Blackfishing?

Has anyone heard of "Critical race theory - CRT"?
Yes, but it’s not really the same as all this PC. As I understand it’s academic study of what I would call the evolution of slavery in contrast with abolition, in the US. There have been, and are, many laws and practices in the US starting immediately after the War Between The States intended to maintain white supremacy. There is currently a resurgence in the US, particularly in Texas with laws being passed to restrict voting to whites an exclude black & “Latino” etc people who are in a majority in the State.

CRT is much reviled by the Right in the US who claim that there is no advantage to being white — which is patently untrue.
 
CRT is much reviled by the Right in the US who claim that there is no advantage to being white — which is patently untrue.

Wasn't the original idea to see little black boys and girls holding hands with little white boys and girls? Either that or what the world needs is a great big melting pot?

But now were repeatedly told that we have victims and privileged oppressors throughout endless generations with it never ever ending and this has even lead to segregation. Madness. IMO.

And I'm still waiting for anyone anywhere to point to any specific privilege in my life. Go back a few generations and my ancestors were farm labourers and looked like cowboys, my dad was an industrial worker and my mam worked in he back office of a furniture shop. Nothing has ever been handed to me, quite the contrary as my northern accent and working class background has been held against me in our class obsessed and working class despising country, and anything I've got in this world I've had to work hard for.

Mrs WW gets apoplectic at all this and is nervous of going to new places now because of the constant race baiting that now seems to dominate social media and the news and just about every corner of society now and at worst we have the crazy attacks on Asians which have got a lot of publicity in the far east. I do wish we could get back to judging people for what they are and not categorising each other as victim or unredeemable oppressor based on melanin content. Gosh, the race baiters even assume your political ideology from the amount of melanin you have or haven't got and if you have the wrong views your a gatekeeper? Bounty? or worse, and when they do this they're waaaay off as an awful lot of people with more melanin than me are a lot more to the right of the political landscape than your average division pushing rave obsessed and normally white UK liberal. Step outside of the liberal UK/USA liberal echo chamber and ask people what they think of all this, some will have a different view to the well intentioned liberal one.

All in all. Can't we just get back to banishing racism and just seeing people?
 
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But now were repeatedly told that we have victims and privileged oppressors throughout endless generations with it never ever ending and this has even lead to segregation. Madness. IMO.
The situation is different in the US, which point I was trying to put across. Unfortunately a lot of the sort of things complained of in the U.K. come from there because people do not realise we are “divided by a common language” among other things eg common law :).
 
Wasn't the original idea to see little black boys and girls holding hands with little white boys and girls? Either that or what the world needs is a great big melting pot?

But now were repeatedly told that we have victims and privileged oppressors throughout endless generations with it never ever ending and this has even lead to segregation. Madness. IMO.

And I'm still waiting for anyone anywhere to point to any specific privilege in my life. Go back a few generations and my ancestors were farm labourers and looked like cowboys, my dad was an industrial worker and my mam worked in he back office of a furniture shop. Nothing has ever been handed to me, quite the contrary as my northern accent and working class background has been held against me in our class obsessed and working class despising country, and anything I've got in this world I've had to work hard for.

Mrs WW gets apoplectic at all this and is nervous of going to new places now because of the constant race baiting that now seems to dominate social media and the news and just about every corner of society now and at worst we have the crazy attacks on Asians which have got a lot of publicity in the far east. I do wish we could get back to judging people for what they are and not categorising each other as victim or unredeemable oppressor based on melanin content. Gosh, the race baiters even assume your political ideology from the amount of melanin you have or haven't got and if you have the wrong views your a gatekeeper? Bounty? or worse, and when they do this they're waaaay off as an awful lot of people with more melanin than me are a lot more to the right of the political landscape than your average division pushing rave obsessed and normally white UK liberal. Step outside of the liberal UK/USA liberal echo chamber and ask people what they think of all this, some will have a different view to the well intentioned liberal one.

All in all. Can't we just get back to banishing racism and just seeing people?
I don’t disagree with you, rather the opposite. For example there was a news item yesterday about Scotland’s remotest pub in Knoydart being ‘saved’. No mention there of the fact that virtually the whole population of Knoydart were shipped off to Canada during the Clearances! :(.
 
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Amen to that. But while we have people that prosper out of divisiveness, it will never happen.
There are also social pressures which excacerbate natural xenophobia. It really isn't as simple as the folk singers would like to present it.

The good thing is that we know there's a problem; the bad thing is that 200 or more years after Dido Belle's father and granduncle did their best to break the race barrier, it's still being repaired by the people whose fear of difference blinds them to the good things it brings.
 
