates from other continents.
This why the terms First Nation, and indigenous are used in a more specific way to refer to the peoples of colonised territories.
It's also problematic in dealing with large populations of the "lost children" so to speak--those who have had their culture stripped away from them and are not happy about that, but see no way to regain legitimacy in the eyes of the "official" authorities, be they native/First Nations/whatever, or governmental. This is a real problem for those who have been stolen (forcibly adopted) and for those whose ancestors migrated to urban areas and as a result cannot prove their connections to the ancestral territory/community. It creates a kind of exile within an exile, if you see what I mean--you don't belong to the majority culture, but neither may you belong officially to the culture of your ancestors--indeed, there are those who will stomp on you, metaphorically speaking, for daring to suggest you might have any connection. And the stompers are sometimes utterly unconnected with any of the parties involved.
I’m sorry, @Enoch, but one or two examples involving a handful of people aren’t evidence of what “most people” in places you don’t live “do not appreciate and get wrong.”
The "First Nations" discussion here continues to derail the above thread because it introduces a completely different conceptual framework from a completely different continent into a thread that is about racist violence in the UK.
Meanwhile, a child has been murdered, homes have burned. Racist mobs have arisen, and people are giving in to far right propaganda.
@WhimsicalChristian was asked to explain their comments here and has attempted to do so, perhaps inevitably sparking further debate about what the term 'First Nations' means.
Like you I fail to see how relevant that is to a discussion of racist violence and far right agitation here in the UK other than perhaps an unsavoury hint on @WhimsicalChristian's part that white people are somehow entitled to protest violently against what she appears to perceive as left wing attacks on their white identity.
I hope I'm wrong on that score.
But the discussion here isn't derailing the Hell thread but facilitating separate debate.
On a point of information, Henry Nowak was 18 when he was tragically and brutally murdered, an age which doesn't classified him as a 'child' in UK law. That doesn't make it any less brutal or less tragic.
His killer and his killer's brother falsely accused Nowak of abusing and attacking them racially. Police initially believed them and sickeningly, handcuffed and arrested him as he struggled for breath, dying of stab wounds.
There are of course serious questions about the police response, both 'on the spot' and afterwards and those issues are being investigated.
Meanwhile, racist mobs went on the rampage and populist far right leaders did not condemn the violence. In fairness, some of their supporters did.
A subsequent knife attack by a Sudanese migrant in Belfast was followed by attacks on the homes of migrants by largely Loyalist mobs.
The latter of course triggered memories of 'The Troubles' when sectarian violence and attacks on people and property were all too lethally common.
That's the context.
In that context I found @WhimsicalChristian's remarks inappropriate and insensitive. She seemed more concerned about the perceived 'madness' of what she perceives as left-wing attacks on white identity than the spectre of pogroms against migrants and people of colour.
She has been given the opportunity to explain herself here thereby not derailing the Hell thread.
I apologise. I absolutely condemn the violence that was happening.
Taken at face value, the answer to your question
Is yes, of course there is. Though generally white people do this by being proud of their cultural heritage rather than specifically their skin colour. For example, the celebrations of Irish heritage that take place on St Patrick’s day - or Shakespeare festivals, or the Latvian celebrations of Jāņi or a thousand other examples.
This is because white people, like black people, are not a monolith. You said upthread that racism is about skin colour. That is not strictly true, there is straight “colourist” prejudice where people are more disparaged the darker their skin. But a European from the Mediterranean can have darker skin tone that a mixed race person from New York and still be read as “white”.
Racism is about seeing one cultural group as superior to another - and then identifying whatever marker as a signifier of membership of that group. It is also why religious attribution is so often used as a paper thin disguise for racism. It is also why this was fundamentally racist, despite the perpetrator being too ignorant to accurately identify his victim. It was her brown skin and looking different that led him to target her. European countries claim to have problems with xenophobia, though noticeably it is rarely Canadians, New Zealanders or other light skinned folk who are targeted. Though we did see hate crimes directed at white Europeans after Brexit.
Systemic racism is where the history of a country and, usually, its current customs practices selectively disadvantage specific - usually minority - cultural and ethnic groups. This is not what is happening to the white majority in white majority countries. There are some exceptions, in the UK for example show people and travellers are widely discriminated against as a cultural group - but they are not being discriminated against because they are white.
