Amazing
Current Affairs The Conservative Party
- Thread starter Ashtonian
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No, racism is the net result of division. Racism only exists if there's division on those grounds.
What I'm saying is taking the knee exacerbates that division further. It's not about making 'more racists', it's about creating more apathy from the layperson and hardening the position of the extremes. No pun intended, but it really isn't a black and white issue.
No one can tell me what that gesture actually, tangibly achieves. They throw up vague terms like "awareness", but we've been "aware" of the issue for decades. It does nothing to actually solve it; it simply exacerbates it by highlighting difference and making it overtly political. This shouldn't be political - it should be as obvious as saying the grass in your garden is green.
You’re wrong to be honest. Gestures and statements are designed to resolve issues. They are designed to highlight the issue. They don’t create further division, the shine a spotlight on division that’s already there. And if you think it’s created apathy then you haven’t been paying attention.
At the very least this has got people talking about racism and challenging both sides of the argument. Which is what is meant by raising ‘awareness’. It’s apathy that has always been the key issue as it’s apathy that maintains the status quo.
that gesture has put the issue in everyone’s front room and pub and by everyone’s coffee machine and on everyone’s social media. It’s caused an electorate to engage with politicians and allowed successful young men to use their platform to try and change the social discourse.
Frankly it’s done everything it was meant to do.
So you honestly believe race relations are better now?
I don't. I think they're much worse. I think it's created a huge swathe of people who roll their eyes at the whole issue because of how it's been approached. I certainly think it's highlighted something, but not what you necessarily think. I think people in general see it as baffling that there's a pretence that racism is worse now than ever before, when that's obviously not true - that's what creates the apathy and disconnect.
I think you're looking at a social media bubble on this if you think otherwise.
Can you point out where I said that race relations are better?
I said that this has highlights the division and opened the debate further and prompted role models to attempt to change the social discourse.
which is the point of ‘raising awareness’. These things need to be debated and prodded and challenged. It allows for the nuance you are obsessed with. And removes apathy.
Im not on any social media so I’m not sure what bubble I’m meant to fit in. Unless you include an Everton forum bubble in which case you are part of it.
The problem with that is when you highlight awareness for a cause you're meant to get support for but it backfires because it alienates the very people you need support from.
Awareness in itself isn't an end goal. Neither is debate if that debate enables the opposite of what you set out to do.
The fact is race relations in the UK particularly were improving rapidly before this. There was a report lately that said there was effectively no institutionalised racism, and whilst I don't entirely agree with that, the fact it's a plausible outcome spoke volumes about the position we were in.
That's all been set back considerably now.
As for role models, if you think Tyrone Mings mouthing off on social media at an elected politician for the crime of correctly calling something gesture politics goes down well with the populace... OK I guess, but that's what I'm talking about when referring to a 'bubble' of opinion, and why it's counter-productive, because the reality is an awful lot of people have big issues with footballers taking on blatantly left-leaning political stances, because if you take such a public political stance on one thing and ignore everything else, it sticks out as a sore thumb as lecturing the public.
The way to battle racism is to win hearts and minds over so as it's seen as the pointless, ridiculous thing it is. The world has no time for it. You don't do it by making it political. Taking the knee is political, whether they like it or not, and that's what causes the division.
Do you think the civil rights movement was the wrong way to go about it then?
How about the suffragettes?
Made a mistake by making it all political?
I don't think they're comparable for two reasons. One, the age we live in of social media and television, where optics form mindsets. It's why the immediate reaction to George Floyd was so visceral and resonated, whereas the prolonged reaction hasn't.
Two, the situation simply isn't as dire. Again, the mere comparison between post-Jim Crow era civil rights and women not being allowed to vote with racism in the 21st century is bizarre to me - black people nowadays have almost complete equal rights with white people in law, and I only use the qualifier "almost" there in case there's some daft law to the contrary I'm unaware of. This isn't legal oppression of black people, where you can fight an authority on very obvious grounds.
"Taking the knee" and so on fails to understand a core underpinning point - and that is who the enemy is, who is it fighting? If it was fighting the Tories on some legal principle, it'd make sense, but instead it's fighting the public, and therein it fails, because it's a blunt instrument that tars too many with one very broad brush. It really is a hearts and minds fight, and you don't win that by saying "you agree with us on everything we say or do or you're a racist".
Priti Patel calling the knee "gesture politics" isn't supporting racism. Tyrone Mings says it is. By doing so, he's also indicating that anyone else who things taking the knee was gesture politics is a racist. Which makes a load of people - who very much aren't racist - turn back round and raise a middle finger to what he claims he's trying to achieve, simply because they don't agree with the mechanism. That isn't winning hearts and minds.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
Both, it's the definition of peaceful protest... Thought chanting and tearing down statues of racists is not very British.
Don't have problem with footballers stepping into and expressing their social experiences, why would anyone?
Don't have problem with footballers stepping into and expressing their social experiences, why would anyone?
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
How is taking the knee “fighting the public”? An overwhelming majority of people were ok with it when it started, and a majority of people are still ok with it now.
Also Mings wasn’t saying that at all. He was criticising it being called as gesture politics by people whose entire politics are gestures.
Because you're fighting societal racism. Society is the public.
I think you confuse "ok with it" with "supporting it". Only 1 in 4 people support the players taking the knee strongly. 4 in 10 oppose it.
It's the very definition of divisive as a gesture.
This was what Mings said.
He specifically said "stoke the fire" against the "anti-racism message". Patel didn't see it as an anti-racism message; she saw it as gesture politics. She's entitled to that view. Mings is, to be blunt, wrong.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
No she isn’t. “Gesture politics” is as dismissively glib a phrase as “playing politics” is, designed to suggest that any action or criticism, however well justified, isn’t valid because it’s merely political fluff.
Mings et al started taking the knee because of a very real issue that is ongoing. First the papers and commentators responsible for dividing the country had a go at them for this (and loads of other overblown or invented things), and then some of the public joined in. We’ve just seen how correct Mings and the rest were to highlight it; as you said on the day it was sadly inevitable what was going to happen when the three players missed.
He was 200% right to go after Patel for dismissing and belittling what they were doing.
Doesn't say. Source here: https://news.sky.com/story/football...ng-a-knee-helps-tackle-racism-survey-12329006
Bare in mind we're talking about what is supposed to be an anti-racism gesture here. You have 4 in 10 people saying they oppose it.
Now, 40% of the country - or even 40% of football fans - aren't racist. They just aren't. You're insane if you think otherwise, I can't even begin to have a discussion with anyone who seriously believes that to be the case.
Yet 40% of football fans oppose the knee. That's a staggering amount against. So, clearly, the gesture isn't doing its' job - it's doing the exact opposite.
Ah, classic Tubes
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