Britain's racist past

[soulwally]

From the BBC News website. I was a teenager [[just!) then, but this is a piece of the UK's history I'd never heard about...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23795655

[soulster]

That was great! Seems a lot less violent than here, but, of course, that did happen too.

[jsmith]

Much like in the US, it was only when blacks [[& the locally based college students) in Bristol started to boycott the buses and walk that action was taken.
The bus company bosses, seeing they were losing a lot of money, & were getting awful publicity, soon faced up to the actively racist bus-crews and insisted that blacks would be employed. Storm in a tea-cup really but it can't have seemed that way to the immigrants involved.
They [[& blacks right across the UK) had more problems getting decent housing at affordable prices. Slum landlords bought up run-down old houses and charged huge rents as very few existing buy-to-rent owners were willing to take in blacks [[or Irish or gypsies).
Discrimination laws were soon fetched in & all that ended quite quickly thank God.

[soulster]

Much like in the US, it was only when blacks [[& the locally based college students) in Bristol started to boycott the buses and walk that action was taken.
The bus company bosses, seeing they were losing a lot of money, & were getting awful publicity, soon faced up to the actively racist bus-crews and insisted that blacks would be employed. Storm in a tea-cup really but it can't have seemed that way to the immigrants involved.
They [[& blacks right across the UK) had more problems getting decent housing at affordable prices. Slum landlords bought up run-down old houses and charged huge rents as very few existing buy-to-rent owners were willing to take in blacks [[or Irish or gypsies).
Discrimination laws were soon fetched in & all that ended quite quickly thank God.

Problem is: people react to things they SEE. The real racism never left. It is always disguised.

[Jerry Oz]

And usually the disguise is pretty flimsy. I continue to wonder why our president, the very definition of "African-American" is still referred to as "black" when he has a white parent. The "one drop" doctrine is still in effect and affects how people of color - any color - are perceived.

[soulster]

And usually the disguise is pretty flimsy. I continue to wonder why our president, the very definition of "African-American" is still referred to as "black" when he has a white parent. The "one drop" doctrine is still in effect and affects how people of color - any color - are perceived.

No, I think African-American is much more accurate for Pres. Obama than "Black". He's biracial, too.

[Jerry Oz]

That is what I tried to say. I am good with him being referred to as African-American. But I am curious why he is constantly called "the first Black" president when he is just as much white as black. One drop of black blood is what it takes to designate someone as Black.

[robb_k]

JSmith and any other Brits here- Was there a lot of prejudice in Britain against Jews when you were growing up? I remember that there was still quite a bit in the 1940s and 1950s.

[robb_k]

Shouldn't this thread be located on The SDF Lounge? That's the reason it was started, so we could just have on-topic threads on this great music forum.

[jsmith]

Robb, there are [[& always will be) some sad racist bigots in every country. In the 1940's, there was a section of Briton's [[the Black-Shirts) who supported the Facist view that all the ills of the world should be blamed on the Jews. Luckily they were in a very small minority.
I never even realise if someone is Jewish or not until it is pointed out and many other Britons are like me. So it's much harder to 'hate / blame the outsider' in that case as we never perceive them as being outsiders.
Brits [[like Americans) are a mongrel race [[made up from many different ethnic backgrounds), so if educated its hard to get us to pick on outsiders [[even during hard times) coz we realise we're all 'part-outsider' in background.
The 'real danger' comes when the State itself turns on outsiders and seeks to make them scapegoats. There's a whiff of that in the UK these days towards East Europeans who come over to this country to find jobs.

[soulster]

That is what I tried to say. I am good with him being referred to as African-American. But I am curious why he is constantly called "the first Black" president when he is just as much white as black. One drop of black blood is what it takes to designate someone as Black.

Unfortunately, we are conditioned to judge others by their appearance.

[Sotosound]

JSmith and any other Brits here- Was there a lot of prejudice in Britain against Jews when you were growing up? I remember that there was still quite a bit in the 1940s and 1950s.

In essence, humans are tribal and they aren't always comfortable with difference or with change. This can be seen all over the world, with wars or disputes in most countries.

We had one Jewish boy in our class at school in the late 60s and at the age of 12 or 13 some of the other boys would poke fun at him. "Roses are red-ish and violets are blue-ish and everyone knows that ***** is Jewish." was commonly chanted. A lot of this was probably the result of what these boys saw in their parents' attitudes towards Jews rather than anything that they fundamentally believed themselves. To an extent I was carried along with this, partly because my dad was at least verbally a little anti-Semitic. We were, however, only 13. By the time we reached 16 it was all forgotten and this boy was just one of us.

In the late 50s and early 60s Peter Sellers made a lot of money out of impersonating Indian people at a time when Asian immigration was high in the UK. It seemed funny at the time to make fun of Asian immigrants, their strange accents and their strange usage of English, but I suspect that the humour was at least partly driven by the need to deal with something that was new and slightly discomforting to many people.

I also wonder whether the only way to truly get rid of tribalism and racism will be to evolve it out of ourselves since it's probably basic to human nature in our current state of development.

Slightly depressing, really......

[soulwally]

Robb, you're right about where this thread should have gone. It's just that I only ever post on this forum and the Motown forum, and it was just automatic to do what I did. Sorry about that.

[marv2]

Although this should be in the Clubhouse, I find it interesting and enlightening. I never knew there were racial or racist problems in Britain. They just covered this subject on "Coronation Street" but that is fiction.

[jsmith]

Bristol as a city was quite an appropriate place for the bus boycott to take place.
Lots of big wealthy merchants led good lives there, living in big houses with servants, back in the day.
The reason they were so wealthy was that they ran the UK end of the slave trade. Chartering local ships to go to Nth Africa to pick up slaves, transport them to the US & Caribbean, then load up there with tobacco and fetch it back to Bristol.
That's also the reason that the UK cigarette industry was historically based out of Bristol.

[Amithesameboy]

Never knew ? There are a reasonable number of people in this country who would happily re-install a colour bar tomorrow. They tend not to be very intelligent.