Nailed it.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by ChaosEngine.

White people in England are immigrants though if they happen to be Polish, for example. Only the Brits in Poland are expats. Not sure about Brits in Poland who happen to be of colour, they might be elevated to expat status, unless some football hooligans meet them in a dark alley, then they become... yeah he is about right.

The "individual acts of prejudice" can only happen because society in general allows them.

I'm far enough away from these issues to admit that I don't have anything like concrete knowledge on the subject, but I feel like I should mention some of the more obvious counterpoints to some of the things he's said in this video. Otherwise I'd get that dirty echo chamber feeling, and no amount of showering seems to wash that away. Could be I'm just a masochist, though, who enjoys arguing.

I think there's racism in every culture. I think it's often much more subtle than described in the video, often even subconscious. I also think that modern western culture is among the least racist cultures to have ever existed, despite our many complaints.

I guess I'll talk about Libya first. The west (the white people he was talking about) is continuously demonized for supporting tyrants and the like. Yet when they participate in overthrowing a clear example of a extravagant super villain tyrant, they are demonized for that. I'm not saying they didn't have other motives, I'm just saying that it's an example of a tautology. No matter which choice they make they are labeled racist.

Now, when beleaguered folk make a desperate attempt to dangerously cross a sea, well knowing the risks they are incurring, it is again the fault of the Italians for not rescuing then with sufficient alacrity. Yes, many of them are coming from countries the west had a hand in destabilizing. But it would be pretty racist for you to demand that the Italian navy take full moral responsibility for the actions of other western nations, simply because they are white too. Also, if the only number you pay attention to is the number that drown, your bias is showing.

Next the issue of the Commonwealth. It seems absurd to expect the UK to treat former colonies populated by citizens that had moved there the same as former conquests that have since shrugged off the yoke of empire. The justifications for this discrimination would seem to be a combination of racism, cultural chauvinism and sober pragmatism. The latter two factors clearly scale with the gap between the culture of the colony in question and the home country, and probably ought to in some sense.

The incarceration thing is tougher to poke holes in, and clearly a much more touchy subject. Once could argue all sorts of justifications for why more members of ethnic minorities are apprehended, but it's nebulous and smells of bias and chauvinism, at best ending in a chicken vs egg conundrum. But once you're in police custody, I think can agree on demanding a higher level of equality of outcome. So I checked out a charity called Inquest who had compiled pretty comprehensive stats on police custody deaths since 1990. Here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
To summarise, since 1990, ethnic minorities have made up a total of 153 out of 1557 deaths in police custody, or roughly 10%. Given that they currently make up 13% of the population, that seems to be well within an acceptable range of results, so I was confused at first. Then I thought maybe he had misspoken and had meant to say state custody, or inmate deaths. So again I looked for some numbers, and again Inquest had the most comprehensive data, broken down by year and ethnicity etc. Again here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-prison
It shows 453 out of 3963 prison deaths are suffered by ethnic minorities. This seems almost perfectly in line with the 13% population of said minorities. So again, I'm a bit confused by the point he's making.

All of that said, I think I agree with the sentiment of his presentation, which perhaps confuses me even more.

even if modern western [white] culture is the least racist, the problems seem to stem from the fact that it is the dominant culture. so whatever racism there is, it's magnified significantly.

for example: the internet often likes to claim that black american culture is way more racist than white american culture. assuming this to be true, look at how little an effect this has. black communities, groups, event, whatever organization can be as racist as they want and we as white people essentially laugh it off as being funny or ignore it or use it as political leverage. it doesn't effect us unless we go out of our way to let it effect us.

then look at the reverse, assuming white culture is the least racist. it categorically devastates communities, groups, generations, events, etc. even after decades of us collectively and actively trying to not be racist, systemic or otherwise.

Good point.

I don't dispute racism exists, and its effects are amplified by power and reach. There is a difference between quality and quantity when it comes to racism. Western racism seems of a low quality, but it generates a high quantity due to pragmatic reasons. Strangely, perhaps, I find this less reprehensible than high quality of racism that is mitigated by distance or political clout. That's definitely a bias I have.

EDIT:
I think the above video and my response to it demonstrate some of the problems in that stance. Akala confidently lists a collection of events that he clearly considers egregious. A subset of those I've addressed in my criticism, to varying extents. If detecting racism in our culture is disagreeing about how effective a foreign navy should be in it's coast guard duties on a foreign shore, perhaps we're disappearing down the rabbit hole. If detecting racism in our culture means finding a sub 1% discrepancy in prison death rates in a small sample size, then it could be we're missing the forest for the trees.
It isn't to say that there aren't still problems in western culture, but we are teaching ourselves to cry wolf constantly, and we know where that leads.

Well, what pisses off me about racism in the States is that we enslaved people for 200+ years, made them live in shacks and treated them like cattle. We pretty much stripped them of dignity and all that is human to the point where many of them believed it, then we said: "Hey, you are free now, so act like us!" What in the funking funk is that kind of logic? Do we expect them to say, "Thanks for the freedom, now I'll just erase the indoctrination and all the memory and I'll magically be jolly jumping ideal citizen like the best examples of your race." What adequate tools did we give them to re-engage in society?

