Is Black Britain an illusion?
www.charcoalink.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/why-black-britain-is-an-illusion/
Please read Charcoalink’s article before reading mine. Ta!
I love Charcoalink, she is intelligent self assured, and proud. I applaud her, she is ambitious and articulate. However her summation of my community in this post just hurt!! It was painful, i don’t think she could have gotten away with roasting any of the other british ethnic minorities.
A lot of what she said i feel, was worthwhile, but some just smacked of an outsider who had no knowledge of the community, and that is what stang, a white woman would be torn down for being “priveiledged” and thinking that one glance could deftly explain the complexities of one minority group, without study.
When my grandparents generation came to this country, they expected the welcome mat, that white colonialists had brainwashed them to expect. They were confronted with a country that scorned them. Landlords that could charge a whole wage packet for substandard housing. Police who would beat and arrest at will and whim whomever they pleased. Employers could discriminate, banks did not lend and morgages were denied not on inability to pay, but on simple discrimination.
So My community fought, they rioted in the streets for equality for all, they fought and lobbied for employment laws that protect us all today, they fought for equality across the board. Housing, schooling,employment and i for one think those are pretty important. WHY did we fight for equality, because we are a proud people We came to work and do well and we found in the late 1940’s that we could not do well because there was discrimination and opression that strangled our development.
For the Majority of the 1960’s I have been told, by relatives. that the thinking was in schools and all educational facilities, that all black children were educationally sub-normal on account of strong west indian accents, those children who did not “bleach” the sound of their mother country from their tongues, were left to languish in the classes for the educationally sub normal classes regardless of ability. Teachers were those born at the earliest 1930 or there abouts, so we can safely assume that they were brought up on tales of empire savages and slaves, it’s not a streach to see how they must have reacted to boisterous west indian children with their stecatto brash accents. So for the best part of the sixties a whole generation was written off.
In the 1970’s to early 1980’s we had the sus laws. Where british police had the right to stop, search or arrest anyone on the suspicion that they , had been, or would be involved in a crime. Black people were targeted on amazing scales and this erupted with the new cross fire. My community had had enough of the flagrant disregard of the establishment.
The new cross fire.
A party held not far from new cross gate station. Held by a West Indian family for a youngster. It was being held in a home. suddenly the house is ablaze, numerous children and young teens are seriously injured. 13 young teenagers die. The fire makes the news. The police investigate claims from injured people that there was a petrol bomb thrown into the living room. The national front had increased activity in the area and several people decide to mobilise the community into campaigning. 2nd march 20,000 black people marched for the lost youths Throughout central london. They campaigned and still campaign for justice two inquests have happened recently i am not quite sure of the exact years but we do care for our community and for our youths.
http://www.newstatesman.com/199902120015 -Darcus Howe’s feelings on the events of the night.
The kind of immigrants we had during the 1940’s to the 1970’s were predominantly families, large families. We took low paid jobs, often beneath our qualifications because we had familes to feed, it was more important that families stayed together, ate together and had a good quality of life that jet set at the exepense of having no quality of life.
Assimilation of the mid 1980’s to present. yes my community is assimilated as far as black people can assimilate. Why? because That is how our colonial background has shaped us, we have no language ties that force difference with our white neighbours, we have no religious difference that separate us from our white neighbours. Some black men (a few black women also) like having sex white people, who are we to stop them? West Indians love each other and their heritage, but we suffer a disadvantage that other minorities do not have.
Our Creole heritage ( when i use the word creole i mean it in the caribbean way not the american way) means we have some of our african traditions, but all, they have been corrupted, diffused and changed, our heritage has been anglicised, we have no language of our own “patois” is understood by all. Other minority groups at least have the option of keeping a bond by using the exclusive mother tongue, we do not share that option.
But to say that we are not proud to be black, because we utilise the term “black british”, is asinine. I am black, I am british, not untruthful, but scratch the surface and i am more than happy to tell you about my heritage. The fact that i am born and bred in England, does not neutralise my west indian culture, west indians cannot be neuteured. We are too proud if any thing.
To intervene or not????
Hello, i’m back after a long hiatus!! i am revitalised and ready to blog!
What i am aim to discuss is the matter of where the boundaries of personal and public behaviour meet!
When people’s behaviour become erractic and maybe even incling towards mental or physical breakdown/ damage, when do we as outsiders intervene? Psychologist and many an older person will atest to the general public’s reluctance is evidence of modern societies decay and malaise.
