Yes. Because why have forums where people can converse when in fact interaction is unnecessary because of technology ?
Why is the left seen as kind and the right as evil although the left is in favour of child genital mutilation? Go Google !!
Why is " yakkety yak " by the Coasters such a prophetic song . The black working classes trashed by white liberals . And now the white working class being trashed by white liberals . Malcolm X knew ....tried to warn us ....got silenced for his sins
Why are the "extinction rebellion" mob entirely affluent and what is their end goal ? Carbon tokens ? Where the plebs sell their tokens to the woke ? Because the plebs cannot afford a foreign holiday ? . Gary Lineker, Scientists, Lily Allen etc will Hoover up the poor and their carbon tokens and swan about the world endlessly whilst lecturing the plebs about saving the planet
It’s a bit complex, with black American minstrels proving highly popular in the 19 century, leading to white imitators latching on to it in, sometimes, a less than flattering way, hence Al Jolson and then the Black and White Minstrels. It is not that far removed, in some respects, from Elvis appropriating Rock n’ Roll from black artists, and giving it a ‘respectable’ white face. Unfortunately, in the UK (let alone the US), minstrelsy has always been associated with racist tones, and Mummers parade dancing, a US form of celebratory dance, caught on over here, only instead of being called mumming (we already had our own, very different, mumming tradition) the parades were referred to as n****r dancing. There is film of it, with what looks like dozens of ordinary people blacked up, dancing in a very stylised manner as part of old time Edwardian carnivals. The use of the n word is moot. Whether it was intended as racist is lost in the age, but at the very least it is derogatory. Chaucer used several versions of the word c**t (I’m using it for educational purposes) in his writing, but whether he intended offence, or was simply repeating a common word that at that time described ‘a thing’, it is difficult to say. I suspect the use of the n word is similarly confused; it became popular at a time when we were still freeing slaves and fighting wars to end the slave trade, so I think it would be going a bit far to suggest it was a mark of Britain’s rampant racism, though I imagine there are a few on here that would disagree. Anyway, the look of the minstrels was popular, and someone made a doll in the style. Sadly, even from the start, the choice to do so was so tied up with racist identities (ironically, they could be considered a doll of a white man, only in black face). And we can never watch Papa Lazaro ever again, which is a shame, because he seems more like the old British tradition of ‘guisers’ or disguisers, who would seek alms for entertaining people, with their faces hidden. Certainly there is no attempt by Lazarou to appear as a charicature of a black person. But the association is very difficult to let go of. For me, gollies cannot shake off that connection, and although they are a cultural curiosity worthy of study, I do not think it was a bad thing when people stopped making them.
Interesting Henry. Thank you. Of course the issue is not why or if these things are offensive but why Plod thought it a worthy use of resources to raid the pub and seize them
Some gollies had been hung over the bar (see post above) and on Facebook reference had been made to ‘they used to hang them in Mississippi.’ The clue is the word ‘Pub’. It’s a public house and therefore a business. It’s not a private matter. You’d expect the Police to be interested if the pub had stereotypes of Jewish people on display alongside posts saying ‘they used to sort them out in Poland’. The Police could have handled it better, but that’s a side issue compared to the rallying call from the Home Secretary and others to claim there is nothing wrong with gollies when they are an absolute **** you to Black people from troublemaking folk.
I'd have thought it was the landlord's decision how he or she chooses to decorate their boozer. People are free to decide if it's somewhere they want to spend time and money.The pair that run the pub in Essex sound revolting and are almost certainly racist but in a way they are doing the local community a favour - by displaying their gollies they are letting customers know what sort of people they are before the punters spend any money over their bar
Like I say, it’s a business open to the public. You wouldn’t say it’s fine for a bank or a dentist to do that, just because the owners happen to like it.
But why a police raid because some (most) people don't like it? Are gollies illegal? Apparently there are about 50,000 pubs in the UK. I'm guessing 49,999 of them don't have gollies on display. If you don't want to look at gollies while drinking/eating your pork scratchings simply go somewhere else - don't phone the bloody police!
It is part of an investigation into the landlord's general racist activities. As an aside would you say the same if he was displaying Nazi flags or SS memorabilia?
Gollies are like the minimum wage (if we could pay you less, we would) of racism. If people who flaunt their gollies could get away with more, they would. It’s saying to black people whatever your sensitivities are, I’m going to reject them.
That is the point, for me, of allowing bigots freedom of speach. I'd have no problem with them displaying gollies. They can explain that for themselves and people can make up their mind. The issue I have with this case, is that the display was explicitly linked to lynching by the Landlord's own freely given comment. If that was the intention of the display, based on his words, then it has become something much more than just a controversial cultural display.
I might feel similar if they were displaying Stalinist or Mauist regalia. Mind you, if they were doing so to highlight and warn against murderous extremist regimes, there may be another side of it to consider. I think it is a good thing to remember that, just because we didn't directly fight against commumists, the 100 million deaths at their hands, in the last century, shouldn't be over shadowed by their nazi brethren. It is good to remember that they are all the same, once you remove the flags and badges.
Magnificent. So gollies are to black people what CRT's view of "white" is to white people. My comments here are based on your opinion in the post above. I do not see gollies in that way. No matter what a white person's sensitivities are, they are rejected, and all white people are racists because they have white privilege. Can we then assume what I have been claiming for years now. That all groups, from white Democrats to British football fans, who embrace CRT are racist towards white people in the same way as British landlords who string up gollies in their pub. It cannot be denied that what you say about gollies is an exact parallel of what CRT says about whiteness. So the only question remaining would seem: "So, is it OK when it is done in the name of CRT and racial justice? Personally I would say no.
The Libertarian Right in this Country have become quite deranged. They think Rishi Sunak is a socialist. They think everything else is a WEF/Big Pharma plot.
Sadly, the UK is just following the US's exported nonsense now. Whenever some ludicrous talking point pops up here, it invariably surfaces in the UK within a couple of months at the most.
'Fraid so. And people who will swear till they are blue in the face they are independent free-thinkers who do their own research will parrot the phrases and talking points obediently. Whether it's wokeness or the radical idea of having neighbourhoods that aren't choked up with traffic and fumes, or getting in a froth about toilets. (I mean, which gender toilet do these cotton-wool brains use when they're on a train, for example?) We've reached a stage where all this stuff is now just a set menu of drivel dressed up as common sense beliefs. Believe one thing and get the rest beamed directly into your brain for free.
The truth of this is pretty clear. When the leader of the Labour party can't tell you what a woman is. Keep kidding yourself, I suspect. I don't thing you will be fooling anyone who can think freely for themself. And I think the lunatics on the right are just as dangerous and unpleasant as those on the left. Trying to make out that the US inspred lunacy on the left at the moment is right wing propaganda is a little redundant, to free thinkers. We need moderation, but all we get is extremism.
Fantastic piece of self-flagellation by the Guardian that turns into an attack on Man City and Utd...
So are citeh and united the latest to join the right wing culture war by continuing to use the ship on their badges? They can get rid of it for all I care, but how long before the left say they are waging a culture war by not removing it? Or the right wing are accused of agitation by defending it? Let the gas be lit! Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out...
Just a thought: how many things can be expunged, for reasons that are all very laudable, before the reason why it was laudable to expunge them in the first place is forgotten? Sometimes, unpalatable as it may be, we should be exposed to the full implications of what used to be 'normal' in past eras as a salutary warning of how today's 'normal' could be judged by future generations.
It’s an appropriate reminder of how clubs (particularly these) exploit workers and children around the World to produce overpriced replica shirts.
