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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2015 20:08:08 GMT
Don't mention the war if from Fawlty Towers But you can find racist assholes in any era I think Yes, they are coming out here now that more and more refugees are coming here.
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Post by Moose on Oct 24, 2015 22:47:15 GMT
here too it's painful to see it happening all over again
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Post by raspberrybullets on Oct 25, 2015 10:06:17 GMT
what is on the West side of Melbourne? When I say "Melbourne", I'm often thinking of the CBD (central business district). So by west of Melbourne I mean the western suburbs. The south east side is pretty white (although we are still talking Melbourne so not like it's white white [see in this case I was referring to Melbourne as a whole including the suburbs], whereas everywhere else is much more mixed and a lot less blondies.
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Post by Moose on Nov 6, 2015 0:21:31 GMT
What is the sort of ethnic mix in major Aussie cities in general? Is it comparable with British or US cities?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2015 11:48:34 GMT
Frank and I always notice when we are in Birmingham that we see more dfferent people, from different cultures and ethnicities there than in Germany. In Bremen, you see many these days, but sometimes people will still not sit next to a black man on the tram. And what is painfully ovious is that advertising still targets white, German people, unless it's international. In any ads for cheese and milk you see white, blond or brown-haired people, some with ads for supermarkets, washing powders and cleaning products.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Nov 11, 2015 9:09:26 GMT
What is the sort of ethnic mix in major Aussie cities in general? Is it comparable with British or US cities? In European cities I see much more Africans and less Asians (by that I don't just mean Indian but also like south east asians, chinese, japanese etc ). Here it's the other way round - loads of Asians, fewer Africans. For example if I look around my office, probably half are Asian but only like two Africans. Melbourne is the most diverse of all the cities along with Sydney. You go somewhere like Perth and it's still pretty white. I had a colleague back in Amsterdam who had lived in Perth for a couple years in around 2005/6 I think.....he was saying he was the only one of two black guys in Perth!
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Post by whollygoats on Nov 11, 2015 18:02:12 GMT
What is the sort of ethnic mix in major Aussie cities in general? Is it comparable with British or US cities? In European cities I see much more Africans and less Asians (by that I don't just mean Indian but also like south east asians, chinese, japanese etc ). Here it's the other way round - loads of Asians, fewer Africans. For example if I look around my office, probably half are Asian but only like two Africans. Melbourne is the most diverse of all the cities along with Sydney. You go somewhere like Perth and it's still pretty white. I had a colleague back in Amsterdam who had lived in Perth for a couple years in around 2005/6 I think.....he was saying he was the only one of two black guys in Perth! So...the Aboriginal peoples are, by and large, unseen in the big city? The city in which I live is probably the 'whitest' big city in the US. There is a black population, but compared to most other large US cities, it is a much smaller percentage of the total population. Compared to other US cities, there is a slightly larger proportion of East Asians, thanks to the long-standing Chinese and Japanese heritage populations and the results of the post-Vietnam 'boat people' refugee wave of the 1980s. The higher proportion of East Asians is similar to other west coast US cities like Seattle and San Francisco, as well as Vancouver in Canada. Prior to the presence of Intel, there was no real South Asian presence in the area. That has since changed.
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Post by juju on Nov 11, 2015 19:02:23 GMT
Whete I live in west Wales it's almost exclusively white. There used to be more people from Islamic countries here a few years ago, but since the university where I work has changed some of their degree subjects there are hardly any left now, and otherwise it's typically rural welsh. You rarely see a non white* face round here, which is odd for me because I grew up in quite a multi cultural area. But... There's been some momentous news, today in fact. Lampeter is going to become a giant Chinese cultural hub apparently, with one of the uni's buildings becoming a Buddhist centre! Interesting times... except I might lose my job if they no longer teach humanities here... *apart from self-tan orange, of course.
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Post by Moose on Nov 14, 2015 19:30:45 GMT
I live in the whitest county in England apparently ... non white faces are pretty weird around here. It was an odd contrast with the SE where I lived during my twenties, where I lived in places with large black and Asian populations (Crawley especially has a large Muslim contingent and I lived in a fairly Muslim area for several years). I see less tolerance and more racism up here than I ever saw down there, though I am not saying I never saw any there .
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Post by Miisa on Nov 15, 2015 15:28:57 GMT
I am constantly getting caught off guard by the type of racism that is seen in the US (posted on FB and eleswhere a lot), and always feel like it is something I could never comment on without seeming patronising or as a "white person trying too hard not to be racist" by Americans.
