Monday, March 29, 2010

I Blame Racism

Well if it's racism when particular ethnic groups score below the white average then using the same line of reasoning it must be racism when other ethnic groups get better results.
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6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

No wonder Chinese and Indian people don't want their kids getting married to Whitey.

8:11 AM, March 29, 2010
TDK said...

The BBC strangely didn't find room in that report to mention the ethnic group that is at the bottom of the poor male achievement scale. Must be caused by the failure to promote Black History Month.

11:18 AM, March 29, 2010
Edwin Greenwood said...

From the linked BBC piece:

[The Birmingham Advisory Service] is also calling for black and Asian history to be added to the syllabus.

and

The BAC report calls for teaching "the need for mutual respect and understanding".

Subjects discussed should include "fairness and social justice, the nature of prejudice, anti-social and aggressive behaviours like racism and bullying".

I recall half-listening to some piece on Radio 4 in which schoolkids were interviewed about their sense of their own identity. Black and Brown sprogs were proudly holding forth about their respective ethnic heritages. And then the interviewer turned to a White girl, who replied rather disconsolately that she didn't seem to have an identity.

It is any wonder White kids are increasingly disaffected in an educational system which teaches them they are rootless grey non-entities in a world of glittering diversity, who nonetheless contrive to be collectively responsible for all the world's ills?

12:40 PM, March 29, 2010
Mark Wadsworth said...

All this identity stuff is complete and utter hogwash. What about mixed race kids? How can you have two identities?

I cheerfully admit to being half-foreign, and my kids are even more mixed than that, and we're atheists to boot, we get along just fine without 'an identity', apart from being English by default because that is where we live.

11:25 PM, March 29, 2010
Edwin Greenwood said...

"What about mixed race kids? How can you have two identities?"

I suppose one answer to that is to say they inherit both and neither parental identities simultaneously and exhibit different "tribal" characteristics and allegiances in different contexts. Someone of mixed Chinese and White British parentage, say, might consider themselves as Chinese, English, both simultaneously or something new we might call "Anglo-Chinese". If they are lucky they will be embraced by both communities as "one of theirs". If they are unlucky they might be rejected by both as "other".

Unfortunately, we can't just dismiss all this stuff about tribal, ethnic, national, etc identity as "hogwash" because in real life it affects what people believe about themselves and others and it informs how they behave and how others are affected by their behaviour.

I might say, "we are all human brothers together, let us live in peace, co-operation and harmony". But where does that leave me if my Nigerian neighbour replies, "Stuff you, oyinbo, I'm Yoruba first and last and I'm going to look out for my brethren?

None of this stuff is particularly straightforward.

7:11 AM, March 30, 2010
James Higham said...

I've been accused of being racist in supporting England.

9:21 AM, March 30, 2010

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