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.
If i disapprove of your relationship does that make you feel better?
Hi all!! sorry about my absence i have started a new job and i have been away a lot.
anyhoo on with my post.
I have met a wonderful group of people. But one comment from one of these women irked me a little. We get on well and all in all i think she’s great, however she seems to be fixated with my opinion on her relationship.
She asked ” Do you, as a black woman resent me for taking a good black man?” i looked away from my screen to see her green eyes staring back at my face imploringly. Like if her life depended on my answer. I was a little disturbed by several things.
: I had only seem her man once in my 20 and some years how could i feel anything???
:Her man was a good black man? because all the rest of them are bad???? Why is he good?? He is hardly what i call stellar he is distinctly bland.
why did she seem disappointed when i told her that i had no problem with her as a white woman dating a black man. her little face sank litterally for a split second before she caught herself and smiled back. she then spent the afternoon regaling me on how many black women hate on her for taking this “good” black man.
We were quite busy and we really didn’t have time to swap idea’s on society and diversity and i would have loved to explained the foibles of my section of the uk’s black community. but as it happened we didn’t and she then went on to rhapsodise on the benefits of having a black man opposed to a white man.
Don’t get me wrong, as much as it pisses me off to see a black man i am pining for walk off with a bint (of any race), i just cannot get worked up about it. She did not get that we were in a professional work place and that talking about “a nice big thick black cock is like heaven cloaked in a man’s body” is entirely inappropriate.
She even asked me again, and i told her “really honestly i don’t mind, i do not own him or any black man” she then proceeded to ask me why black women were so jealous, i shrugged. She then came back from a fag break and announced that she had made enemies on account of her kissing her black boyfriend in front of some black women.
I then added that some women, are just jealous regardless of colour. The fact that i was not upset or angry just seemed to unsettled her. she badgered me on and off for 5 hours.
i wanted to ask her if she would be happy if i said that i disapproved, or if i stalked her and her man scowling would she at least stop asking?????
BINT
Racial disharmony at the school gates!!
Good day, or rather i wish it was. Today dropping my much younger sister off outside the school, the whistle had been blown and i like most of the parents and relatives were leaving. The Stragglers were all racing to the gates in an effort to get there before they were closed and they were officially late.
I was standing along side a family friend watching the children move in single file into the building. suddenly we heard shouting. It was the usual suspect there is always one parent who takes it upon themself to become an unofficial traffic marshall.
A man had pulled into the curb to perform a 3 point turn or a turn in the road as you will. Mr “blood pressure” then proceeded to race 200 yards down a hill and slam himself as close to the moving vechicle as he dare. ” you can’t come in here, it’s closed ! the same bloody people all the bloody time!!” people were tutting , in argrement or in disargrement i do not know. the man excuted his turn and left. Mr “blood pressure” then turned to the startled learning assistant and turned on her ” when are people gonna learn! have you done anything about it?” she replied that yes letters had been sent out. “NO NOT JUST TO EVERYONE, TO THOSE PEOPLE PERSONALLY, IT’S ALWAYS THOSE PEOPLE!! THEY WILL NEVER LEARN!!”.
It was at that point that one mother pulled up across the road . she stopped the car and the kids took off their seatbeats. the handbrake must have slipped a little but then i could see that the mother reapplied it. before her door was even open he started shouting. “OI YOUR KIDS NEED THEIR SEATBEATS ON, DON’T IGNORE ME!!! YOU MUST HAVE SEATBELTS ON IN THE BACK.” the mother looked startled. the kids looked scared, with his big angry reddish purple face and his clenched fist and index finger being jabbed at them. The crowd mummered with a sense of disapproval, we had all seen that, it was simply that the handbrake had slipped and he was being so rude. But he was in full swing he must have thought he was whispering, because previously he was roaring. ” YOU STUPID WOMAN, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SEATBELTS IN THE BACK! ALWAYS THE SAME BLOODY PEOPLE, THOSE PEOPLE CAN’T DRIVE, THEY CAUSE SO MUCH TRAFFIC! THEY SHOULDN’T BE GIVEN LICENSES.” At this point i became unnerved, he had only picked out the bad drivers of colour, the black man making a 3 point turn,the Muslim woman whose only mistake was to have not applied the handbrake firmly enough.