We are very risk averse as a community. we would see our young people bullied in the streets, see them tear each other up and fight, very rarely does anyone apprehend them or admonish them; yet we cry about the rise of street gangs, not recognising the link. we allow these gangs when we allow kids to fight and be bullied without consequence, we have become scared of our own children and gangs prey on that.
These gand leaders prey on our kids like paedo’s they groom them, give gifts, create an artificial community with it’s own rules and codes and modes of behaviour. It’s a sense of belonging and a strong community these kids get in these gangs , whilse we outside the gangs fail to give the kids a decent community on the outside.
when growing up, as well as being made aware of manners and correct attire, i had a community with it’s eyes trained at me. if i was involved in any mistemeanour the elders of my west indian community would have the news back to my various family members faster than text messages,twitter, facebook or any modern innovation. Futhermore my parents would have been dissapointed and upset and my elder relatives would have been furious that i had shamed them.
But now well some people think they know better than to raise children in the manner that people have been raisng them for millenia/ or centuries depending or not you believe in creationism.
The effect of a community was secondary in my development of a sense of moral and civil behaviour.But for some that extra support could be that extra protection from harm.
If you saw someone exhibiting strange or worrying behaviour what would you do? Now i am not including in this anything like dangerous,violent or psychotic behaviours just to be clear. would you approach them? would you call a police community support officer, would you just run like hell, would youwalk by and then worry about them and what happened to them.
It reminds me of the case last year of the cyclist that died in a street, he was passed by 3 cars and no-body until the 4th car thought to call for help, he lay dying in a street and nobodygave him any aid.
it just makes me sad, he was somebodies son, maybe husband, maybe father. But we are so risk averse that 3 cars drove past and this man expired, because of a lack of altruism.
so in that sprit today i intervened in some troubling events. I walked uo to see two grown women and they were arguing and a sullen child was being clutched by one woman, they child was kicking her.
The general gist was that one woman was talling the other that she shouldn’t tell her child off. the mother was furious….. i had to step in. the child was wild and contraditing the mother was just making matters worse. the childless woman was advocating that the child would learn what was right from what was wrong by not being informed, she was reasoning that shouting was just barbaric. Great i love it i thought, undermind the child’s primary caregiver right in front of the child! she was not smacking, nor beating, not even pointing.
so i simply walked up and offered ” lady you’re being very inapropriate, she is not hitting the child, she’s shouting because being kicked hurts and that gets the message across!” the mother looked gratified, the childless woman gave me a dirty look and just threw her hands up and left.
But what would her version of the world end up like? where people just let children do what they wanted and they made up their own morality? But then again this woman was the exception, she was doing exactely what i am advocating, but it shows that some people care enough about the society in which we raise our children, which is always a good thing.
Women have a right to a decision… not acording to some men.
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2009/05/pro-life.html
(please read the above post at field negro before reading mine! ta!)
Hello, good day to you from England. I was rather bemused to see the anti abortionists protesting at the catholic university where President obama was being presented with an honourary degree. they were almost exclusively male. they held up a banner of a virgin mary with her halo shining out. Mary was the ideal, she was so young she did as she was told, she didn’t question, and she could be controlled, by the man around her( well i wouldn’t argue with the holy sprit but…). These men are a throwbacks to the age when women did not have that much enfranchisement, when you had to have your husbands permission to take a job or futher your education. They probably want a woman in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, cooking all day so when they get home they just glide into a chair eat and sleep (men had it sooooo good).
Let’s have some real talk now, Mary has a halo because you believe that she never had sex. well most women in a “spot of trouble” have had sex, or intercourse. Mary was a vessel used to deliver a male child, god promised her that there would be no trouble and he would provide. Most women (dammit all women) become pregnant through men’s seed. some men do not and refuse to provide for children.Our society would probably begrudge that woman raising a child on the benefits offered by the government, but these hicks would deny her the right to the decision.
Abortion is an emotive subject because we were all at some point fetal, in-utero and thus we may have been aborted. but these men will never be in the same situation as a woman, they will never have something grow inside of them and develop into a separate and completely different entity, men could , sometimes do run away from the situation unlikely that many women get that chance to abandon their children.