But the truth is that the type of racism that is almost "normalcy" still in the US is very fringe in Europe. Here racism is really more "culturalism" and xenophobia than separating and judging based on skin tone. I can only put that down to the history of institutionalised racism in the US, which put actual legal walls up between what was deemed to be different "races", as if race is an actual thing that exists inherently. And in Europe the xenophobia is more based on long-standing populations of natives feeling things are changing because of "foreigners" (or historically also heretics and infidels), regardless of appearance.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Nov 16, 2015 8:44:40 GMT
In European cities I see much more Africans and less Asians (by that I don't just mean Indian but also like south east asians, chinese, japanese etc ). Here it's the other way round - loads of Asians, fewer Africans. For example if I look around my office, probably half are Asian but only like two Africans. Melbourne is the most diverse of all the cities along with Sydney. You go somewhere like Perth and it's still pretty white. I had a colleague back in Amsterdam who had lived in Perth for a couple years in around 2005/6 I think.....he was saying he was the only one of two black guys in Perth! So...the Aboriginal peoples are, by and large, unseen in the big city? Aboriginals only make up about 3% of the population. And the majority still live in the Northern Territory (about 30% according to wiki). In Victoria they only make up 0.85% of the population, the least of any of the states. There are Aboriginals of course, in the cities - they are just a minority compared to other cultures, especially in Melbourne. You'll see much more in Darwin - and you'll also see lots of Asians in Darwin. Darwin is an interesting city because it's so far away from anywhere in Australia that it's actually closer to a lot of Asian cities than to any city in Australia.
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Post by juju on Nov 16, 2015 8:58:05 GMT
And in Europe the xenophobia is more based on long-standing populations of natives feeling things are changing because of "foreigners" (or historically also heretics and infidels), regardless of appearance. I think the British (given their history of it) are always worried about the idea of 'invasion'. And of course the media plays this up.
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Post by Moose on Nov 16, 2015 22:43:12 GMT
I dunno Miisa - the thing is that Finland is still a very 'white' country. I remember Antti talking to me about the first time that he ever saw black people and was surprised. Maybe racism is less obvious there because there has never been any 'scope' for it? (I realise that I am to some extent contradicting what I just said about there being more racism in Cumbria, a largely white county, than Sussex, a multi cultural one. But still I wonder what would happen in Finland and neighbouring countries if there was the same level of multi culturalism there as there is here ...)
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Post by Miisa on Nov 17, 2015 7:41:03 GMT
The larger cities in Finland are pretty colourful these days.
I am not saying that American-style racism does not exist in Europe, but rather that it is limited to extremists such as skinheads. The more "normal" or common racism is more likely to be a fear of people coming in from elsewhere and changing things than simply a matter of looks. Anti-semitism, for instance, which is a "racism" against people who look (often) just like everyone around them but are otherwise "not us", or fearing the recent African immigrant over the someone who looks the same but has lived here for 3 generations.
Whereas in the US the "white vs. black" thing is deeply ingrained, something which seems illogical to me.
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Post by whollygoats on Nov 17, 2015 16:47:09 GMT
I think that 'racism' is a form of fear and hatred of "the Other". Engendering fear and hatred against those who are not part of the 'in-group' has always been a way for a small elite to control the larger community. An 'other' who is easy to distinguish, like having a distinctive skin tone or behavior, are easy targets. The implied threat is that since they are different, they will want to take away the good things you and yours enjoy...and if you cannot expel them, then you need to suppress them or they will displace you and yours and become your masters. If you are a really successful bigot, you'll manage to force 'the Others' to do your dirty work for a pittance and be abused in the process.
In the US, the 'white vs. black' thing is not the only ingrained bigotry, just the most obvious. It exists in subtler forms as bigotry against anyone who is not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male who watches and believes FOX News.
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Post by Moose on Nov 19, 2015 0:52:41 GMT
I gather that there are protests by African American students on American university campuses at the moment. Whilst I feel fairly sure that they are correct in their assertions that there is racism alive and well in the US, I did read one report earlier which said that a group of black students was staging a sit in at Princeton and that one of their demands was for a 'black only cultural area.' This, if true (and it might not be) seems deeply disturbing to me. Why would anyone want to go BACK to segregation?