He is a police officer, this is the 5th time this year he has done this, singled out bad driving, or some barely there offense and screamed at the top of his lungs at someone, but only if they are ethnically different from himself. the first 3 times i brushed it off as coincidence, but after that and today i think he is acting on some bias in his mind. As the family friend, her colleague and myself walked away, we talked about it
Family friend: oh here he goes again.
Colleague: well he is right they don’t think about their childrens safety!
lifeisannoying: what? her handbrake slipped he’s overreacting, he should realise that he’s not at work, there are bigger and more important offenses than that!
Family friend: well it must be hard to switch off a high powered intense job like that?
Colleague : yeah i couldn’t do it
Lifeisannoying: i know a few police officers, my friend is engaged to one , but he’s never as obnoxious as that!
Colleague: he’s not a just a police officer, he’s an armed officer, guns and all that
Lifeisannoying: WHAT THAT HOTHEADED BASTARD IS WORKING WITH GUNS!!! BLOODY HELL!!!
My confidence in the police sank to the lowest levels since stephen lawrence was killed and the police managed to let the killers get off. How can i trust the police to be fair, just and a force for good when they arm, militant and possibly racist men?
It goes to show, the media would have you believe that the black man would get out of the car an assault the man, but he didn’t he waved his hand with a look of weary resignation and reversed out, the muslim lady did not have a bomb concealed under her chador, she shrugged shook her head at the man, watched her children across the road and got in her car, but i could see the hurt and embarrassment in her eyes. Nor did i as “an angry black woman” go over and create a scene as i would have loved to! i simply took a look at his face, and in a few moments will report him and his behaviour to his superiors.
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.
When your friends are right wing fascists???
Thanks to the joy of www.facebook.com i have had the joy of hooking up with friends who have drifted from me. People who i loved and supported from 1997-2001-2003. Yound adolescent girls have an instrigic desire to form strong bonds of friendship with other females in their age group i was no different. I was a little bit more outsopken and honest but i was no different. The wonderful thing about youth is that we are so open, young minds are beautiful and we express all our sentiments without being bogged down by the weight of political correctness (percieved) or social norms, we called it as we saw it.
So hooking back up with my best gal pal from 1997-2000 lets call her ellena. Ellena was beautiful, still is tall lean with beautiful chocolate brown hair ( back then she dyed it sunshine gold because she presumed it made her sexier). She came from a home somewhat like my own, two parents , happy. the difference was she had twin brothers and i was at the time an only child, oh and i’m black and she is white. But we were so close and loving. she was quite conservative and in a way quite naive about the outside world, she was compared to me sealed in a hermatically sealed bubble of Ellena land.
I could see a world beyond my boundaries, i could emapthise with people who did not share my world view and she could not. Case study our differing views on the murder of Stephen Lawrence. (for those of you not in the know allow me to explain. In 1993 Stephen and his pal got off a bus on the way home , they were surrounded by 5 white men all of whom were known to the police. and slaughtered. when the police arrived instead of aiding stephen as he lay dying, they interogated his friend, ignoring the injured stephen and asked if they were carrying drugs if they had any enermies. stephen died. in the resulting inquiries they interogated his parents was he in a gang? Did he take drugs? and all kind of nonsense. The men were broght to trial but they were aquitted beacause the evidence that the police collected was too scant, Two of the males fathers was fairly close to the police officer in command, the evidence was tainted because it had been gathered with the assumption that the victim was guilty of something and not innocent. By the time the five men were brought to trial and aquitted a tape surfacced in the press that showed the five white males posing with knives and saying how they would “chop up N!663rs and leave them with stumps and throw them in the ocean and tell them to swim home” the tape was several minutes long and really quite damning in light of what they had done. A second trial was brought against them and yet again they got off! The men laughed as they left the court. A few years later the metropolitan police release the Macpherson report that explained that the police was institutionally racist and because of this the case was processed and handled incorrectly. It was an absolute revelation the police has come on leaps and bound in reforming itself. It has increased its intake of people from ethnic minorites and is striving to pull itself away from its racist past.)
