Taking the Knee | Page 7 | Vital Football

Taking the Knee

Tarian said:
Why should "most white people would acknowledge that there is such a thing of white privilege" ?
Most white people are just about "getting by" - paying more than they ought for housing and taxes.
And with the current Culture War, being white seems to be anything but a "privilege".
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You've missed the point on "white privilege" just as I had until I received some education. Its not about the obvious things its the hidden things.

Here is an example to help explain. I have two team members, one is white and has an English name. One is mixed race and has a foreign name. Both British.

I sent both to work on a contract but one of the requirements is you have to be a UK national (its a military thing). Both received the security briefing and the person doing it only asked one of them to confirm that they were a British national the other he just assumed was.

When he spoke to me I tried to justify it by saying I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it. The point is he said "You can forgive it once but when it happens all the time you get tired of being singled out"

The white privilege I am referring to is that we (white people) don't have to justify ourselves as much as others.

One other question for you. You are sat on a tube and a white guy carrying a rucksack comes on the train. Would your reaction be different if the person wasn't white ? I'm not ashamed to say I would be more concerned that something bad might happen. I just assume that the white person wouldn't be a potential terrorist but the Asian/Arabic person might be.

I don't think that myself as a white man can understand white privilege. You have to see it through someone elses eyes.
 
markinkent said:
One other question for you. You are sat on a tube and a white guy carrying a rucksack comes on the train. Would your reaction be different if the person wasn't white ? I'm not ashamed to say I would be more concerned that something bad might happen. I just assume that the white person wouldn't be a potential terrorist but the Asian/Arabic person might be
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Isn't it natural to feel that way ?
We all know that islamic terrorism happens all over the world , so one's suspicions would be raised. It's a basic instinct of humans.
 
I do think "white privilege" is a poor term as many many white people can obviously look at their lives and reasonably reject the idea they are subject to any kind of privilege. It's just the case that they aren't actively disadvantaged on account of their race, as in markinkent's example. Obviously they may be structurally disadvantaged in any number of other ways - "middle class privilege", for example, certainly exists, which of course means black, working-class people are often subject to two intersecting structural disadvantages.
 
markinkent said:
One other question for you. You are sat on a tube and a white guy carrying a rucksack comes on the train. Would your reaction be different if the person wasn't white ? I'm not ashamed to say I would be more concerned that something bad might happen. I just assume that the white person wouldn't be a potential terrorist but the Asian/Arabic person might be.
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That is just down to history and experience. I don't think any of the Baader Meinhof gang were asian but they certainly made the German population jumpy for a while.

The vast majority of the IRA are caucasean but there was a time when the sound of a broad irish accent on public transport would put people on their guard.

So why should 7/7 have not had a similar effect on our psyche?
 
I was working at London Bridge station yesterday on the gate with two other colleagues, a lady came up to me and said "I came to you as I know I can trust you". Funny, one of the three of us had been a naughty boy in the past the other two had not. Coincidently two of the three of us are black (I'm not). My colleagues are made aware of comments like this all the time.

I am often made aware of my "white privilege" working in a multicultural environment. It does not matter how open minded you think you are and thinking everyone should be treated on merit, I can assure you many people carry prejudices that sometimes they are not even aware of. Must be a bugger being on the receiving end day after day :(

PS - When I worked in the Civil Service, my accent was noticed on numerous occasions and I feel I often had to work harder than my middle class colleagues to get my contributions acknowledged or accepted (still a lot of them were prats with built in attitude of automatic entitlement).
 
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GillsBluenose said:
That is just down to history and experience. I don't think any of the Baader Meinhof gang were asian but they certainly made the German population jumpy for a while.

The vast majority of the IRA are caucasean but there was a time when the sound of a broad irish accent on public transport would put people on their guard.

So why should 7/7 have not had a similar effect on our psyche?
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You are correct so perhaps it wasn't as good an example as I had hoped to illustrate my point. Rotherhithe has a better example
 
valenciagill said:
Isn't it natural to feel that way ?
We all know that islamic terrorism happens all over the world , so one's suspicions would be raised. It's a basic instinct of humans.
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It is which is why I am not ashamed of those feelings. It wasn't the best example to illustrate my point. The first example was better and Rotherhithes was better still
 
markinkent said:
It is which is why I am not ashamed of those feelings. It wasn't the best example to illustrate my point. The first example was better and Rotherhithes was better still
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Birds of a feather flock together , it's just the way it is. Trying to modify human behaviour can only work to certain degree.
 
While I support the taking a knee protests, I don't I agree with the argument that they are not political - in the sense that advocating for social change, in this case racial equality, is inherently and manifestly political.

I also don't necessarily agree that political expression - even that which I don't agree with - should be banned from sport (although I'm less sure of this position) as I think politics is, to varying degrees, inextricably linked to just about every aspect of life. My position is that the players have every right to take a knee, fans have every right to boo them and I have every right to vehemently disagree with those booing and think they are morons for doing so.