We often expect a tabula rasa from African Americans when in fact we ruined them and should heavily reinvest in them for at least a few decades, if not centuries. Racism based on half-assed logic boils my blood more than pure racism.

I understand your point and mostly agree, but not completely.
First, I'll totally disagree with the proposition that white culture is the least racist...as a culture, it may be one of the most racist, and as individuals we certainly aren't the least. (yes, I do understand you said it for the sake of argument, not as a claim you're making, but still, I disagree with the suggestion that it might be true)
Secondly, racism from the black community towards white people does effect many white people significantly.
I, as an 18 year old white male, lived in East Palo Alto in the late 80's when it was called the murder capital of the US and was over 95% 'minorities'. I was often confronted just for being there, and on more than one occasion was attacked/chased for being a white guy in "their neighborhood" (clearly it wasn't theirs or they would have know I lived there). Granted, the racism I experienced was not systemic (except when the police assumed I was there to buy drugs and repeatedly harassed me for being the wrong color in the neighborhood), and not a daily occurrence, but it happened way more than once, and I didn't go out of my way to let it effect me. I went out of my way to ignore it.

*hiphop *equality *british

Adding video to channels (British, Equality, Hiphop) - requested by ant.

obviously what i said was a very general statement about a very nuanced and complex issue so there are going to be lots of examples counter to it with varying degrees of validity.

that said, one could counter your example by saying that the reason the people in that neighbourhood are so protective is precisely because of contemporary systemic racism: they've been ghettoize. education and opportunity has stripped away. one of the few things they have left is the ability to control their immediate area.

I don't disagree, I just meant to point out that it's not ALWAYS true that we can just laugh it off or ignore it, or that we ALWAYS have to go out of our way to be effected, even if it is ALMOST always true. ;-)

On a side note, sadly, the ones most effected by minority racism against whites are usually the same people that are the least racially biased themselves. To explain what I mean by that, if I had been racist, I never would have moved to a nearly all black neighborhood even if the alternative was more inconvenient. Because I chose to expose myself to interactions with minorities in 'their' community daily, there was more opportunity for me to be harassed in a place where the community stood with the harasser, or at least not against them.

The reasons for various forms of racism are a different topic from the effects.....mostly.

Good little rap.

What was the show?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0qnYOr1qQ4

Why are you saying "we enslaved"? I've never enslaved anyone. And nobody currently alive in the US has participated in legal slavery.

Even a descendant of a slave owner is not responsible for the atrocities of their ancestors - we aren't Klingons.

Yes white people did terrible things in the past, but "we" didn't do it and to take on perceived guilt for someone else's actions just because they are the same skin color as you is just self indulgent.

Further, please don't say "we expect" just as black people aren't all the same neither are white people, and one person does not speak for others unless they have been nominated to do so.

So here is what I expect: everyone on the planet regardless of race, religion, nationality and life experiences to be a decent human being, that respects the rights of others, and I expect it to go both ways, without concessions because of someone's culture.

If anyone wants to talk about which races, religions and nations have the monopoly on slavery, sexism, homophobia racial and religious discrimination, it's not Europeans these days, and certainly hasn't been for a long time.

If it's not acceptable for white people do behave this way, why do people tolerate it in other cultures?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvQJ_zsL1U


Seems to me like Rapper Akala's anecdotes are a bit one sided.

@MonkeySpank Fascinating how your thoughtful comment on the psychological effects of horrendous treatment for over a hundred of years, followed by being the victims of terrorism for an additional hundred years, gets re-written into a treatise on liberal guilt.

Fascinating.

Regardless, the conversation has been relatively civil, so we should do our best to keep it that way. It can still be a good conversation, especially if someone says something you don't quite get, ask them about it, rather than just paper over them with some dubiously constructed impression based on an inflexible stance that impairs your imagination.

I'm not pointing at anyone here. You seem to have taken this as personal offense. I am not asking you to apologize for anyone. You didn't enslave anyone and neither did I. I didn't choose my parents or my race so I don't expect to be blamed for my ancestral guilt. If someone were to blame me for that, then that would also be racism.

Not sure what you read, but what I said is once enslaved people go back into society, there should be some radical reparations to bring them back to societal standards. Historically speaking, we failed miserably at that. If we can't even accept that, then we are not there yet.

My original comment was not an apology, but a highlight on the fact that we, as a nation, messed up. Your expectation that "everyone on the planet regardless of race, religion, nationality and life experiences to be a decent human being" is a valid one. What irks me, though, is when people blame one bad action on the individual at times, yet at others times, they conveniently blame the exact same bad action on an entire race.

Which part offended you? Is it the "We" part? Replace "We" with "Americans" if you that makes you less offended.