These men probably say, well have the baby but have it adopted, REALLY THAT OLD CHESNUT!!!! that old one still doing the rounds…… our social care homes /orphanages are overun and they are under resourced by a few hundred thousand pounds if not million. Each and every child in those “homes” needs love and families but what chances do they have… with the newly born being first choice for adoptive parents, there will always be those left behind without families and is that anymore desirable than evrything else. but hey if you get some kids that yound you can brainwash them all with agreeing with you.
these are probably the same men with the same conservative viewpoints, who moan about single mothers and their supposed moral incontinenece. but they would want to deny that woman the right to make a decision about her own fertility.
If you do not agree with abortion, dont have one, The catholic church have no currency with me. their leader is a 70- something year old virgin, with no idea of what a healthy adult relationship is, (here’s a clue nothing to do with young alter boys!!!) they have yet to appoint a senior figure who is female in sex they are living in a fashion that does not uphold or reflect their supposed family values. these priests and bishops leave their family units and become men who exist only for spriture.how can they possibly understand the troubles the average family man, who burns with passion but has to resist to save the sanctity of their marriages? these dried up men who for the past 60 years abused the children in their care world wide (america, ireland being the cases i know of)they elected a nazi to become their leader but they condemn women for making educated choices!!!
Not every woman will have an abortion, Nobody forces women to have abortions, but women do have the right to have it as an option.
Housing crisis and bigots!
Whats been irking me for the best part of the last decade is the housing crisis and misguided peoples false beliefs that all the blame can be laid at the door of immigrants. One group of papers that is partial to this particular line of journalism, is “the DAILY MAIL” and the “DAILY EXPRESS” i find that their mild brand of xenophobia is cultivating a culture of fear amongst the cherished “middle Endland” that they foundly talk of.
They bolster the cries from the far right, that “african immigrants are given council homes above waiting english tenants” or that “asian immigrants fiddle their benefits to cheat” or “polish people are taking all the bedsits”. I can barely read one of these papers without runing into the shrill cries of “white people will be minorites in our own country!” these are the phrases of the far right of course, The aforementioned papers are a tiny bit more respectful than that. That i believe that is down to the fact that their journalists are a tiny bit more educated than the average far right politician/supporter.
Now i feel that the housing shortage in this country is a lot more complex than just “bloody foreigners”. i will outline my beliefs below.
-In the 1980’s Margret Thatcher sold off a large portion of our social housing, thus places are restricted.
-People are living longer thus they are not returning housing stock to the market, thus increasing the “value” of the remaining houses on the market by the scarcity of the commidity.
-the buy to let market is one that has allowed several wealthy, or middle class persons to buy up second homes, or several properties. this increased their own personal wealth, while pushing the housing market further skyward by making the commodity even scarcer.
-People are living differently in modern society, the housing stock is still largely consistant of family homes, 4 bedroom, 3 bedroom houses. While many more single households are existance than ever before. so thus if the needs of people who need to be housed are not being met by the houses that are suplied we obviously have a situation when people will have to wait for an adquate house is found, they may watch people with differening circumstances appear to waltz in and be housed straight away because the house best suited to their requirement is availible.
So there we have it, in my opinion.
What really pisses me off is that bigots take the easy route they do not even try and be intelligent about it they just pull thoughts out of the sky and do not be rational about your arguements.
they cant see that life exepectancy would have anything to do with it. if people used to die at maybe 65-73 and now they die on average 79-100 that is about 20 additional years that their home will be occupied, thus a family who is waiting for that home when they are 65 will have to wait 35 years for that home to become availible, by which time lets assume they have grown up and their children might be awaiting a home.
Margret thatchers government sold off a large portion of social housing, that stock was never replaced, despite the growing population, the tory government was selfish, greed was good, and in essence i can understand their arguement that home ownership is a good thing, but it was not given a sustainable plan.
The buy to let market has also chocked the private market as well. This market has been driven by greed, it took up homes that struggling families needed and priced them out of the market. This is especially hard in rural areas where the wealthy city living elite bought up summer homes in beautiful areas that they only inhabit maybe 3 weeks out of 52. meanwhile the local folk often on vastly different wages look on while their housing market ascends out of the range of their pockets, they cant afford the homes in the region and sometimes have to move away from their area to raise families.
