George Floyd

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
I can't help but think the focus on statues - Sadiq Khan has launched a review today - is a bit of a diversion from the more systematic and immediately relevant racisms being perpetuated in the name of the hostile environment, immigration discourse and son on.
Click to expand...
Do you not think it's useful and positive as indicating a sea change in public attitude?

Or are there such deep divisions that talking about "public attitude" like it's one thing is a fallacy?

Not being rhetorical, I genuinely don't know what to think.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
Mr. Tea said:
Do you not think it's useful and positive as indicating a sea change in public attitude?

Or are there such deep divisions that talking about "public attitude" like it's one thing is a fallacy?

Not being rhetorical, I genuinely don't know what to think.
Click to expand...
I'm quite impressed with the report on the racism in the North London NHS Blood transfusion team. It's unglamorous workplace discrimination, but it's objective and evidenced and tangible. All about silent violence and blocking promotions, and that rings true against my experience of working on real life cases.
It's quite mundane really, unless you are on the receiving end (or you want to propose a white supremacist/vampire conspiracy), but it's a proper demonstration of how actual Brit daily racism is perpetuated by regular white people.
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
DannyL said:
I can't help but think the focus on statues - Sadiq Khan has launched a review today - is a bit of a diversion from the more systematic and immediately relevant racisms being perpetuated in the name of the hostile environment, immigration discourse and son on.
Click to expand...

it's a symbolic gesture yeah, but I think it's more materially significant than stuff like, say focusing all attention on diversity at the academy awards or something.

Ben Burgis' next book is called 'Cancelling Comedians While The World Burns'
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
cancel twitter

what purpose does it serve?

also cancel the verb "to tweet" - from now on birds just chirp

world-changing notions i know
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
DannyL said:
I can't help but think the focus on statues - Sadiq Khan has launched a review today - is a bit of a diversion from the more systematic and immediately relevant racisms being perpetuated in the name of the hostile environment, immigration discourse and son on.
Click to expand...

you are right to think that, but those racisms are built on a platform of the historical ones and it is, joyfully, suddenly very simple to symbolically address those. (And only symbolically). But let’s just enjoy that for a minute.

The removal of theses statues was impossible and too difficult a year ago. Now it’s unthinkable for them to remain. Why were they ever there? Lots of people asking questions - the hidden part made visible.

Black adults who went to Colston’s school and had to wear a flower in his honour once a year. Black kids dancing on the empty plinth.

People pull down a statue in Bristol and the mayor of London has to keep up with them. It’s not him, it’s us.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
For sure. And it's not like I don't think its a good thing. It just struck me that are plenty of other egraegious baked into the current system, that I'd also like to see challenged just as forcefully, if not more so i.e. shutting down Heathrow and stopping those fucking deportation flights.

Glad the Milligan statue has gone but that also struck me as a weird one. It's right in front of the Museum of Dockland which has a gallery dedicated to the slave trade. When I first saw people talking about that statue this weekend, I thought that must've put the Museum there deliberately to provide that context. Might be wrong there though. And getting rid is a more powerful gesture.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
This is an interesting article:
medium.com

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
medium.com medium.com

Idk if I'm convinced its by a former cop but still
This passage struck me:
I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.

Colin Ward, in Anarchy in Action, writes about how most people are not predatory, criminality is overstated, we exist within social norms of non-violence and politeness for vast majority of our lives without the need for external supervision, and slip into frameworks of mutual aid if the conditions are right. (All of his work can be seen as a vindication of the idea of mutual aid).
 
Last edited:
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
...most people are not predatory, criminality is overstated, we exist within social norms of non-violence and politeness for vast majority of our lives...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how much agreement you'd get on this part from someone who lives on a run-down estate where gangs basically do what the fuck they want. And if the argument is that the police aren't effective and should be abolished for that reason as much as for any other, that sounds pretty nihilistic. Like, you live in a high-crime area? Tough shit, deal with it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RWY
sufi

sufi

lala
Mr. Tea said:
I'm not sure how much agreement you'd get on this part from someone who lives on a run-down estate where gangs basically do what the fuck they want. And if the argument is that the police aren't effective and should be abolished for that reason as much as for any other, that sounds pretty nihilistic. Like, you live in a high-crime area? Tough shit, deal with it.
Click to expand...
you didnt read the article
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
sufi said:
you didnt read the article
Click to expand...
No, and I was responding to Dan's comment, and thinking about the situation in the UK (where, thankfully, trigger-happy cops are far less of a problem, if only because most of them don't have triggers to be happy with) rather than the USA.

I have since started reading the article.
 
Last edited:
V

version

Well-known member
Ice Cube's currently going mad tweeting a bunch of antisemitic conspiracy theories alongside his thoughts on the police etc. It's pretty grim.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top