Lootman wrote:UncleEbenezer wrote:Would that be your black belt in whitewashing?
I suspect that any topic can be manipulated into being about race if someone sufficiently desires that. But what does it really say about a person who sees race in everything in that way?
What is particularly stupid to me is the fact that the African Diaspora are not even black, and Caucasians are not white! Language has merely evolved, as languages do, to use these adjectives to describe us.
Not only is it unscientific, but anybody who has studied English/Linguistics will tell about the power of opposites to create an effect. Thus, hot-cold, up-down, good-evil, wet-dry, white-black etc. Thus whether people are aware of it or not, the use of white-black is already creating an idea of 'them vs us' in their minds.
Years ago, I did evening voluntary work as an Adult Literacy teacher in Hertfordshire, and occasionally chatted to our very ethnically diverse students about this. Everybody agreed that they didn't like it. The young lady who organised the classes was not too happy about these chats. Her whole job, so it seemed to me, revolved around a continuous and exaggerated war against racism and gender inequality and she never shut up about it, even though the classes were very balanced male-female and I never encountered a whiff of racist behaviour. Racism was part of her 'raison d'etre' and I reckon that her rants did more harm than good.
Steve
