George Floyd Death and the Wider Consequences

[Butts]

He specifically excluded women from receiving Rhodes scholarships over the protestations of many. Hence the existence of the Marshall scholarships.
What matters more is not what you achieved, but the manner by which they were accomplished. There's a reason that there aren't many statues of Rhodes in Zimbabwe...

As Women were not allowed to Matriculate from Oxford until 1920 excluding them from the Scholarships (at that time) would seem eminently sensible.

I take it you are opposed to the three remaining All Womens Colleges at Cambridge ?

 

[alex397]

This is textbook language of the loonie left. I very much doubt that the bulk of "supporters" would agree with the anti-family stance, which airbrushes fathering out of child raising.

Not sure what I think on all of what they say, but they certainly don’t sound ‘anti-family’ to me - they sound more like they are inclusive to all kinds of families.
It doesn’t sound anti-father to me, or anti the idea of a ‘normal’ family with a Mum and Dad - instead they are saying that the idea of a family shouldn’t just be restricted to those ideas.

The particular text you quoted from BLM doesn’t sound very extreme to me. It sounds like they just want a world which is more inclusive, less judgemental and with more empathy. I don’t see a problem with that! It remains to be seen if that will ever be achievable though.

As for the ‘defund the police’ campaign - I certainly don’t agree with that, though it might apply more to the context of the U.S. and their anger towards the American police. But, I doubt most sensible people would truly want to defund the police.

 

[najaB]

That's a rather rose tinted view of BLM. It is not just an equal rights campaign, it is an extremist anti-capitalist movement.

Seeing as it is a movement based on a hashtag, rather than an organisation it is very difficult to say that it is any one thing.

As for protection from law, BLM are quite open about wanting an end to policing. What exactly do people think a "Defund the police" campaign is about?

With respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. I suggest that you read up on US police funding rather than continuing to expose your ignorance.

 

[najaB]

As Women were not allowed to Matriculate from Oxford until 1920 excluding them from the Scholarships (at that time) would seem eminently sensible.

It's not just that they weren't eligible, they were specifically excluded by the language used to found the scholarships.

Edit: And you made the point earlier that the fact that black people have benefited from Rhodes scholarships (which is true), but it's worth noting that as well as being only available to men, 82% of the original allocation of scholarships were to majority white countries. In the case of southern Africa his will specified that only alumini of specified whites-only schools were eligible to get a scholarship.

I take it you are opposed to the three remaining All Womens Colleges at Cambridge ?

On principle, yes. But if they receive no public funds then I don't really have any say in the matter.

 

[mmh]

Seeing as it is a movement based on a hashtag, rather than an organisation it is very difficult to say that it is any one thing.
With respect, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. I suggest that you read up on US police funding rather than continuing to expose your ignorance.

You're wrong. It very much is an organisation. It has leaders and is very well funded. If it were not an organisation it would be impossible to make donations to it, and impossible for it to have funds to make grants to local groups with.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You're wrong. It very much is an organisation. It has leaders and is very well funded. If it were not an organisation it would be impossible to make donations to it, and impossible for it to have funds to make grants to local groups with.

Indeed BLM is an organisation - you can check out their home page at https://blacklivesmatter.com/. Those who regard BLM as a fluffly, harmless, group might want to particularly note the social media banner on the bottom left, which includes this:



(Text reads: Happy 96th Birthday, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. We honor you, Freedom Fighter, followed by some hashtags). The person this is dedicated to spent much of his adult life arguing that blacks are superior and should be separated from whites, and described Martin Luther King as a 'chump' (Although to be fair he did appear to change his mind in the last year of his life).

 

[nlogax]

You're wrong. It very much is an organisation. It has leaders and is very well funded. If it were not an organisation it would be impossible to make donations to it, and impossible for it to have funds to make grants to local groups with.

It's both although I'm sure the organisation aspect isn't known about by many. If you were to venture on social media you'd notice that most regard it as a movement.

 

[hst43102]

I'll just step in and give my two pence worth into this very interesting discussion.

My problems with the BLM organisation and the protests in this country are that the UK has very little to do with all that has happened in the US, and therefore the same arguments/phrases don't work the same here as they do across the pond. (I can't breathe, for example.)

Secondly, although the protesters claim to be trying to make lives better, they are gathering in large crowds at a time in which this is completely inappropriate.