It was at this time a little while after the macpherson report that Ellena became very upset. “well it’s all very fine and good. When white people die it doesn’t get this much attention, it’s like we don’t matter.” she said putting her hands under the handdrier. I was baffled she was not the brightest girl but surely she was not stupid? i explained that yes white people matter as well but Stephen Lawrence was something very different, he died because instead of the police woman on the scene trying to stem the bleeding or attempt to revive him or call to check if the ambulance was on it’s way she was interogating a witness like a suspect. she did not check his pulse or try and communicate with him. i tried to reason with her the police officer in command did not step aside when he realised his prior connections with two of the suspects. The interviews with the Parents of Stephen Lawrence were more akin to interogations than interviews.In one instance questioning brought Mrs Lawrence to tears by it’s heartlessness. Ellena’s responce? So the police were doing their job, what was he doing out at that time of night anyway he could have been doing something dodgy? well i’ll be i thought to myself. If Stephen was white , would his friend have been interogated ? would the Police Woman have attended to him and his injuries (surely a live victim is better at talking than a dead one?), would the police officer in command have stood aside? would the evidence have been collected properely and without the assupmtion that Stephen had sone something? would those five white men have passed him by if he and his friend been white? Ellena had her mind made up it was media circus over nothing. i had to disagree because of Macpherson the police had to reform itself and i felt that i could begin to hope that my community would be treated with something that resembled fairness.
So i let it lie, I could not win all the time! she was beautiful but naive and i was brainy and worldly. then she went to Austrailia and came back everything was Paki this and Paki that. I asked her not to use that work because it was offensive and she countered that everyone in Austrailia said it and it was not swearing, it was just an shorter form of Pakistani. I countered that she should know better and that all that Aussie sun must have burned her brain out, She knew it was offensive that is why she did not use it before she went to Australia, she used Asian for short and Pakistani in all other situations. We grew up in the late 80’s early 90’s when “paki-bashing” was all the rage with neo-nazi scum in this country. she could not miss it her Area was closer than mine to a Pakistani stronghold in town. Sometimes i wanted to strangle her she was so ignorant.
Ellena had a secret that we shared , her grandfather was German and she was so worried about that, i had a feeling that she might have been entirely anti-immigrant had it not been for her German granddad. she cried in history class when a teacher picked up on her anglicised german name. It is name that almost english but it’s sound points you to holland and Germany. It was a lesson on Nazi’s and she left the room red faced and within 5 seconds of reaching the toilets she was collasped on the ground sobbing , she bore some guilt unnessarily her grandfather had left germany in the 1930’s although he wasn’t a jewish man. but the weight of other people’s assumptions crushed her so i let my 5′11 cry on my 5′0 shoulder. It’s so stupid but it was moments like this i felt like yelling, see the world isn’t clear cut and you need to look at things from another perspective! but it would do me no good
So when we linked up on facebook how not surprised was i to find that she is married to a guy in the forces. Bless she was always patriotic, but then so was i i just did it in a way that i considered not blind to the rest of the world. she sent me a link to join a facebook group after Prince harry’s “paki-towelhead gate” furore and it said “support Prince Harry” and i pressed the ignore button. Because there is not a “FUCK OFF” button. we were talking the other day jsut reminising over old times when we started chatting about the economy she reasoned the reason that we are all in such strife is that we have too many foreigners taking all the plum jobs and sucking benefits. “if you cannot prove that your roots are 100% here in the uk you should just resettle in the land of origin and that way at least we can get our balance back” i shook my head and i pondered if i argued with her would i be the big bad scary black woman who made that poor sensitive white woman cry? i decided yes i would being playing into her hands, so i took the gentle approach. “you know at least 25% of you belongs in Germany , are you going to remove a leg or an arm?” she blushed and i think she finally understood what i had been trying to drive home to her all these years.
The Dinosaurs, The Dodo, The African-Caribbean community???
WARNING: THIS TEXT IS WRITTEN IN TYPICAL A TYPICAL WEST INDIAN RUM SHOP MANNER! NO BULLSHIT, NO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, IT IS NOT WRITTEN TO OFFEND, NOR DOES IT INTEND MALICE, IT SIMPLY AN ARTICLE OF OPINION!!!!!!