I remember something on TV or the radio a few years back about the first record of "Africans" in Britain being at the time of the doomsday book. They weren't specifically singled out labelled and named but pictured... so it didn't seem such a big deal that it needed pointing out in writing rather they were just there going about their business. So that was 1,000 years ago. I don't know but I suspect people of African decent were here a long time before that even if they only came here for the first time with the Romans. So that could be 2,000 years ago?

But it's still an issue?

I haven't discriminated one jot in my love life, I just like who I like. Years back I had a GF who's family was from Nigeria and she had her worries about us as an interracial couple but the worry was mostly I do have to say about how people who looked like her would react not about how people who looked like me would react. I'm now married to a Thai and I'd say the worries about race have increased over the years not decreased and who's to blame for that? The far right? Hardly so as IMO they're so small in number they don't matter, IMO those to blame are the race baiting "liberals" who just can't stop pointing out differences, applying arbitrary labels, making sweeping assumptions and creating division.
 
Wasn't the original idea to see little black boys and girls holding hands with little white boys and girls? Either that or what the world needs is a great big melting pot?

But now were repeatedly told that we have victims and privileged oppressors throughout endless generations with it never ever ending and this has even lead to segregation. Madness. IMO.

And I'm still waiting for anyone anywhere to point to any specific privilege in my life. Go back a few generations and my ancestors were farm labourers and looked like cowboys, my dad was an industrial worker and my mam worked in he back office of a furniture shop. Nothing has ever been handed to me, quite the contrary as my northern accent and working class background has been held against me in our class obsessed and working class despising country, and anything I've got in this world I've had to work hard for.

Mrs WW gets apoplectic at all this and is nervous of going to new places now because of the constant race baiting that now seems to dominate social media and the news and just about every corner of society now and at worst we have the crazy attacks on Asians which have got a lot of publicity in the far east. I do wish we could get back to judging people for what they are and not categorising each other as victim or unredeemable oppressor based on melanin content. Gosh, the race baiters even assume your political ideology from the amount of melanin you have or haven't got and if you have the wrong views your a gatekeeper? Bounty? or worse, and when they do this they're waaaay off as an awful lot of people with more melanin than me are a lot more to the right of the political landscape than your average division pushing rave obsessed and normally white UK liberal. Step outside of the liberal UK/USA liberal echo chamber and ask people what they think of all this, some will have a different view to the well intentioned liberal one.

All in all. Can't we just get back to banishing racism and just seeing people?

White privilege doesn't mean anything has been handed to you on a plate, It means that in all likelihood if you weren't white you'd have had to have worked even harder than you have to get where you are now. And benefiting from it doesn't mean you're racist.
 
There are also social pressures which excacerbate natural xenophobia. It really isn't as simple as the folk singers would like to present it.

The good thing is that we know there's a problem; the bad thing is that 200 or more years after Dido Belle's father and granduncle did their best to break the race barrier, it's still being repaired by the people whose fear of difference blinds them to the good things it brings.
That’s curious to me. Thinking about it I grew up in the later days of Empire and before any large scale immigration here and what struck me back then was how similar people from around the world were despite obvious physical differences. To my knowledge I never saw a person of a different ‘race’ before I was shipped overseas during National Service.
 
White privilege doesn't mean anything has been handed to you on a plate, It means that in all likelihood if you weren't white you'd have had to have worked even harder than you have to get where you are now. And benefiting from it doesn't mean you're racist.
Though denying it possibly does ;).
 
White privilege doesn't mean anything has been handed to you on a plate, It means that in all likelihood if you weren't white you'd have had to have worked even harder than you have to get where you are now. And benefiting from it doesn't mean you're racist.

All that's fine but is any of it actually demonstrably true?

How about those not of Celtic / Anglo origins who only employ those from their own sect? I'm not going to get a job with them am I? And don't tell me that doesn't go on or that positive discrimination doesn't damage the prospects of the white working class who arguably face some of the most difficult challenges in the UK today and are (again arguably) some of those with the least power to change anything.

I'm sure white privilege lives in the minds of privileged liberals who will insist that the likes of me are more privileged than some non Celt/Anglo who went to Eton and is now a lawyer living in some fashionable area of North London but step out of the liberal echo chambers that exist in the UK, USA and some other places in this world and you may hear different views on his subject. Oh, and do that and you'll see real racism, racism I've never seen in the UK.

And still no one has pointed at any specific benefit I've received.

I just wish we could just... Drop This.
 
I just wish we could just... Drop This.
I'm sure many people would like to do just that but problems ignored have a horrible way of growing bigger and bigger...
 