Nobody's asking you for an apology, so I'm not sure what liberal guilt has to do with anything. I just stated the fact that we did a piss-poor job, societally speaking, by:

1) Enslaving people
2) Failing to rehabilitate them after emancipation

@Engels Noted and taken to heart.

I have edited my comment to be less judgmental and more descriptive.

Thanks for the reminder.

Whoa. I was agreeing with you. Someone else laid into you, completely misunderstanding the point you made. And since they upvoted my comment, they misunderstood that I was agreeing with you also.

Sorry for the miscommunication. Although re-reading it, I can't see where I went wrong.

But if TWO people misread it, it must be true.

Well we seem to be devolving into miscommunication, so let's all be clear! bareboards2, I was not singling you out at all. In fact, you have by and large been the image of civility, so much so that I picture you with a monocle while writing your missives to us.

I too think that MonkeySpank (god help us all) seems to have the most historical and accurate interpretation of the situation; one does not traumatize a people, be they Jews or African Americans for decades and decades and decades and then expect them to up and happily integrate. There's a reckoning that has to happen, and I am sorry if your lilly white ass didn't personally own slaves, you were born into a societal architecture created by those who did and you can't pretend the playing field is level. You can stare at your voting right's act, you can belly ache about how Ashley with her 3.5 didn't get into U State university while a minority did, but it doesn't change the fact that that there's a lot of redress to be done, and it'll take a LONG time to remedy. We have some signs of improvement, with prominent African American politicians and intellectuals taking the stage and garnering universal respect, but that's the tip of the iceberg, and we have a LONG way to go.

The UK has done a much better job in handling the situation than the US has, it seems, though it has had more time to do so than the southern US. I don't think they achieved it by implementing systemic racism in the opposite direction, though. And let's be clear, even though we may feel justified in kicking out higher achieving students to replace them with a quota-satisfying minority group, that is systemically racist, the very thing we are trying to abolish. It is a clear example of committing a wrong to hopefully achieve a right. And it will never feel like anything short of racism to the individual student that gets short changed.

So let's say that it works, and black folk begin to integrate more successfully into the encompassing community, and the encompassing communities don't end up resenting them for the racist laws that are helping them to do s . Will we ever be remove these racist rules? Or will we be arguing about an ever small statistical deviation somewhere? Furthermore, all of the people that are unjustly damaged by these new racist rules (ie. Ashley), won't they then be due reparations in the future too? Who would pay those? Where would it end? Would it end?

I just doubt that more racism is the cure for racism.

My original statement was not a call to action, rather a historical highlight of how we kaboshed the opportunity to correct a bad deed. Seeing as this statement has devolved into an internet argument (my least favorite online activity), I am going to refrain from participating altogether. It's been fun Videosift.

@Engels You COULD NOT be more wrong about me. However, I so deeply love that image, I'm going to stick with it.

(I was fairly sure your comment wasn't directed at me, however it did LAND on me, because my monocle slipped there. Codswallop. Lovely lovely monocle-ish word that is still denigrating instead of descriptive. I prefer description when in monocle mode.)

And yeah. Internet arguments. I'm severely allergic to them now.

I'm not offended, I'm just tired of regressive leftism - as explained very well by the Bill Maher video I linked.

I'm completely disgusted at the white people in this video tripping over each other to see who can feel the most guilty. It's completely self indulgent.

As far as the Libyan people go, people are pissed when a dictator is propped up by an outside power, and pissed when he is removed. This is a not a no-win situation; the winning move, much like the movie War Games, is to NOT FUCKING GET INVOLVED. It's a sovereign country, let them figure their own shit out. You don't want to trade with them or let any of your money go to their country, fine. But let the people choose their own destiny, do not impose it upon them because you believe you know what is right. This is not a race issue, one of basic human self-determination.

I agree in principle. I don't see how it could work out in practice, though. If we embargo Libya, it is ineffective because someone else will buy their oil, and effectively the only thing we impact is the economy and the plight of it's citizens, as we have clearly seen with Saddam. This will lead to further claims of racism because the people of the country are being made to suffer.

So, I suppose we could blockage them to really enforce their isolation. But unless we are willing to sink russian and chinese ships trading with them, all we are doing is issuing empty threats. And clearly if we do start sinking those ships, we will start wars and again be called racist.

The only alternative you leave, is to completely ignore their suffering, hope that nobody else intervenes for their own ends, and await the eventual overthrow of the government, which could take hundreds of years. This seems like the least empathetic and most disregarding approach imaginable. Being so afraid to do bad that one refuses to try to do good.

I think the most moral approach would perhaps be the most chauvinist of all. I'm thinking about Japan post WWII. But then I never bought into the post modern nihilistic view.

We as individual white people are not responsible.
We as a nation are.

I don't agree, because it's still an event that happened in the past. However we can and should be part of a solution.

I think there is a sensible middle ground that can work towards fixing the issue without all of the self flagellating, and without the victim culture of idiots like the rapper in this video.