A frequent problem people seem to have is understanding that fairness is not about everyone having the same, it’s about equity. Applying the rule, everyone must have a penis to train as a doctor (the position of most universities in the 18th century) can be said to be “fair” in that the same rule applies to everyone. But it is discriminatory, in that it requires an arbitrary standard unrelated to role that excludes half the population.
Saying everyone who can meet the academic standard can go to the university, as they did in the early 1900s, looks “fair” because it offers to everyone. But fees mean that it is in fact only open to the rich, and that means that rich get a monopoly of better paying work and social status and thereby hoard the wealth whilst the poor stay poor - this is structural inequality.
When you have kept one group poor e.g. black people in the US and the UK then that structural inequality also becomes systemic racism.
Equity is when you pursue an attempt rebalance this, e.g. providing grants for people with lower income to study - but not providing those grants to the wealthy. In this site Epiphanies is pursuing some level of equity by trying to privilege the voices of of marginalised or historically discriminated groups in discussions about them - this is why detailed and serious discussions of racism belong in Epiphanies.
The belief that because you because you have not used a specifically racist, sexist, ablist, lgbtq+phobic or sectarian religious slur - you cannot be saying something bigoted is an error.
White grievance narratives are fundamentally racist, narratives that suggest that all members of a particular religion or racial or cultural group are inherently undesirable in some aspect are inherently bigoted and usually racist. They are covered by our first commandment and if you repeat this material again you will be banned. Unconscious bias is a known phenomenon, we all have blind spots, but the hope is once you are made aware you reflect on and alter your perspective.
I am not going to continue to re-explain this again and again, if you or anyone else has trouble understanding this there is a whole internet you can use to educate yourselves.
Doublethink, Admin
We have enough trouble in this thread, without borrowing more!
I responded to a question not being asked, about conversational categories for people in colonized countries. I suppose I was misled by the use of "First Nations", which is used in the context of colonized countries. Whether one thinks the United Kingdom is being "colonized" would be deeply problematic and likely racist.
Anyone who wants a term for French culture that excludes The Three Musketeers is both racist and extremely stupid.
The background of my question was that in Australia, in the last five years or so we have had increasing protests and clashes on Australia Day, our national public holiday to celebrate our nation.
Australian flags were even banned from being sold from supermarkets for Australia Day celebrations.
There was a foiled bomb attempt this year by a right winger.
So it is an increasingly polarised problem for people just are just grateful and proud to be Australian and want to fly an Australian flag to celebrate their country. It's dangerous to do so unless you're happy to be cancelled by the left wingers, or grouped with the right wingers being racist.
It's an issue that divides friendships, which is very sad. But I guess that's just the world we live in nowadays. The centrists are caught in the maelstrom of the culture wars.
As far as this Antipodean can see no legislation ever passed: more of a L(ocal) Area) A(rea) thing and more likely to do with banning of flying of the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island flags. Don’t know where you got the idea that legislation was ever passed.
I am concerned that dogwhistle racist talking points are being repeated on this site.
In all seriousness, please explain.
Sealioning is also known as "just asking questions" or JAQing off, if that helps.
Dogwhistles are rhetorical tropes and phrases that are used to make extremism sound moderate to people who aren't familiar with them, but signal group affinity to other extremists. A classic one is "family values" as code for shitting on single parents, working mothers, LGBTQ+ folk, sex workers etc etc
There are links to explanations for each of these in @Doublethink 's post above.
But are multiple questions always designed to block discussion? Now that I think about it, I have observed people trying to respond to multiple verbal barrages as part of a dogpile, especially on the Old Ship, and then being castigated from above….
I used to work with someone like that. I think the idea was to drive you to lose patience, say you would do the thing yourself, while they maintained 'they were just trying to be clear'.
That article includes the comic strip from which the term “sealioning” is derived.
Is accurate, or a repetition of misinformation that constitutes a racist dog whistle.
I note the sequence of white people should be able to be proud of their own culture, reference to the (possibly mythical) Australian flag banning as an example of white people not being allowed to be proud - that would appear to imply that people with Australian citizenship who are not white are in some sense not truly Australian.
Ah, I can tell you that what @WhimsicalChristian has posted is an absolute, out-and-out, blatant, what other adjective can I use, lie. And (check, FD, this isn't Hell, or if it were, I'd say what I think of trollers who peddle this, er, check again, FD, it's not Hell), misinformation about Australia.
It was one of the large chains of supermarkets. Coles or Woolworths? Can try find it for you if necessary.
A decision by a single private company not to sell a particular item is not 'Australian flags were even banned from being sold from supermarkets for Australia Day celebrations.'