Though denying it possibly does ;).

When the ones who seem to wish to do so have turned back all the good work that's been done over the years to eradicate racism, when they've taught everyone that everything begins with skin colour, when they've labelled people according to melanin content and categorised them and reintroduced racial segregation and formed "This shade of skin only" volleyball matches they can then sit back and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Meanwhile the large part of the population of Africa and other parts of the world will look over, and despair.
 
THe world must in a pretty good state if this all people have to worry about, have all wars, poverty and hunger been eradicated and I missed it?
If someone wanted to look like me I’d be honoured, and worried about their sanity, but hey ho.
 
I'm sure many people would like to do just that but problems ignored have a horrible way of growing bigger and bigger...

I mean drop the race baiting not the work to ensure what MLK dreamed of or Blue Mink sung about comes about.

I don't think CRT and the generalisation and categorisation and the thought that everything is about race we're seeing these days is helping. I think the evidence is that it's doing the opposite, creating division where before there was next to none.

"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists.”

A view I tend to agree with.
 
I mean drop the race baiting not the work to ensure what MLK dreamed of or Blue Mink sung about comes about.

I don't think CRT and the generalisation and categorisation and the thought that everything is about race we're seeing these days is helping. I think the evidence is that it's doing the opposite, creating division where before there was next to none.

"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists.”

A view I tend to agree with.
Most jobs now ask you loads of questions about race (and we have gone from just 4 or 5 to in some cases White - British, White - English, While - Scottish etc... PLUS the ones about how I identify, sexual orientation etc... I just dont see the point.

There has been great work in equality and while there will always be people who 'won't employ XYZ', the vast majority will simply employ the best person. We need to get away from categorising someone and actually treat them as a person. Companies are too obsessed by this and how many are this, that and the other on their board.
 
Most jobs now ask you loads of questions about race (and we have gone from just 4 or 5 to in some cases White - British, White - English, While - Scottish etc... PLUS the ones about how I identify, sexual orientation etc... I just dont see the point.

There has been great work in equality and while there will always be people who 'won't employ XYZ', the vast majority will simply employ the best person. We need to get away from categorising someone and actually treat them as a person. Companies are too obsessed by this and how many are this, that and the other on their board.

I'm all for a meritocracy much of the time but there may be times when we want to employ / put in place / otherwise appoint or recognise some set of people or other for specific reasons... be they melanin, sex, religion, culture or whatever, it could and maybe at times needs to happen in limited instances and I see that as all well and good but I am against blanket "positive" discrimination and needless labelling and division. If we have to grit our teeth and do this sweeping blanket categorisations and positive discrimination thing I do wish we could look beyond melanin and at least recognise that those that are melanin challenged are a set of people too. for example working class white boys being bottom of the league table for a basket of reasons that need to be recognised and addressed.
 
All that's fine but is any of it actually demonstrably true?

How about those not of Celtic / Anglo origins who only employ those from their own sect? I'm not going to get a job with them am I? And don't tell me that doesn't go on or that positive discrimination doesn't damage the prospects of the white working class who arguably face some of the most difficult challenges in the UK today and are (again arguably) some of those with the least power to change anything.

I'm sure white privilege lives in the minds of privileged liberals who will insist that the likes of me are more privileged than some non Celt/Anglo who went to Eton and is now a lawyer living in some fashionable area of North London but step out of the liberal echo chambers that exist in the UK, USA and some other places in this world and you may hear different views on his subject. Oh, and do that and you'll see real racism, racism I've never seen in the UK.

And still no one has pointed at any specific benefit I've received.

I just wish we could just... Drop This.

Yes, it's demonstrably true.

For example, things like this:

 
Yes, it's demonstrably true.

For example, things like this:


That's a bad example but it is from 11 years ago and references studies going back to the 70's. I hope things are better now. It's hardly evidence that I've benefited from white privilege.

And to add balance to the above I wrote the equal opportunities policies for the last lot I worked for and defended them against those who attempted to force any form of discrimination.
 
For me, CRT sounds like the Catholic idea of original sin. where you are born with sin because of the saviour's death two thousand years ago, ergo you are having to atone for something which you had absolutely nothing to do with.
I think Martin Luther King was an outstanding person, a beacon of light which was extinguished by hatred.
 