Thirdly, what are the aims/goals of the protest? I hear lots of noise about "systemic racism" and so on, but no evidence to support these claims. I'm from a non-white background (I don't like the term BAME as it's just lumping a multitude of different cultures and races under one umbrella) but I've never experienced any racism of any kind. If this was as racist a country as the protesters make it out to be, I'd be out there with them!

 

[C J Snarzell]

Apparently, Mars Confectionary are now set to completely rebrand the Uncle Ben's range. The image on packs of rice depics a 1940s photograph of an aging black rice farmer which Mars are saying is now inappropriate. I remember being given Uncle Ben's rice as a child and it is a brand I still eat regularly & I would never associate it with racism or negavity to black people.

CJ

 

[UP13]

I don't know if I'm more surprised by the decision (I'm unaware or any controversy around it) or only just finding out thatUncle Ben is owner by Mars...

 

[najaB]

You're wrong. It very much is an organisation. It has leaders and is very well funded. If it were not an organisation it would be impossible to make donations to it, and impossible for it to have funds to make grants to local groups with.

BLM the organisation and BLM the movement are very much two different things. 99.9% of people protesting under the BLM banner are not members of the organisation. The organisation is a result of the peculiarity of American politics by which it is virtually impossible to exert political pressure unless you are a registered political action committee.

 

[Butts]

BLM the organisation and BLM the movement are very much two different things. 99.9% of people protesting under the BLM banner are not members of the organisation. The organisation is a result of the peculiarity of American politics by which it is virtually impossible to exert political pressure unless you are a registered political action committee.

Notwithstanding that, I wonder what BLM's stance is on how a Black Man became a two time President with such apparent lack of equality of opportunity in the USA.

 

[alex397]

Notwithstanding that, I wonder what BLM's stance is on how a Black Man became a two time President with such apparent lack of equality of opportunity in the USA.

So, because there’s been one black US president, that means there’s full equality of opportunity? Oh please!

Ireland has a gay Prime Minister. Does that mean there is no homophobia in Ireland?

 

[Butts]

So, because there’s been one black US president, that means there’s full equality of opportunity? Oh please!

Ireland has a gay Prime Minister. Does that mean there is no homophobia in Ireland?

I didn't say there was equality of opportunity I was just wondering if it was that bad how Obama made it to the summit of becoming President.

Perhaps it is a little more nuanced than Black v White and is more to do with class and or social background.

 

[alex397]

So, because there’s been one black US president, that means there’s full equality of opportunity? Oh please!

Ireland has a gay Prime Minister. Does that mean there is no homophobia in Ireland?

I didn't say there was equality of opportunity I was just wondering if it was that bad how Obama made it to the summit of becoming President.

Perhaps it is a little more nuanced than Black v White and is more to do with class and or social background.

Probably because racism isn’t as bad as it has been in the past in the US .
But there is still huge issues with race relations in the US, far more so than in the UK. That is why there are BLM protests. It’s quite clear, so im not sure why you can’t see it.

 

[Ashley Hill]

I read on the BBC news website that some long established British companies are apologising for having historic links to slavery. Didn't they do that some years ago during the last major slavery outburst? Also Churchill has recently been publically criticised for his views but only a couple of years ago was voted one of Britains most influential men alongside Brunel. Plymouth are about to rename one of their squares due to John Hawkins (who?) having slavery links. It is now to be named after an historical Argyle player.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I didn't say there was equality of opportunity I was just wondering if it was that bad how Obama made it to the summit of becoming President.

Obama is the only black person to have reached the summit of US politics, and is an extraordinarily talented politician. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he is probably the most talented politician to reach the summit since JFK. The fact it took someone as talented as Obama to get through the glass ceiling shows that, yes, things are that bad. The fact that his successor was someone as uniformly talentless as Donald J Trump, whose main electoral plan was to claim Obama couldn't possibly be American because he is black, only proves it.

What you don't see is mediocre black or Hispanic politicians reaching the summit. There have been plenty of mediocre white men reach the top though: Bushes senior and junior, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, not to mention the current Chimp in Chief. And that's really where you measure equality: can mediocre people from one race rise as far as mediocre people from another.

Also Churchill has recently been publically criticised for his views but only a couple of years ago was voted one of Britains most influential men alongside Brunel.

Churchill was a thoroughly unpleasant chap, even for his time. That's why he was such a good wartime leader and why, as soon as the war was over, he was voted out.