Stop the press!! A study commissioned by Equality and Human Rights Commission has reported that my beloved African caribbean community is set to vanish. I read the headline with great alarm in the Sunday Times yesterday. The cause is apparently good news for the state of multicultralism. it means that white people are just more accepting of interracial relationships, the African caribbean community dies out by default of not having enough people to sustain itself in the face of such rapid absorption. thus we die out leaving only the notting hill carnival to atest to our presence.
This is not really a surprise though, it’s an unplesant thing but all in all we knew we would arrive at this predicament, with the way that things are in the dating market. Allow me to illustrate to you our rates of interracial out-dating the study show that 50% of all black African-Caribbean men have a partner of a different race, 20% of black African men have partners of a different race,10% of indian men and women have partners of a different race. 40% of chinese women have a partner of a different race, the pakistani community (of both sexes) has an percentage of 4%.
when looking at the figures you will notice that largely black women are invisible, we are not note worthy, i know of 3 black women who are married to white men but i doubt that they alone make up 1% of the African-Caribbean community.
What it does make me wonder is why is my community up front and centre on this trend? we are the smallest minority (surely) in the country (england).
Well we could argue that our heritage is one that is one that leans heavily to anglicisation, we HAD to assimilate to get by and get jobs, our cultral values while not exactley the same are very similiar, our countries were part of Britain well up into the 1980’s and we largely are Christian.
we could also Argue that there may be a tenuous colonial thing going on here? Franz Fanon legendary author (and arsehole) of martinque (french speaking caribbean) said “there is only on destiny of the black man, and that is white”. calypso’s (popular topical music of the caribbean) of the early to mid 20th century often rhapsodised that the ideal woman was rich, white and stupid.(i don’t know if that is more racist or sexist but it sucks all around). The white woman has a special position in the Caribbean, she is rare, coveted and protected, so when you have chance of having your very own white woman aren’t you going to celebrate and grab that opportunity as soon as you can.
Or the third arguement is the sappiest pile of crap i have ever been forced to swallow, “Black women are just too difficult to please”, well excuse us for exepecting not to be crapped on. Like those arses have never bumped into a white woman who is less than courteous.
The truth as i see it, is that Black men from my community like white women, just accept it. the fact that they can get their hands on white women renders me and other women who share my background obselete.
In the dating world, we are the dregs, Asian women are feted as beautiful,seductive innocents. White women are the rulers of the western world they have the media are their backs, playboy, hustler,loaded,maxim,FHM,nuts etcetera. Latina’s have a reputation of passionate lovers and sultry loaded looks that set loins afire.
What about us black women what do we have, a reputation as being little more than beasts of burden oh and Robert di nero and Robin thicke…. that is some team there!
Arse on a bike…. i should immigrate back to the caribbean at least the weather is nice, if i am doomed at least i could do it in the warm.
ps to all those idiots who thing that having a very mixed society obliterates racism please take a look at brazil….
ps i may just hev been a little bit sacastic at times in this post, it’s just the way i’m feeling.
My two pence- Prince Henry and other BS!
I think the british media has done a fabulous job of sweeping the trouble under the proverbial carpet; however it’s total bullshit! If they are trying to tell me that the royal family is soooo insulated from the british public at large that they haven’t graped the fact that the word paki, is as insulting as the term nigger and is just not the done thing for a person with more than two brain cells, then the royal family has no place in modern britain!
What troubles me is that people are trying to excuse it by explaining that Prince harry is just a hoory henry in the sense of bertie wooster of pg.woodhouse. A nice but dim character. so that is totally harmless? No the only way it is excusable is if he had tourettes, he does not thus he is just a ignoramus.
some people have tried to excuse it by saying well the Asian in question hasn’t complained, well have they ever considered that maybe that dignified silence is an displeased one. that young man is living in ( not only working in) an enviroment that is very hierachical and a system to which he has to fight for the hooray henry’s grandmother! so maybe he isn’t complaining because of strategic reasons.
Now there is another theory i am willing to give a chance, it’s a little controversial and maybe will give hope to the BNP but her it goes, Maybe ,just maybe most Indigenous white people of the british isles are only paying lip servive to multiculturalism, and actually do not want ethnic minorities around and don’t give a shit!
