London Calling

[BeBMan]

Btw, are those riots going on only at night time or all day long?

[Cort Haus]

Bebro, they've mostly been at night, but some have started in the early evening while it's still light. Nothing earlier than that.

[Heraclitus]

it took a while, but here are the results, and that has nothing to do with immigration.

The lady doth protest too much.

[Heraclitus]

Let me guess, you think a mixed-race person with maybe 1 black grandparent and 3 white grandparents is black? A lot of the kids in the videos you posted would probably have 1 or 2 black grandparents, but are they white or are they black? I would class them as British and leave it at that, you probably wouldn't. The Asian kids are probably more homogenously asian (due to intermarrying with cousins back in Pakistan etc.).

I'd ask the kid. Self-Identification matters more than biological classification (though biologically obviously someone with a black and a white parent is mulatto).


In any case Afro-Carribeans are pretty mixed race to start with, but then so are American Blacks. As I said, you are what you say you are, and what inspires loyalty, this is why I don't dispute say Barack Obama's Blackness, since as he states in his biography his soul is stirred and heart touched by the village life of Africa rather than European cathedrals or forts. In America its only natural that the African American community is his community.


What do you think stirs the souls of those mixed kids? Is it really Britain as it was historically? Or is it Britain the propositional nation? And if it is the latter, what's the point of having an independent britian rather than subsuming it into the EU or the US? Are the differences between various forms of Liberal democracy something that say variation between US states couldn't cover?

[C0ckney]

onefoot. it's perfectly possible if you grow up poor (and let's be honest, what we mean by 'poverty' in britain is really 'inequality of income') in the UK to have a good life, to get a good education and to move up in the world. it's not easy, and it should be easier, but the things that get trotted out at times like this are just weak excuses.

[Jon Miller]

Race is very much what someone identifies as.

In South Africa blacks are africans with no non-black ancestors (that people can determine), coloreds are those with a non-black ancestor.

Apparently the identity is pretty different.

JM

[C0ckney]

or on the other hand for the "bottom" on social support this goes into parents doing nothing, and kids organizing their own lives to try to "make" it

this is the real problem. we pay for a whole class of people to do nothing and to breed. if the parents have never had a job, the kids don't see working people in their home environment, they don't see the value of education, and resign themselves to a life on benefits, where they'll be paid to do nothing and breed. rinse, repeat.

[Hauldren Collider]

So you're saying it's the classic case of government bringing about dependence instead of prosperity?

[onodera]

No tear gas or rubber bullets have been used yet? I was going to propose sending in the army and they haven't used anything yet? The Met must be full of pussies. We should send some of our riot control policemen to show how to deal with rioters.

[Cort Haus]

Labours was far from the only government in Britain in the past 30 to 40 years to allow mass immigration. Sure they are off the hook for these riots, but are you honestly saying there won't be riots like this in 20 or 30 years? And are you honestly saying you don't expect the descendants of the Labour immigrant tsunami to be overrepresented in them?

My beef isn't with Labour far from it, its with Europe trying its very best to recreate America's race problems, just worse by bringing Islam into the picture.

People can pontificate all they like but the simple truth stands: Had immigration been more selective a generation or two ago, riots such as these would be much more mild if they occurred at all.

Also what is up with this faux political agnosticism? Riots are politics. The French and Americans learned this 200 years ago, welcome to modernity.

Hera, the perception about recent UK immigration is that it is mainly eastern Europeans. Indeed, much of the prejudice about this group is that they are racist against non-white people.

Britain has serious social problems regarding some people at the low-end of the social scale, and these people are of all colours and ethnicities. In fact, most of the social sneering at the 'underclass' revolves around the 'chav' stereotype which is white.

Britain has absorbed immigration for hundreds of years. At times there have been problems, including pogroms against Jews in the middle ages, and the infamous Gordon Riots in 1780 in London which were initially aimed against Catholics, but ended up in days of mayhem and hundreds of deaths.

The riots in the 1980's were in many cases a response to police racism which was very real and a reflection of the racism that black people did suffer for decades. I would argue that significant strides towards equality have been made since that time, and while social problems that include black people do exist today, society is not institutionally racist in the way that it was, but the historical baggage is still perceived to be a problem.

The Islam thing is another question, but there is no evidence that it has anything to do with the current unrest, so it would help if you didn't try to bring it into this thread, as part of your race-oriented hobby-horse.

Oh, and finally, as I watch the TV coverage of disturbances in Manchester, there seem to be as many white people involved as black in the picture.

[C0ckney]

we have abandoned a whole class of people to welfare dependency, with all the problems that brings. it's a complex social problem, but the real answer lies in providing work and opportunities. i have some ideas how this might be achieved but i doubt they'd be popular...

edit: was in response to HC.

[Cort Haus]

onefoot. it's perfectly possible if you grow up poor (and let's be honest, what we mean by 'poverty' in britain is really 'inequality of income') in the UK to have a good life, to get a good education and to move up in the world. it's not easy, and it should be easier, but the things that get trotted out at times like this are just weak excuses.

QFT

[Barnabas]

Race is very much what someone identifies as.

In South Africa blacks are africans with no non-black ancestors (that people can determine), coloreds are those with a non-black ancestor.

Apparently the identity is pretty different.

JM

That seems more "normal" to me than Obama considering himself black. In all of Latin America mulatos and mestizos considered themselves different from blacks and amerindians. There are some articles on the internet of African-Americans who go on vacations to Brazil and think brazilians hate their blackness because part black multiracial people don't consider themselves black.

[C0ckney]

and as cort (and others) rightly say, it's not a racial issue, it's a social issue.

[notyoueither]

Back to the topic of the thread.

Does it look like the riots will stop, or will there be another round tonight?