You want a ******* leading the war effort. And lead it he did. So, to respond to your comment, someone can be influential and thoroughly unpleasant at the same time.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Obama is the only black person to have reached the summit of US politics, and is an extraordinarily talented politician. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he is probably the most talented politician to reach the summit since JFK. The fact it took someone as talented as Obama to get through the glass ceiling shows that, yes, things are that bad. The fact that his successor was someone as uniformly talentless as Donald J Trump, whose main electoral plan was to claim Obama couldn't possibly be American because he is black, only proves it.

What you don't see is mediocre black or Hispanic politicians reaching the summit. There have been plenty of mediocre white men reach the top though: Bushes senior and junior, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, not to mention the current Chimp in Chief. And that's really where you measure equality: can mediocre people from one race rise as far as mediocre people from another.

I fear you're trying to deduce too much from limited data, and making too many assumptions.

Firstly, I doubt anyone would dispute that the situation for blacks in the USA was absolutely terrible until at least the 1960s. So any elections before then are irrelevant to the question of whether things are that bad today. If we say, go back to 1972, there have been 14 presidential elections since then, and Obama won two of them - so a 14% success rate for (currently) 13% of the population. Doesn't seem that bad, but obviously that's not nearly enough data to go on. No presidents from non-black ethnic minorities seems a bit more damning, as well as no female presidents - but 14 elections is still not a lot of data. The other thing is, it takes time to become well known and respected enough in politics to have a good chance at running for President (usually anyway; Trump is a bit of an exception probably because he knew how to appeal to populism and was lucky enough to have a particularly unpopular mainstream opponent at a time when trust in mainstream politics was very low) . So even if, miraculously, things became completely fair and equal tomorrow, you'd probably still be looking at, maybe, 10 years, before representation caught up.

Also, I'm not sure I'd describe Obama as 'extraordinarily talented'. If anything, he struck me as being full of good ideas, but somewhat ineffective at implementing them. I suspect that may be in part because he ran for President without first taking the time to get much experience in national politics, although the obstructionism of the Republicans wouldn't have helped. At any rate, who gets elected seems to me to be much more dependant on knowing how to appeal to voters than on being talented at running a country (the current Presidents/Prime Ministers of - for example - the USA, the UK, and Brazil all amply testify to that!)

Churchill was a thoroughly unpleasant chap, even for his time. That's why he was such a good wartime leader and why, as soon as the war was over, he was voted out.

Yet 6 years later he was voted back in again during peacetime (albeit in part due to the problems with our electoral system). I think you'll find there are other reasons why the Tories lost in 1945.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Also, I'm not sure I'd describe Obama as 'extraordinarily talented'. If anything, he struck me as being full of good ideas, but somewhat ineffective at implementing them.

He didn't have control of the legislature, so that wasn't a huge surprise. I was also careful to call him a talented politician; that isn't necessarily the same as a competent leader (cf Boris Johnson).

Even beyond the Presidency, you don't see many politicians of colour in senior jobs. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and that's about it.

 

[westv]

Obama is the only black person to have reached the summit of US politics, and is an extraordinarily talented politician.

And even then you could say he has as much white heritage as black.

 

[Butts]

Are Black People actually over-represented on TV Advertisements in relation to the percentage of the population they account for ?

Possibly not if you live in a metropolitan area , but in a rural area ?

How does this fit into the whole Black Lives Matter ethos ?

 

[najaB]

Are Black People actually over-represented on TV Advertisements in relation to the percentage of the population they account for ?

Possibly not if you live in a metropolitan area , but in a rural area ?

That's an interesting question. Overall, probably yes, but that would only be noteworthy if you take "TV advertising" to be a homologous mass. Since ads are commissioned by individual advertisers, each of whom wants to be representative of their customer base then that's inevitably going to happen. But then you could say the same of any minority.

How does this fit into the whole Black Lives Matter ethos ?

It doesn't.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Are Black People actually over-represented on TV Advertisements in relation to the percentage of the population they account for ?

Possibly not if you live in a metropolitan area , but in a rural area ?

How does this fit into the whole Black Lives Matter ethos ?

It's noticeable that many companies at the moment are falling over themselves to be politically correct. Whilst it's good to recognise that EVERYBODY is equal (and I stand by that) it does lead to the above criticism from some corners.