But maybe thats a little far fetched! what worries me is the wonderful legacy that Princess Diana left behind is being wrecked by this beligerant twat! Princess diana was a global campaigner towards the end of her life, she was hardly mother thresa but she did do quite a bit more than the current duchess of cornwall! but that is not even a fair comparison.
The royal family are fairly insulated bunch, they serve in the army so that the public won’t complain, that they have easy lives. they pass their Art A levels with the aid of their teachers ( Harry) even if other students would get kicked out for that. They cant get away with going to “natives and colonials balls” (yes the still use the term Natives).
well they dont fool me, they are benefit scrongers, just like the ones on jerry springer (they are inbred too!!! Queenie and Prince Phillip are cousins as were several generations of royal couples). they just happen to be filthy rich, incredibly indifferent to repubilcan sentiments and lazy. they sit around on the wages from the tax payers and moan about duties such as travel around the world, shaking peoples hands and talking about the lack of privacy! well never mind that there are people working 10+ hours a day in construction and do you hear then bitching??? (nope) I have to do substaincial saving to have the priveilge of traveling the world, and leaving this rain soaked freezing arse cold country! but never mind that huh!!! Want to talk about lack of privacy , want to try my west indian family, who regulaly grill my male friends if they have ever fancied me, if not why not, then proceed to tell me “if you fixed up your appearance/ stopped talking in that voice / hanging out with those people /was a little less choosy/ more choosy and all of that crap. they have it nice all they have to do is act nicely and the status quo remains.
so in conclusion Prince harry is a twat! and can you say cover UP? this issue has me fired up!
Prop 8 and the furore from my perspective!
Good evening from England! Being a avid follower of politic both here in the uk and abroad i could not have failed to have missed the firestorm surrounding the passing of the prop 8 law in california. for those of us not in the know, basically prop 8 criminalises the same sex marriage that is practised here in the uk, we call it a civil union, but that is basic semantics, we all know it’s a marriage for gay folk.
Now with california being so liberal i was surprised that the state’s voters voted to criminalise the act of same sex marriage. but the mormon church poured plenty of money into it’s campaign to criminalise same sex marriage and their gamble paid off. however what i find scary is they way that some new corperations have decided that california’s black residents are soley responsible for the passing of this homophobic law. the black population of california must be about 10% which is by no means a large segment. how they came to be 100% of the problem is not something easily squared, they are trying to tell me that no white, asian or hispanic people voted to pass that prop 8? I guess that their homophobia is more palatable and attractive than the kind that rages in the breast of a negro? (yes if that is how you feel then you call us negroes). yes i understand that if you are courting a community 10% can make all the difference, but are they saying that of that 10% none of them are gay? for the gay black community voting against themselves makes no sense.
I see this easy link being made here in the uk, those black people are terribly homophobic, peter tatchell screams ( i am paraphrasing and exgerating here don’t sue me!) how does he know? he knows us all? Like all communities that were strictly christian like the carribean are, believe me that the whole fire and brimstone thing is taken very literally by the older generation, so no surprises there. But then again, that is true of many white people of the same generation. we are easily identifiable by skin colour and thus very easy to scapegoat, “they rob your car, steal your purse, hate the gays and the jews and take our women!” .
the great problem i have is that black people are chracterised as a great big group of unthinking lemming that all share the same opinions and views and vote as a single block. in our midst there ARE homophobes , but more importantly in our midst we also have ,moderate people, thinking people, and people who are most definatly not homophobic. the problem is not only confined to the african diaspora, it just that the media only sees fit to chastise all black people for the feelings of only a few!! homophobia exists in all racial groups not only my own.
Just for the record, all west indians do not sit around listening to songs that incite people to kill gays, that is a perverse lie, no family does that! however i know a bisexual man who does!!( he is so deep in the closet he uses it as a cloak, make of that what you will!)
Obama, black politicians and “no more predjudice”
Firstly, congratulations to not only Barrack Obama and his family, but to the whole entire United States for being so forward thinking. 40 years ago a man with one or two black parents would have been bawled out for voting, but the fact that the nation can elect one such man is a testment to the power of change.
