Walter Tull on C4+1 now
- Thread starter Dougal
- Start date
Ironskullll
Well-Known Member
- Nov 15, 2010
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It often strikes me that there are so many different types of racism that we could maybe do with some more words for it, not unlike the eskimo people, who have so many different words for different types of snow. I'm the first to say that I appreciate that as a white person I really don't know, at a fundamental level, what it feels like to be racially abused and am therefore not the best person to advise or comment on someone who has been at the receiving end. On the other hand, someone who has been on the receiving end might not necessarily appreciate that someone like me might utter a racist comment without necessarily appreciating or meaning the harm and offence it might cause.
I truly hope that I have never uttered a racist comment in my life - I certainly can't remember ever having done so, but somehow I doubt it, although I have been absolutely shocked to my core by other people's racism at times; and I do genuinely want a society where racism is totally absent. I have so many blood relatives, including my own children who are of non-white, mixed race parentage that it would be shocking if that weren't the case, but you'd hope that would still be true even if I'd never met their mother. My old gran, long time gone, but of the same generation as Walter Tull, used to use the P word all the time. And she referred to black people as d*rk**s, but here's the rub - she was describing her next-door neighbours, who used to check up on her and help her, and who she was very very fond of. She'd probably not have thought anything of even introducing them to people as such - "this is xxx, the P*** who lives next door". I was even bemused once when my son described himself as a P***, and in the most innocent of contexts too. One of his black friends once used an expression along the lines of "some of my other half-caste mates" when I was giving the lads a lift back from football once. Language sometimes confounds me.
20 years ago, I knew an old American bloke who was racist to the core but who used to cry with guilt about his attitudes. He was spending his retirement years raising money for orphanages in third world countries. Basically, he knew his racism was wrong and was not prepared to act on it in any way, but he seemed to be saying it was a deep-seated response that had been burned into him, and he was at war with it.
I used to think my dad was racist but once I had the funniest discussion with him. I had said that I didn't think the Notting Hill carnival was very good apart from there being so many people there, and that carnivals I had experienced in other parts of the world were far better. He was so angry, and his answer seemed to be to the effect of "we have the best blacks anywhere in the world and if you don't like our carnivals then you're welcome to leave". More recently; last week actually, he glanced at a picture in his paper of a funeral procession - that horrible, awful case of a Pakistani (I think rather than, say Bangladeshi) family that had been the victims of an arson attack, and his emotion and heart for the victims were there to be seen - no mention of race, just sympathy, and anger at whoever could have committed such an attrocity.
Then earlier this week, my mixed race kids surprised me when they told me a story about their mum who had suggested to them that she had been treated in a racist manner at work. She had been really put out by her boss's behaviour. Apparently she'd had a cold (be aware she works in a bakery), and her boss had suggested she take a few days off sick (she almost never calls in sick, it's a badge of honour for her to work whatever the circumstances)... she felt she was being picked on because of her race. My kids thought her attitude was laughable. They did actually laugh out loud in ridicule at the suggestion that her boss was being racist in any way.
I throw these thoughts out there because I've just read the link to the Walter Tull programme. It refers to racist abuse that Walter received from the Spurs crowd, and also referred to his rise through the ranks at a time when it seems prevailing (racist) regulations ought to have prevented it. I wonder what sort of racism was at work in the crowd; the nasty, wilfull corrosive sort of naked hatred or the ignorant sort from people who would be genuinely shocked to realise what pain and hurt their comments were causing; and I wonder about Walter's rise through the ranks, would he have risen even further had he not been black; was his rise the result of genuine enlightenment - probably, I feel, because surely there was no such thing as political correctness in those days; although it might simply have been pragmatism.
But that's all they are, a collection of incomplete thoughts and half-answered questions. Perhaps this thread now belongs in General. I wonder what sort of a person Walter Tull was - I'll never know, but is it relevant? I do applaud the work of people such as Jason Roberts who seems to be able to take such a firm and sometimes controversial stance on racism without being offensive - he makes me want to question my own ways of looking at the issue without implying (over the airwaves) that I might be racist but instead that I might just be wrong or misinformed. Good on you Jason, we need more people like you if we are to finally eliminate the scourge of racism from society.