If the footballing authorities wish to be neutral and consistent with a ban on political messages, maybe they should ban these protests. If they do so, I would hope the players would have the strength of their convictions and protest anyway, consequences be damned; Tommie Smith and John Carlos presumably knew they would face consequences for their black power salutes in 1968, and were subsequently expelled from the Olympic Games, but they did it anyway because they believed the message they wanted to send was more important.

Bit of a can of worms, but I felt this way about the whole FIFA-England-Poppy debacle. I don't think it was unreasonable for FIFA to say they contravened their rules on political messages but, had they been banned, if the players believed wearing a poppy was a valuable and important thing to do they should have gone ahead and worn them anyway.
 
markinkent said:
You've missed the point on "white privilege" just as I had until I received some education. Its not about the obvious things its the hidden things.

Here is an example to help explain. I have two team members, one is white and has an English name. One is mixed race and has a foreign name. Both British.

I sent both to work on a contract but one of the requirements is you have to be a UK national (its a military thing). Both received the security briefing and the person doing it only asked one of them to confirm that they were a British national the other he just assumed was.

When he spoke to me I tried to justify it by saying I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it. The point is he said "You can forgive it once but when it happens all the time you get tired of being singled out"

The white privilege I am referring to is that we (white people) don't have to justify ourselves as much as others.

One other question for you. You are sat on a tube and a white guy carrying a rucksack comes on the train. Would your reaction be different if the person wasn't white ? I'm not ashamed to say I would be more concerned that something bad might happen. I just assume that the white person wouldn't be a potential terrorist but the Asian/Arabic person might be.

I don't think that myself as a white man can understand white privilege. You have to see it through someone elses eyes.
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Foreign names and Asian/Arabic examples aren't really relevant to taking the knee are they? That is about racial equality for blacks, not Asians.
 
markinkent said:
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Plenty of evidence of people from different backgrounds coming together to live happy peaceful lives. No matter how mad that drives some people
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Fair enough Mark , it's only my opinion after all.
I've lived in Spain for 20 years. Would I expect to be treated like a native ? No I wouldn't, further more I wouldn't cry ' Latino privilege '
 
valenciagill said:
Isn't it natural to feel that way ?
We all know that islamic terrorism happens all over the world , so one's suspicions would be raised. It's a basic instinct of humans.
Click to expand...
I can't say that I have ever been even the smallest measure perturbed by a person who is (or appears to be) Muslim with a rucksack on the tube.
Thinking in bayesian terms, even if there is a high probability that the perpetrator of a given act of terrorism is an islamic fundamentalist, the probability that some random muslim guy on the tube is an islamic fundamentalist terrorist is astronomically, vanishing small. Essentially zero.
 
Paranoid Android said:
I can't say that I have ever been even the smallest measure perturbed by a person who is (or appears to be) Muslim with a rucksack on the tube.
Thinking in bayesian terms, even if there is a high probability that the perpetrator of a given act of terrorism is an islamic fundamentalist, the probability that some random muslim guy on the tube is an islamic fundamentalist terrorist is astronomically, vanishing small. Essentially zero.
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Ah well , that's ok then , we can all rest assured.
Thankfully we have the security services being vigilant on your behalf.
 
RotherhitheGill said:
Unfortunately Kings Cross and Parsons Green say otherwise.
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A ridiculous response. I didn't say islamic terrorism doesn't exist, merely that it is astoundingly unlikely that the muslim guy sitting across from you on the tube is a terrorist and thus it is completely irrational to worry about that being the case.

Or is it your contention that those two attacks demonstrate that more than a tiny, tiny minority of muslims are suicide bombers?
 
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What a palaver lol.

Once again the real powers are laughing their heads off as they watch the downtrodden argue about who is the most oppressed and has the most privilege. Pitting one group against the other - same old divide and rule.
better take a side - either will do the strings belong to the same puppet masters.

reminds you of the old man sketches by python. I was black and lived int hole in road. Well, i was white, worked 14 hrs downt pit etc.

ffs people need to wake up and move together. The socialist call was always to fight for equality for all - simple as that, maybe shaming whities is not a great tactic.
 
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Buddha said:
I've been listening to this, it's really good. A really intelligent and articulate bloke.

Everybody in interested in issues of race and racism in Britain should listen. Especially those few of you who get labelled as racists but believe you're not. Listen. Listen properly. And learn something, possibly gain some understanding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wl4m
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Thanks bud. Good listening, as the 60s onwards i recognised most of what he says as the truth.

only things i found weak were around north Atlantic slavery. For some reason he kept objecting to programs venerating Wilberforce for helping to change the laws on slavery as others obviously helped - e.g. jamaican uprising etc. He also decided to excuse african countries enslaving 25m people and selling them to europeans.

the way forward has to be through factual history even when there are inconvenient truths.

more history (not alternate) for me is always a good thing but:
- where the claim is that not enough black history is taught In schools then exactly which parts of uk history is to be removed, already we do not have enough time spent on history. we do not have enough history of the common people and political past (including oppression and slavery of whities) taught in history now. Maybe both side would understand a bit more - adding more time on history lessons would be my answer - definitely not removing content.
 
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