For me, CRT sounds like the Catholic idea of original sin. where you are born with sin because of the saviour's death two thousand years ago, ergo you are having to atone for something which you had absolutely nothing to do with.
I think you need to study uo on the situation in the US, which I tried to point out earlier, it’s different!
I think Martin Luther King was an outstanding person, a beacon of light which was extinguished by hatred.
Here’s another example of the same sort of thing but in reverse:

It took King a while to grasp the complexities of discrimination in the UK as compared with the US. “I’m not sure he immediately understood what it meant that the victims of discrimination here were immigrants,” says Selma. “In the US, you cannot say black people are not American, but here people did question the Britishness of black people. There were questions about the extent to which the UK was like the US, but it was different because we didn’t have the whole weight of slavery and lynching. But there was the common thread of persecution and how to confront it.”

While British activists took from him experience and encouragement to mobilise, King saw in the UK how victims of discrimination from many ethnicities suffered jointly but could also work together; a scenario more complicated than the black/white fissures in the US.


I remember this very well, I was there, and demonstrated against MLK, but that is another story ;).
 
A view I tend to agree with.
Before racism can be discussed, it's vital to differentiate the behaviour from xenophobia. To keep this discussion simple, I regard racism as a form of bullying and xenophobia as a mental illness.

Like so many phobias, xenophobia has various causes and is unreasoning. There is no real cure but a sufferer can be taught strategies to deal with it.

Racism is much nastier and, while it may originate from xenophobic tendencies. It is at heart, aggression against victims who are thought to be vulnerable, Racism is often gang related and where this is the case it is important to remember that, like all gangs, there's a prime mover, some active supporters and a periphery of weak minded opportunist hangers on.

The key point to take from this is the need to identify in each case whether you are dealing with xenophobia or racism because the strategy for fixing the situation is quite different between the two causes. Mistaking one from the other will only make the situation worse.
 
Before racism can be discussed, it's vital to differentiate the behaviour from xenophobia. To keep this discussion simple, I regard racism as a form of bullying and xenophobia as a mental illness.

Like so many phobias, xenophobia has various causes and is unreasoning. There is no real cure but a sufferer can be taught strategies to deal with it.

Racism is much nastier and, while it may originate from xenophobic tendencies. It is at heart, aggression against victims who are thought to be vulnerable, Racism is often gang related and where this is the case it is important to remember that, like all gangs, there's a prime mover, some active supporters and a periphery of weak minded opportunist hangers on.

The key point to take from this is the need to identify in each case whether you are dealing with xenophobia or racism because the strategy for fixing the situation is quite different between the two causes. Mistaking one from the other will only make the situation worse.
I am not sure that in this case (blackfishing) it has anything to do with either of your assertions. To me, it is just another example of "joining the latest bandwagon"
 
I am not sure that in this case (blackfishing) it has anything to do with either of your assertions. To me, it is just another example of "joining the latest bandwagon"
Conversations move on.
 
In todays Newcastle Spurs game a number of Newcastle fans had arab style headwear on, a few looked like tea-towels while some looked more genuine - would that count as arabfishing?
 
In todays Newcastle Spurs game a number of Newcastle fans had arab style headwear on, a few looked like tea-towels while some looked more genuine - would that count as arabfishing?
Any country around the world which has English as an official language is guilty of Anglo-fishing — I would exempt Anzacs, Canada, South Africa but not USA (rebels and always calling us Brits) Eire …


… Oh, but definitely not exempt Scotland ;) :exit:
 
That's a bad example but it is from 11 years ago and references studies going back to the 70's. I hope things are better now. It's hardly evidence that I've benefited from white privilege.

And to add balance to the above I wrote the equal opportunities policies for the last lot I worked for and defended them against those who attempted to force any form of discrimination.
But then the likes of the BBC run adverts for jobs where white people can't apply.

It should be equal for everyone not just for minorities
 
But then the likes of the BBC run adverts for jobs where white people can't apply.

It should be equal for everyone not just for minorities
Have you got any examples of that?
 
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Yes.


2 years prior

Though as your link says they are not “jobs”!

It is a knotty problem though and I think the “ethnic minority “ thing is fraught with difficulty of defintion. Are Jewish people an ethnic minority and if so which minority is it if they are of recent German or Russian etc origin?

I think as long as the criteria are published and the numbers known it’s probably OK.
 
Though as your link says they are not “jobs”!

It is a knotty problem though and I think the “ethnic minority “ thing is fraught with difficulty of defintion. Are Jewish people an ethnic minority and if so which minority is it if they are of recent German or Russian etc origin?

I think as long as the criteria are published and the numbers known it’s probably OK.
Jobs, apprentiships, training…. Whatever, doesn’t matter, everything should be open to everyone and based on merrit, not skin colour, ethnicity, sexuality or anything else.
 
