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 Originally Posted by poop
Ong, your approach seems to be to deny racism at every turn.
Wrong. It's just I refuse to dilute the term to capture anyone showing the slightest hint of insensitivity.
You say the cops aren't racist, when clearly a lot of them are.
"The cops" is not equal to "a cop".
Yeah, some, maybe a lot of them, are racist. These are individuals. The police as a force are not racist. Prove they are and you should write to the Guardian or someone and escalate the matter, because if you're right, if the police are institutionally racist and you can prove it, you'll get the chief fired. Heads will roll.
You say the royals aren't racist.
Again, we're talking about a lot of people here. I'm not sure I ever actually said the royals are not racist, but they obviously all aren't. Now the Royals have lots of old people who have lived through colonialism and have a very different view of interracial relations than younger people. Some of the Royals certainly are racist, Prince Phillip being the obvious one to point to. And given that the Royals don't fire racist princes, I can accept the argument that the Royal Family does have an institutional racism problem. But that doesn't mean it's fair to tag everyone associated with the Royals as racist, even if they say something that some (not all) people will find insensitive.
Seems every time someone points out racism, your response is to accuse them of race-baiting or playing the victim
There's a reason for this. The vast majority of what we talk about, it's not the kind of racism we'll all agree about. It's not a white person kicking the shit out of a black person. It's not businesses refusing to employ black people. It's subjective stuff like not supporting BLM, booing footballers who take the knee, being offended about being asked where you're from, so of course I usually dismiss it as race baiting. It's headline news, the media are making a big deal out of it, it's very likely to be race baiting.
Fact is, everyone is racist inasmuch as it's a natural part of human cognition to categorize people based on appearance.
But this isn't what racism is. Racism is the belief that one's own race is superior to another. It's discrimination against people based on their race or ethnicity. It's hatred based on skin colour or ethnicity.
It's not looking at a black woman wearing tribal clothing and assuming they are not British. That alone is not racism. If old lady is being malicious, wilfully attempting to make Fulani feel like an outsider, then it is racism. But I just don't see that as the likely motivation. Intended polite small talk is much more likely.
If you think Lady TE had a right to touch this woman's hair...
I'm not even sure how much credit I give to the hair touching without footage of it happening, but let's assume it did happen. Why is the default here "racism"? Maybe this old lady would have done exactly the same to a white woman.
Lady Oldface has no right to deliberately touch anyone's hair without consent. Race is irrelevant here, unless you're arguing that old lady subconsciously believes black woman are inferior to her and therefore she doesn't need to ask permission. That *might* be the case, and if so, then yes, it's racism. But that's an assumption based on absolutely nothing.
And you're still taking Fulani's account as factual. Do you not see the problem with blindly believing the accuser?
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