How The Over Use Of The Racist Label, Can Turn Into Something As Tragic As This.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3213821/The-inoffensive-everyday-phrases-used-anchor-Alison-Parker-earned-death-sentence-Flanagan-deemed-racist.html

/// When someone brought a watermelon to work, he thought that was racist ///

/// 'We would say stuff like, "The reporter's out in the field." And he would look at us and say, "What are you saying, cotton fields? That's racist".' ///

/// 'We'd be like, "What?' We all know what that means, but he took it as cotton fields, and therefore we're all racists.' ///

Unless someone definitely breaks UK laws on racism and regarding this site, the existing AB rules on such matters, should anyone falsely accusing another of being a racist be suspended?

[whiskeryron]

I think I know where AOG is coming from. I try to treat everyone regardless of race or colour as I would like to be treated, BUT the problem it would appear could be cultural rather than racist. The first house my late wife & I bought was at the time of the immigration of West Indian folks & the part of Birmingham we lived in was one of the first places where the newcomers settled. We got on very well with them as neighbours & it soon became clear how different our cultures were. They did play loud music all day long, they had house parties most weekends where relatives & friends would congregate in gardens & indeed also outside on the street with sometimes ( to our untrained ears ) appalling loud noise. One of the things I objected to was the fact that a lot of the men at these parties would urinate against the front walls so that urine would run down the pavement into the gutters. These things became so annoying that eventually it became apparent that if we wished to maintain our own culture & the way of life we were used to we would have to move to another area which we did & so we were guilty of spreading the non integration opt out which was going on at that time. Believe me there was absolutely no racist motive involved, simply a clash of cultures which of course is with us all with differing immigration from all parts of the globe.

[mikey4444]

Ron...while I can sympathise with your problem of bad neighbours, I can show you many council estates in South Wales where you would get the same problems, but from white neighbours.

Playing far-too-loud music, bbq's, urinating in the street, gathering of too many people, etc, is hardly an exclusively black affair.

[whiskeryron]

Fair comment mikey, I suppose everywhere has deteriorated now but at the time these things were completely alien to most of us & not at all akin to our way of gong about our daily lives.

[mikey4444]

Ron...alas, bad and ignorant behaviour is now the norm in a lot of places.

Public decency and concern for others is fast falling out of fashion with some groups of people, and I doubt if it will ever come back. I get bouts of it on the estate where I live although its only caused by a minority, although that minority is nearly always the usual suspects. They are outweighed by the rest of us at the moment, but at the rate these people breed, I am glad I will probably not be around in another 20-30 years.

[dunnitall]

I entirely understand and see your point WR and it is as you state, far from being racist but a cultural thing. These things happen in a lot of different backgrounds, as Mikey has said, many IMO 'low grade' of council tenants or chavs as some call them have similar way of behaving just because it's their 'way' and I for one wouldn't like or want to stay living next door to those either. I personally feel that most cultures wish to be amongst their own because they identify with ways known to them and how they have been brought up. Many times I've seen people being wrongly called racist when in fact the truth is a cultural difference and I'm sure it's not just British people who feel they cannot get on with certain cultures, IMO all cultures will feel the difference and sometimes uncomfortable outside of their own.

[-Talbot-]

When was Vester Lee Flanagan, aka Bryce Williams declared to be insane?

[anotheoldgit]

Thank you whiskeryron, also thanks to you dunnitall, for simply instilling a little common sense into this thread.

I would wish to award you both the 'Best Answer' but unfortunately that is not possible, so I award it to you Ron seeing you were first off the oche".

[whiskeryron]

I am indebted to you AOG.

[andy-hughes]

Returning to the OP -

The tragedy occurred because the individual in question had serious mental health issues, and simply used the convenient hooks of his ethnicity and sexuality to make an issue of them. The only ‘overuse’ of the term racist was used by him to justify his murderous actions.

Quite how anyone can find a link between the use – or overuse of a cultural term – and the murders of innocent people is a stretch of imagination I for one cannot comprehend.

But, as past threads show – I have a seriously different interpretation of what racism is, compared to the OP provider – and it seems, a number of other AB’ers agree with me on that.

[-Talbot-]

The tragedy occurred because the individual in question had serious mental health issues


Is there a link to this, andy?

[-Talbot-]

Sometimes you can just predict the response of some posters, divebuddy.

mikey4444
The two people were murdered because the killer was insane...lets not make mountains out of molehills here.




Two people murdered in cold blood but ...lets not make mountains out of molehills here