kidshuffle wrote:magma wrote:
Interesting though... if "Projects" was used in the same way in America, it'd be fairly obvious racism. Lucky we've got so many poor, urban whites so we don't fuck about and accidentally accuse ourselves of the same thing.
Err, I don't know if I'd go that far, but I get your point. I think the US is different though, because of how many waves of racial migration/mixing in neighborhoods they've had in a shorter period of time.
They seem to use "Trailer Trash" instead of Chav because their poorest white communities are on the edges of cities rather than in the centre - but it's no different really. Our poorest communities tend to be mixed-race and urban, but for some reason the "Chav" is a white stereotype... he's the white that got "corrupted" by urban black culture. The
wigger. It's racism transposed onto a different target, but the thought process is pretty much the same - they're lower than me, therefore they're
less intelligent and I can impose my will upon them or kick them when I'm feeling bad about myself - its effects might not be as instantly damaging as slavery or denying people the vote, but it certainly doesn't make for a happy society.
The "wigger" stereotype is as much part of the hangover from institutional racism as anything else and it's got nastier roots than people might first assume - it implies that it's ok for blacks to dress/act a certain way, but it's not ok for whites... this can only be because blacks are a lower form of human than whites... they have no choice about being unrefined, unintelligent and violent, but the whites do - so whilst hailing successful urban blacks as if patting a well-behaved child on the head, we castigate whites for the same style of behaviour. Jay-Z and Lil' Wayne are cultural heroes (didn't they do WELL, it's not
their fault they carry guns and dealt drugs!), but Skinnyman is chavscum from a sink estate.
The double-standard is a window on the institutional racism we've swept under the carpet for decades.
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nowaysj wrote:I wholeheartedly believe that Michael Brown's mother and father killed him.