Now here is my whinge, Already without Mr Obama even taking office, the backlash has begun in earnest. A few Bad-minded few folks have come out with such platitudes like
” well you can all stop playing the race card now, you cannot use white people’s predjudices as a cover for laziness when you have a black man in office.”
“well there is no more racism, we have a black man in power.”
“well he isn’t really black, is he? what did black people ever do for him??”
there are more bullshit perspectives that i have heard but can’t be bothered to debunk but lets tackle them one by one.
Playing the race card? Lazy? well lets think about things, this huge hulking brute of english man was berating black people and then he ended his speech with a racial stereotype? trust me if you have ever been racially abused , it is horrid you never ever want to be in the position of highlighting the fact that someone finds your appearance so abborant that they do all they can to make life unbearable. I am sure that if you are anglo-saxon (so to speak) maybe you do not realise that people do not ever want to make something as supercillious as skin an issue, but if you are in the situation it becomes one.
Having one self identified Black man in office does not remove all the bigoted predjudiced people from the world. Yes it is amazing that American voted for him and it is a testement to the stregth of the American Dream, but that alone does not rid the world of horrible people. want a true life example? Lets take 1980’s England, did the Election of Margret Thatcher erase and destroy all sexist oiks? no i think the fact that sexism is still alive and kicking tells us that. All the women who went through court processing sexual discrimination cases will tell you that said oiks are alive and unrepentent.
Now Barrack Obama is Biracial, there is no arguement from me on that point. that is no point of objection, but the way that this woman made this point, was to say that even if he is partially Black, its the fact that he is from a white heritage that he derives all his greatness. well i am not even dignifing that trash with a proper rebuttal. His father like all dead-beats left the scene and his mother and her family did a fabulous job. but to then use his racial background to rubbish black people by default, is to insult his wife and kids.
I love England, but sometimes my fellow english man and woman makes me shake my head and shudder with sheer incredulity.
These people need to just find themselves a seat, shut-up and sit down…… for the next however many days until it is till inaugeration, he hasn’t even had the chance to mess up and already they look for fault….. they are pissing me off. this is why Britain will not see it’s own Barrack in my lifetime. people need to see underneath the skin and see indivuals, this whole thing is bloody depressing.
Why can’t we all just get along??
April 28, 2009 at 12:29 pm (Africa, Africans, bigotry, black community, black people, britain, colonialism, colorism, colourism, ignorance, media, multicultralism, racism, shadism, the caribbean, the diaspora, the world, west indians) (Africa, black community, black history, black men, black people, Black women, britain, colonialism, culture, hatred, Injustice, literary comment, multicultralism, race, racism, stupidity, The black diaspora, the caribbean, the diaspora, West Indian, west indies)
I was reading the Black Snob the other day and one of her topic just struck me, it was about the diaspora and the tensions and hatred that sometimes bubbles to the surface and the mutual distrust that has grown up.
www.blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2009/4/20/why-cant-we-be-friends-the-diaspora.html
I am of west indian parentage and yes i am proud of my heritage, but that does not mean that i instantly disrespect or look down on any other part of the diaspora.I was born and bred in England in the 1980’s and i grew in a large community of others of similar background, you were either white, black caribbean, asian pakistani or asian indian. that is as diverse as my hometown got. ther was only one african boy at my school and one boy did not dilute the overall caribbean flavor of the black community, we had carnivals and community evenings dances and thus it continued until the late 1990’s when we saw a lot of african immigrants mainly from southern africa and to a lesser extent Nigeria and Ghana.
I couldn’t lie and tell you that there was rioting in the streets. But what we have is many communities co-existing that are mainly separate. The older generations i know generally were told in their youth under the british empire that they were vastly inferior than white men who lived in britain, but even though they wereinferior to white anglo saxons in the mother country (England – what fucked up rhetoric that is !!), they were of course miles better than those other black people who had been cleeved from them in the past. Colonialism worked not only for the advancement of the english language but for some very messed up racial ideals. the kind of racial ideals that asked people to devalue themselves and invest in a racial hierarchy where they were almost always at the bottom, so colonist invented a hierachy where black people could place other black people at the bottom.