Jobs, apprentiships, training…. Whatever, doesn’t matter, everything should be open to everyone and based on merrit, not skin colour, ethnicity, sexuality or anything else.
Except that it isn’t of course and never has been :(. You are just describing an ideal which doesn’t exist. :(
 
It will be far easier when we are all coffee coloured bisexuals of unspecified gender.

I would settle for the Coffee colour if I could, because I burn in the slightest sun. but the rest is not me at all.
When it comes to plants and most animals Hybrids are the strongest and healthiest and often the best looking.
This is often true of humans too.
 
Jobs, apprentiships, training…. Whatever, doesn’t matter, everything should be open to everyone and based on merrit, not skin colour, ethnicity, sexuality or anything else.
in Tudor in Tudor England there were 10,000 coloured people in London. they were accepted for what ever skills they had, like everyone else.
Henry Vlll principal trumpeter was a black man and it is noted that when he asked for a raise Henry doubled his salary..
It was also noted that his flag ship the Mary Rose had many black sailors on board when it sank.

It was not till we joined the slave trade that prejudice set in. if you were buying and selling them it eased our conscience to think of them as less than human.
And slavery had biblical support, (but Racism did not)
 
Except that it isn’t of course and never has been :(. You are just describing an ideal which doesn’t exist. :(
I know, but we don’t help ourselves getting there by constantly segregating in the name of “anti racism”..
Everywhere you look now is one thing for one ethnic group and one for another. Again, the BBC with the Asian network and the Black specific programming..

Why can’t everyone just listen to one station, or at least a station/programme that represents everyone.
Universities promoting segregation by having “multicultural” spaces specifically for ethnic minorities. I thought we had moved past segregation.. it seems not.
 
I know, but we don’t help ourselves getting there by constantly segregating in the name of “anti racism”..
Everywhere you look now is one thing for one ethnic group and one for another. Again, the BBC with the Asian network and the Black specific programming..

Why can’t everyone just listen to one station, or at least a station/programme that represents everyone.
Universities promoting segregation by having “multicultural” spaces specifically for ethnic minorities. I thought we had moved past segregation.. it seems not.

People naturally segregate. A part of being human is joining with a peer group, family or tribe that we belong to, and that's most easily identified using outward appearances - whether skin colour, clothes, hairstyle or something similar. The problem comes when we deliberately select against those outside our preferred group.

Humans are inherently unpleasant, and it takes a lot of training and cultural pressure to affect that. I suspect that, rather like a corset being used to reshape a fat, bloated body, if you squeeze the unpleasantness in at one point it simply pushes out at another.

To borrow a phrase from another forum, people are b*****d covered bastards with b*****d filling. That's a generalisation, taking humanity as a whole. Individually and in small numbers, most people will show varying degrees of love, loyalty, care, concern. It's just that it's often forgotten in larger groups or when confronted with a challenging alternative culture. I love people from a wide variety of races and backgrounds, but go all 'ethnic' on me and I'll probably not react as well as I should like.
 
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slavery had biblical support, (but Racism did not)
Not quite true.

In fact, the old testament is rather full of it. For example, in the Book of Joshua, the big fella tells Joshua to kill every person (and their livestock) in the towns of Jericho and Ai, which sounds like racist inspired genocide to me. Likewise, in the Book of Samuel, the boss tells Saul to wipe out the Amalekites. When Saul decides that's a step too far, Samuel is told to finish the job.
 
Not quite true.

In fact, the old testament is rather full of it. For example, in the Book of Joshua, the big fella tells Joshua to kill every person (and their livestock) in the towns of Jericho and Ai, which sounds like racist inspired genocide to me. Likewise, in the Book of Samuel, the boss tells Saul to wipe out the Amalekites. When Saul decides that's a step too far, Samuel is told to finish the job.

It was to do with religious cleansing, rather than race. The bible old testament cites a variety of individuals from other non-Jewish races that came to have key roles, either in their own generation or as parents of future leaders, but who came to accept the Jewish faith. An obvious example would be Ruth (Moabite - enemy nation) as forebear of king David.

Later on the Jews became more exclusive in outlook, but at that time they seemed to be quite open to those of other races provided they gave up their deities.

Also worth considering that slavery in OT times had a complex set of rules and guidelines around it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery It is natural to see slavery as being of a simple nature, especially in the light of attrocities committed by European settlers in America, Africa and the Caribbean, but slavery has taken a much wider range of forms historically, and would not have the racial spin that is so often present in 21st century views.
 
Have you got any examples of that?
When I was unemployed back in 2016/17, there were adverts in the Jobcentre for BBC vacancies, which specifically asked for candidates under the age of 21, so with that little bit of casual ageism, I can well imagine that the BBC would add a littlwe bit of casual anti white racism to the stew as well.
 
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