And that's all. I woke up early at 7 and had nothing better to do than to come on SC. Now it's time to rise and shine!
I truly hope that I have never uttered a racist comment in my life - I certainly can't remember ever having done so, but somehow I doubt it, although I have been absolutely shocked to my core by other people's racism at times; and I do genuinely want a society where racism is totally absent. I have so many blood relatives, including my own children who are of non-white, mixed race parentage that it would be shocking if that weren't the case, but you'd hope that would still be true even if I'd never met their mother. My old gran, long time gone, but of the same generation as Walter Tull, used to use the P word all the time. And she referred to black people as d*rk**s, but here's the rub - she was describing her next-door neighbours, who used to check up on her and help her, and who she was very very fond of. She'd probably not have thought anything of even introducing them to people as such - "this is xxx, the P*** who lives next door". I was even bemused once when my son described himself as a P***, and in the most innocent of contexts too. One of his black friends once used an expression along the lines of "some of my other half-caste mates" when I was giving the lads a lift back from football once. Language sometimes confounds me.
20 years ago, I knew an old American bloke who was racist to the core but who used to cry with guilt about his attitudes. He was spending his retirement years raising money for orphanages in third world countries. Basically, he knew his racism was wrong and was not prepared to act on it in any way, but he seemed to be saying it was a deep-seated response that had been burned into him, and he was at war with it.
I used to think my dad was racist but once I had the funniest discussion with him. I had said that I didn't think the Notting Hill carnival was very good apart from there being so many people there, and that carnivals I had experienced in other parts of the world were far better. He was so angry, and his answer seemed to be to the effect of "we have the best blacks anywhere in the world and if you don't like our carnivals then you're welcome to leave". More recently; last week actually, he glanced at a picture in his paper of a funeral procession - that horrible, awful case of a Pakistani (I think rather than, say Bangladeshi) family that had been the victims of an arson attack, and his emotion and heart for the victims were there to be seen - no mention of race, just sympathy, and anger at whoever could have committed such an attrocity.
Then earlier this week, my mixed race kids surprised me when they told me a story about their mum who had suggested to them that she had been treated in a racist manner at work. She had been really put out by her boss's behaviour. Apparently she'd had a cold (be aware she works in a bakery), and her boss had suggested she take a few days off sick (she almost never calls in sick, it's a badge of honour for her to work whatever the circumstances)... she felt she was being picked on because of her race. My kids thought her attitude was laughable. They did actually laugh out loud in ridicule at the suggestion that her boss was being racist in any way.
I throw these thoughts out there because I've just read the link to the Walter Tull programme. It refers to racist abuse that Walter received from the Spurs crowd, and also referred to his rise through the ranks at a time when it seems prevailing (racist) regulations ought to have prevented it. I wonder what sort of racism was at work in the crowd; the nasty, wilfull corrosive sort of naked hatred or the ignorant sort from people who would be genuinely shocked to realise what pain and hurt their comments were causing; and I wonder about Walter's rise through the ranks, would he have risen even further had he not been black; was his rise the result of genuine enlightenment - probably, I feel, because surely there was no such thing as political correctness in those days; although it might simply have been pragmatism.
But that's all they are, a collection of incomplete thoughts and half-answered questions. Perhaps this thread now belongs in General. I wonder what sort of a person Walter Tull was - I'll never know, but is it relevant? I do applaud the work of people such as Jason Roberts who seems to be able to take such a firm and sometimes controversial stance on racism without being offensive - he makes me want to question my own ways of looking at the issue without implying (over the airwaves) that I might be racist but instead that I might just be wrong or misinformed. Good on you Jason, we need more people like you if we are to finally eliminate the scourge of racism from society.
And that's all. I woke up early at 7 and had nothing better to do than to come on SC. Now it's time to rise and shine!