My grandmother was amongst some of the more priveilaged black people in her island home, she grew up on a farm that her family owned, her family employed others, she received an education beyond the reach of most of her peers she became a nurse. she recalls a missionary from scotland coming to preach, she was in her nursing station and remembers overhearing this missionary preaching to sick children.
” You must strive to be as good as the pure white children in my parish in london, you must elevate yourselves above your base instincts, above the savagery behind africa,you and your progeny must be above your own origins “
It was 1957. My grandmother did not hear the end of his speech she had to tend to an old man.
She assures me that she was fed a steady diet of such contempt for africa and aficans. her own grandfather was a white irish man who had married a black woman and her mother (my grandmother’s mother) had angered him greatly by having babies with a man with an african mother. the “mullato” classes were socially engineering themselves to be less and less visabily black and those who flouted those convensions were punished harshly. It was the mental and physical distancing of black people in the caribbean from slavery and africa, this was a country where to be black or african in appearance was to be a slave.
It’s understandable, i would not want to be a slave nor mistaken for one. thus began a west indian pathology that saw africaness as something terrible, something to be despised.African coming to the caribbean after the Emancipation in 1838 were speaking african languages, some reminants of those languages survive but that was all. their languages were banned and mocked by the ruling classes as jabber, mumbo jumbo. it was seem in those less pc days as stupidity, any person with a brain could speak english after all…
When my grandmother arrived in England after a journey across the atlantic to spain and a train from southern spain to northern spain and then a ferry to england to meet my grandfather. Her eyes were opened to the lies of her colonial upbringing. England was not the home of christendom ,most of the people there were not even as half as devout as most black people back “home”, she saw licentiousness on a scale she had never seen. She was told that in her homeland that black people were the base and carnal by nature and sexually incontinent. but she came to a land where it was all much worse!
After 3 months she met a fellow medic at work Dr (spelling may be wrong) Ateti from somewhere in West Africa she forgets (bless her she is an old lady after all). They shared many silent lunch breaks. one day they started talking and he confessed that he was surprised that she was not loud, agressive criminal or ignorant as he had grown up believing west indians to be. they had cross words but then realised how they had been bamboozled by colonialisation. they had a good friendship until my Grandfather put a stop to it. He was not having his wife form friendships with any other man. he was less educated he was not coming from a wealthy background and probably held the friendship to be a threat to the marriage based on the stereotypes he had been fed about african men.
The 70’s were a blur of confusion, some parents fed their children the same crap that they themselves had been fed about africa and africans, until Reggae and Rastafarianism took off. The final nail in the colonial bs in my community was alex haley’s roots and the tv series. that and actually meeting real flesh and blood africans, no they did not seem that different! they were not sexually incontinent, nor the vicious villains of the colonialists.
I can only speak from experiance and cannot say what things were like on the african side of the fence. But i can say it was not only a west indian to African line. Starting primary school i was ruthlessly teased and punched( to the point of nosebleeds) by lets call him AA, who joined in the racist bullying by calling me “blackie” i pointed out that he was black too but that was apparently not important since me reasoned “yeah ,but you’re blacker than me!” But i sweep him under the carpet.
I want to talk about my ExBoyfriend who is African his name is Brown, we have a backstory if you want to know more check out my other blog cold nights no romance.
www.noromance.wordpress.com
we dated for 3 years in that time he called me jamaican (i am not jamaican),said things like “you west indians” in a tone i doubt he would tolerate about africans. “you are all the same so why can i not call you jamaican” (it takes 4 hours on a jet to get to jamaica from my island and there is not even a direct flight. he mocked my cultral heritage glibly and refused to acknowledge it until we were screaming at each other and i pulled up something african and used it in the same context. we parted ways on non ethnic basis BTW.
That is how far we have come, we can date but we need to realise that yes we can be proud of our cultral differences without it being a denial of someone elses culture, when i say Anansi stories are integral part of caribbean culture i am not denying it’s ghanian roots what i am saying is that it is as much west indian as african. Anansi had to evolve in the middle passage, we have different stories and different situations. we owe you the chracter, but he is ours too!
i digress, we have to do a lot of soul searching all of us and recognise that we need to emancipate ourselves of colonial blinkers over our eyes.
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