The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

a rather nice William Morris paper put on it, which gave me the colour scheme for the rest of the house.

Jackmydad wrote: »

Wuz that with pictuers of Morris 8s or with Moggy Thous on it?

Pyxis wrote: »

Philistine! :rotfl:;)

"I saw some nice wallpaper in Oxford the other day, sort of William Morrisy but not so naff."
Janice Blackstock, Chef, 1993

:rotfl:

PasturesNew

Re Meghan, they made a big deal about her "being black" because that's the American way. Over there, if you've an ounce of black blood in your history you're labelled as black and, over there, that's a bad thing to be.

Here, we're different. We know some people are black, but we don't hang everything on that one feature.... it's just a description, at best - not a "sentence for life" as it is in the US.

When the black American GIs came here in WW2 they were given a talk/booklet to explain that "In England they'll not be bothered that you're black and will treat you the same as anybody else". My mum told me a story that she was walking home one night and she saw a black soldier and spoke to him and he was sad (missing home I guess) and he'd been "banned" from going into the pub. Well, nobody tells my mum what to do, so she took him to the pub! It wasn't the English rules, the Americans brought their segregation with them, but if you were English and pushed the fact (e.g. by taking one into a pub), then you'd probably "get away with it" as they weren't British ways.

For me - if nobody'd ever said Meghan's "black", I'd have never even thought it.

It really doesn't matter.... but it almost became "THE" story/issue.

Brits don't really care ... that was American thinking that followed her into our media.

vivatifosi

Interesting point Pastures. I don't know when I saw my first mixed race couple in the UK but I was definitely a child. In the States, black/white mixed race relationships are far rarer and I've only really noticed them in the last ten or so years.

In the USA they also have the "Hispanic" category, which I always found strange as I don't look at people from Spain as non white. However my American friend's tell me this is because of intermarriage with the original local people. But then why Hispanic? Mexican people are classed as Hispanic, yet don't come from Hispanola, nor do Cubans. Then you have Haitians who are from Hispaniola but don't speak Spanish.

As you can probably tell, I am very confused by American racial divides. I much prefer my husband's view: "people are people. It doesn't matter what they look like or where they are from. You'll like some, based on their character, and not others. The sooner we can get past these stupid divisions, the better."

PasturesNew

We've had a mixed race Queen before, in the 1700s. The trouble is that some people like to make it "a modern day problem of whiteness" ... and others don't notice and don't see it as an issue at all. As Brits we're painted as "being white/liking white" by some people, who talk of "white privilege", yet there's been mixed race before in the Royals ... the "white privilege" is just that the current wealthy lot are very rich and very white. In British history there are a lot of fully black people, holding good positions in society .... lots of them. We didn't see blacks as slaves, we saw slaves as slaves and that is a social position, not actually colour-related. Where I grew up there was a "famous Black association", with his daughter being buried in my ancestral village. https://www.standrews-chesterton.org/church-history/olaudah-equiano/

Looking at Meghan/Harry .... to be frank .... I'd rather marry somebody Meghan's colour than with Harry's hair

Pyxis

I heard this morning about that E-type having been adapted to be an electric car.
Interesting.

vivatifosi

I was at work yesterday so didn't see the wedding, but it does look beautiful from the news coverage.

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

Re Meghan, they made a big deal about her "being black" because that's the American way. Over there, if you've an ounce of black blood in your history you're labelled as black and, over there, that's a bad thing to be.

I hate that. By that reckoning, that means my nephews are "black", as though my (white) family's contribution to their identity doesn't count. I'm happy our society has a better category for them to use when they have to pick a box. They describe themselves as "mixed race" when necessary - they have two parents, and they count both sides of their family equally.

I wouldn't say that Britain has no white privilege, though. Remember, the people with the privilege are usually unaware of it. You don't necessarily notice that obstacles aren't being put in your way, and if you don't know many of the people who are experiencing the obstacles, you may not know what goes on. It's similar to antisemitism - I've never observed any happening in this country myself, but that just means I haven't been around the people who are guilty of it, so I don't know about it until it hits the news, when it takes me by surprise.

Pyxis

Sorry....I thought I had got rid of the stretch with one of the pics, but it was still there. Hopefully sorted now.





Following on from what Pastures said about British black history, BBC4 are reprising a 4-part series first shown on BBC2, called "Black and British: A Forgotten History", telling about generations of people of African descent in Britain.

It starts at 10pm on Wednesday next, 23rd May, and the first one is in a Cumbrian village near Hadrian's Wall.

Personally I loathe the constant references to colour. And as Viva says, people are called black even if they are three-quarters white. I remember when Halle Berry was paraded as being the first black woman to have won Best Actress. I hadn't heard of her before, and when I saw her my first thought was that she wasn't black.

It astonishes me that in the States where black people are umpteen generations removed from the original Africans, that their colour is used to describe them as the first to do this, that or the other. It drives me mad, actually. I mean, they are all Americans, all culturally Americans, and so demarcation by skin colour is as daft as demarcation by eye colour would be.

(And 'Humans' has just re-started, where Synth eye-colour difference is being used as an analogy).

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

.... It astonishes me that in the States where black people are umpteen generations removed from the original Africans, that their colour is used to describe them as the first to do this, that or the other. It drives me mad, actually. I mean, they are all Americans, all culturally Americans, and so demarcation by skin colour is as daft as demarcation by eye colour would be.

They're also all called "African American", no matter WHERE they're from.

Apparently ... if you are black and go to the US and somebody curses you because you're black, just generally does/says something ... and you open your mouth and speak British English, they'll quite often apologise and say "Sorry, I thought you were black" - even if you are Lenny Henry!

They don't see British blacks as being black.

There's something wrong with the entire nation's brain wiring, there really is

ivyleaf

I certainly agree wholeheartedly with viva's DH