So instead of everyone realising or trying understand they are assaulted with this mistruths that it’s all down to the fact that foreigners are comeing into the country and other such vagrants. The question is when was the time when we did not have foreigners coming to our country? Queen Elizabeth the first was dismayed at the sight of so many “blackamoors” and the tolerant folks up north had several anti jewish pogroms in the middle ages as they were seem as foreigners.
Yes we have people coming to the country and if they pass all the revelant tests then they will be housed in the same fashion to you.But our problems started with us and the way we have handled our housing and business over the past 30 years.
STD’s don’t happen to people like you or me…. do they?
Ok, it’s time that people in the developed world wised up. In the 1980’s we developed a binary paranoia, one about HIV/AIDS, it was one that insisted that it was everywhere, but at the same time only really a threat to the degenrate. The 1980’s were so so free and accepting as perhaps we remember them, they were times of extreme predjudice, especially to the LBGT community, they were commonly held to be degenrate, not different.
1990’s allowed us to become really really lax, medicines for HIV/AIDS were improving and the mortality rates were not so great as they were in the prior decade. People in the developed world began to see HIV/AIDS as something that happened to other people, groupie infested rockstars, smackheads,black africans, famine victims, sex workers and generally people who they do not know.
The media has played it part, we never see the faces of HIV/AIDS in the west the mediacted and visually fine victims they only show us the extreme, which distances the diease from our consciousness. It’s only ever a bad thing. People begin to think ” well it’s mainly an African/black/gay/poor/promiscious thing thus it will never touch me” that is the mindset of someone who is at high risk. that is the mindset of a person who will not think to use a condom. they think the diease resides only within certain people , and catagories. they are not likely to get a screening for STD’s thus they are likely to pass them on to more and more partners.
Now i like many other love sex, i do not advocate abstience because i just don’t believe it’s healthy, but practising unsafe sex is just as dangerous. Certain people watch the news and see thining black people in africa suffering and they use that image to isolate STD’s, they reason it’s something that will cause you to be emaciated immediately and give up the ghost and die, not the case, otherwise healthy people would not have sex with infected people, they would be able to see and thus avoid infection.
I remember in 2006/7 the small English seaside town of St Ives was found to be at the centre of a clustre outbreak of HIV/AIDS. the news reporters went into the town and interviewed the towns people. They all expressed shock, they did not expect it to be in a place like their town. They did not have any foreigners (shock horror, quelle suprise!) everyone was absolutely flabbergastered! this quintisentially English 100% white anglo-saxon place “with no foreigners” had been the epi-centre of an infection cluster of HIV/AIDS so big that that the media had been alerted to raise awareness and ask that people please be tested!
So my basic point is, never feel that you are too nice, or too middle class, too white, black, asian,hetrosexual, traditional,christian,jewish, muslim, hindu, buddist,rasta, or any other religious faith to be struck down…. we are all born of man and woman and have the same equipment, there is no man made catagory that will protect you if you are not using a condom.
Oh and by the way if you come across some person who has HIV/AIDS do not respond with ignorance, that person is still human, do not discriminate, there is the chance that they have not done anything to cause their ailment, you can be born with HIV/AIDS vaginal births with HIV/AIDS can be a transmission risk, brestfeeding with HIV/AIDS is also a transmission risk, some people were unwittingly infected by tainted blood transfusions in the 1980’s and early 90’s. So they may have come into this world and developed HIV/AIDS through no fault of their own. Even if they did Get HIV/AIDS and they should have know better (ie used condom, barrier methods, used clean needles) then still do not discriminate.
The men who spoil things for others!
February 22, 2009 at 9:37 pm (families, ignorance, men, misery, pain, relationships, women) (abuse, Add new tag, children., DOUCHEBAG, gross stupidity, hatred, Injustice, literary comment, parenting, relationships, sexism, stupidity)
Today i had the intense displeasure of sharing a journey with 3/4 men who were returning from a stag weekend. they filled me (and i imagine the attractive woman they started to harass) with rage.
It’s a sunday, i a have had only 3 hours sleep after a late night. returning home from london on what shoul have been a quick and comfortable 25 minute trip. Our train company has clean and efficient trains. but due to the loud behaviour of the men i felt sick to the stomach.
i arrived on the train five minutes prior to departure and sat down in the comfy chair. Then exactly as the train doors closed and the final whistle was sounded these louts had just managed to scramble aboard. they sat adjecent to the attractive woman and myself. she was eating smoked salmon and an edame bean salad. i was attempting to discreetly make a phone call to my mother. when the chat started up at high volume.