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Post by Miisa on Nov 19, 2015 8:43:20 GMT
That is what confuses me as well about the US racism issues. There seems to be a will to be voluntarily separate.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the prevalence of separating people - officially - into "ethnicity", as in forms and censuses. Do people in the UK have to tick an ethnicity box on applications and other surveys? To me it feels bizarre. I can sort of fathom it in a "we want to know for medical and genetics purposes", but not most of the time.
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Post by juju on Nov 19, 2015 9:31:32 GMT
That is what confuses me as well about the US racism issues. There seems to be a will to be voluntarily separate. I wonder how much of it has to do with the prevalence of separating people - officially - into "ethnicity", as in forms and censuses. Do people in the UK have to tick an ethnicity box on applications and other surveys? To me it feels bizarre. I can sort of fathom it in a "we want to know for medical and genetics purposes", but not most of the time. Yes we do - I find it really annoying. And here in Wales it's worse - usually there's a box for generic 'white British', but when we moved here we noticed the forms would say 'Welsh' or 'English' or 'Scottish' etc, as well as the other categories. I know nationalists like Thingy really welcome the chance to put Scottish instead of British, but I just feel it's taking things to a ridiculous degree and most people are a mixture anyway. It's all to do with gathering statistics so organisations can monitor their quotas.
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Post by JoeP on Nov 19, 2015 9:58:25 GMT
It's all to do with gathering statistics so organisations can monitor their quotas. This is it.
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Post by Miisa on Nov 19, 2015 13:17:53 GMT
That's... mindblowing. But if your racism really is different from ours and more American-like then could there be a link of sorts?
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Post by whollygoats on Nov 19, 2015 14:29:30 GMT
That's... mindblowing. But if your racism really is different from ours and more American-like then could there be a link of sorts? Um...a link? You mean like our common cultural heritage?
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Post by JoeP on Nov 19, 2015 15:18:50 GMT
Gathering statistics on things is a bit of an obsession in Britain. Actually, in South Africa too.
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Post by JoeP on Nov 19, 2015 15:19:20 GMT
It's sometimes a substitute for taking any actual action.
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Post by juju on Nov 19, 2015 19:37:52 GMT
That's... mindblowing. But if your racism really is different from ours and more American-like then could there be a link of sorts? I don't think our racism is more like America's, I think it's more European and like you originally said - more to do with fear of invasion and cultural change than skin colour. I think America might be unique because of the fall-out from slavery and segregation. The statistics thing in the UK is like Joe says - statistics for its own sake, mostly. They are obsessed with finding out who is living and working where.
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Post by Miisa on Nov 19, 2015 19:48:55 GMT
But how do you determine who is of that "race". What if you are borderline? What if you have grandparents from four different places, and they might be borderline themselves? And how is the statistics going to do anything but place different expectations on people based on whatever box people stuffed them into?
There are some things that give give me a funny unease in what feels like the bottom of my stomach, and race and ethnicity is one of them. Maybe it is my seeing the world from a dog perspective, where breeds (=races) are highly artificial constructs we have to forcibly keep going (not that I am against breeds in dogs, just saying that is where I am coming from - that and biology in general).
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Post by juju on Nov 19, 2015 20:33:33 GMT
Well yeah. It is stupid to expect people to choose. You don't have to - there's always option on there to not say or not to bother.
These forms are always phrased like 'what ethnicity/nationality do you consider yourself?' so people can decide for themselves. It's for monitoring - there's also usually a section for disability too.
However some people, like Thingy for example, really welcome the chance to be counted as a particular group. I think it's ridiculous though, and usually don't bother filling it in.
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Post by Moose on Nov 19, 2015 20:43:55 GMT
I usually tick White British but only cos I did not know that you could leave it blank. I never know what to tick for disability either. Do I have a disability? I am on disability benefit but I am not physically disabled.
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Post by Alvamiga on Nov 20, 2015 9:24:30 GMT
A disability is a disability, it does not have to be physical.
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Post by Moose on Nov 23, 2015 1:44:51 GMT
Well yes but it's rather difficult to know how they interpret it.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Nov 29, 2015 0:59:08 GMT
When we entered Brunei the other day - the immigration/customs form asked us about our "race". Both DG and I left it blank - I literally couldn't understand the question. Like Miisa says - what if your parents and grandparents come from different places? I wouldn't even know what "race" I'm supposed to be put under. There were no options to choose from, just a blank space to write something in.
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