” so i’m for it when i get home” the men roared loudly while swiging from a shared bottle (unspecified energy drink). ” she is gonna come with the whole that is our babies inheritance, what if you lose your job….blah blah. humourless bitch” alll the men roared with laughter in approval. All i could think was WAIT THIS IGNORAMUS HAS A BABY TO TAKE CARE OF AND HE BLEW £400 ON A NIGHT OUT!!!! THERE IS A RECESSION DAMN FUCKING RIGHT HE IS FOR IT WHEN HE GETS HOME.
Oh but it gets worse he divulged that £300 of that £400 pounds of the savings for the baby , was spent on a private dance from a stripper. “best blowjob i ever had!!!” they all laughed. All i could see in my mind was this image of a woman holding her baby in tears.She must be the brains of the relationship, she has just had a baby, the econmy is sliding down shit creek into the cess pool and my man thinks that he can still spend £400 of rainy day money on getting some anonamous stripper to suck him off. Not to mention they now have a baby to take care of. If they were just a couple with no kids by all means knock yourself out truth would out and she could leave him at the side of the road….. when you have a child things change overnight. Chances are she is still on maternity leave and economically challenged. That baby is still related to horse shit daddy for better or worse. she could take the child and move back to her family but that is not always viable.
I felt the tears inside me, i did not physically manifest them but i felt them. they then moved the conversation to the attractive woman sitting opposite to me . “i like blondes, especially ones with nice tits, they are even better when they wear blue.” they started sniggering and the poor woman went as red as a beet. another one took up the thread ” you know why i like blonde women… you can always tell when they are turned on… they get all flushed in the face and on their chests.” the woman dropped her spoon into her edame beans and her face was immeadiately lowered. i stopped looking at her. we had looked at each other during the previous conversation and shook our heads and and even guffawed at the outrageous behaviour of these louts.
Another one of then men started up with a story to graphic for me to attempt to tell. to cut the story short and sanitise it, him and another guy who was at the time still asleep in the hotel in london. had taken a stripper back to their room, completed a few unsavoury sexual acts and then pissed all over the woman. they took delight in the fact that they hadn’t asked her if it was ok. “The look on her face was classic…. (laughing too hard )……… she went (gasp) and she looked like one of those blow up dolls (mouth gaping open in mock disgust)……(laughing again)…. (bangs fist on table) then i told her to get out and pete gave her some money for a taxi and shut the door on her.” I looked at the seats behind the men and saw a very angry looking dad and his young daughter. he had stuffed his i-pod into the childs ears and she was merrily crayoning away. his face was so red i thought he might punch one of them.
The men continued with their behaviour and they clearly still drunk, smelling of alcohol at 12.30pm going home to their wives. they carried on with this tawdry talk for the whole duration of the journey. Without a thought to the fact that families were travelling with their young children, i imagine a few curious question will be asked ie ” whats a blow job?” “whats spunk?” “whats a gangfuck?”" whats double penetration?” ” what is a cunt?” “why does that man call his wife a bitch?”. But here is what was really damning….. Not one of us disgusted passengers thought it was safe to cahllenge the louts. Too often we see good samaritans and have a go heroes being killed for doing the right thing. so we choose to tolerate them. i have to tell you it is not a nice choice. it not one that leaves us with dignity.
SO HERE IS THE POINT OF MY POINT, IF YOU ARE A WOMAN CALLED JANE, YOU HAVE NEW BABY, YOUR PARNTNER IS IMMATURE WHITE MALE 20′S/30′S, WENT TO A STAG WEEKEND/NIGHT 20TH/21ST FEBRUARY, CAME BACK SMELLING OF JACK DANIELS , HE HAS A CANDIAN FRIEND AND YOU HAVE A JOINT ACCOUNT, YOU LIVE IN THE SOUTH EAST OF ENGLAND, OR EAST MIDLANDS…….
CHECK YOUR BANK TOMORROW MORNING FIRST THING, YOU DESERVE MORE AND BETTER THAN THIS ARSEHOLE. MAKE YOUR OWN PLANS, WHATEVER THEY ARE I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST.
SOME MEN MAKE ME SAD SOMETIMES, EVEN THE ONES I DON’T KNOW AND SHOULDN’T MATTER TO ME.
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