To LaMika:
I could live a very peaceful and happy life never having to be around black people. Could you say the same thing about living your life without white people? Who do you feel safer being around? Black people or white people?
27 comments
"aaa
I visited glasgow once. It was pretty violent and fun at the same time."
And the relevance of that comment? No previous poster mentioned my home city and none of the photographs featured Glasgow.
pic 1: Newcastle
pic 2: Somewhere in Britain but nothing to suggest Glasgow
pic 3: Mainland Europe from the look of the police
The middle pic is Hull, apparently, and the bottom one is Sydney Australia.
Mind you, I have been in a pub in Glasgow for which the words 'happy' or indeed 'peaceful' would indeed have been inappropriate.
Depends. Must I, like bnative, be a screaming racist nutjob? If so, then I'd be "safer" around those of my own race. Otherwise, there's little difference.
Well, to be fair, Glasgow is the murder capital of Britain. Then again, they're also the kicking-terrorists-who-are-on-fire-in-the-nuts capital of probably fucking everywhere, so I think the moral is that you'd be safe from everyone except other people from Glasgow if you lived there.
Hmm... personally, I feel safer in a mixed groups. When everyone is the same colour, the more close-minded of them (there are always a few) feel more secure about singling out anything that is different. My town is terribly white and I don't think it's a good thing, people grow up without seeing any diversity.
Yeah, sure, there are violent Whites and peaceful Blacks. But you have to be pretty dumb or purposefully ignorant to not notice that areas populated by Blacks are usually disproportionally violent and dysfunctional.
Which blacks LH?
Where I grew up in Collingwood (an inner city neighborhood in Melbourne), the poor whites and the aboriginals were the most violent groups - still are*. The Congolese and Somali's are pretty peaceful by comparison.
History and context mate. African Americans had slavery in their history, Congolese and Somali's who have settled in Australia just want to get on with their lives, they've had enough of war and frankly they're done with it.
*For the morons out there, this does not mean that all poor whites or Australian aboriginals are violent. But the ones who grew up in prefabricated concrete, government - built shitholes with a heroin supermarket in their backyard can be a bit more violent than your average folks - go figure!
History and context mate. African Americans had slavery in their history, Congolese and Somali's who have settled in Australia just want to get on with their lives, they've had enough of war and frankly they're done with it.
I don't know much about Australia and its African community. I've lived in France for most of my life and I have seen entire neighborhoods and suburbs ruined by African immigrants (the same thing is happening in many European countries). I also understand that many large American cities that have accepted an important number of African refugees are now facing a growing gang problem.
So what's the excuse/rationale here ? The legacy of colonialism ? Institutional racism and exclusion ?
I once worked in a neighborhood of Paris that was heavily populated with immigrants from relatively poor regions such as China and South-East Asia. In spite of that, it was one of the safest places in the city. Go figure.
@ LH
I didn't offer up an "excuse" for anyone, I'm just saying that there is more to a neighbourhood being a violent place than the melanin content of it's inhabitants.
And yeah, the legacy of colonialism can play a part - so can class, institutionalised criminality, drug dealing, lack of social services and so on. At the end of the day it's still up to the individual to make the right decision or not.
During the seventies - when Melbourne much less multicultural than it is now, it was a hell of a lot more violent than it was today.
It was the era of the skins and the sharps - gangs of mostly white kids that rode the trains looking for a bit of aggro.
Like Antichrist said, assholes come in all colours - simple as that!
Sorry, but in the end race does play an significant part. To come back to the example of France, many immigrants from China and the former French Indochina initially had to live in government-built projects and faced hostility from the local population. Today most of them are relatively well integrated in society and don't constantly riot and whine about racism. Blacks, on the other hand, have often turned many formerly decent neighborhoods into quasi-thirld world no-go zones.
Prove that race was the major factor!
In my old home town the black Africans are mostly peaceful and some of the local whites would cut your face off.
Here's a pic of one of our better known peaceful white folks, author, poet, Collingwood resident and sometime standover man Mark "Chopper" Read.
image
Underworld figure, hobbies include sharp objects, firearms, setting fire to peoples limbs with oxy acetelene torches and chopping their toes off with bolt cutters - oh, that and bad poetry.
Some black people are violent bastards, so are some whites. That's it, period - finish.
"Prove that race was the major factor!"
As a whole, Asian Americans are amongst the most educated and the most successful minorities in the United States today whereas Blacks remain near the bottom. The Japanese immigrants to Brazil lived in near-servitude for decades but are richer and more educated than the Brazilian average today. Is that a coincidence ?
"Some black people are violent bastards, so are some whites."
Sure, I have never said the contrary. It's just about proportions.
Blacks are over-represented in crime and poverty in almost every country where they are found in large numbers. But there's nothing wrong with them, it's probably just that everybody else is racist and treats them unfairly.
I prefer lovely Asian women for a peaceful and happy life. Also, lovely white women and lovely black women.
OK, I love being around lovely women.
Coincidence has nothing to do with it, but local context has everything to do with it.
When Vietnamese migrants first arrived in my country in the late 70's they recieved a lot of flack from the tabloids and local racists for violence, forming gangs, dealing drugs etc - this was despite the fact that, as I've already mentioned the local white boys weren't exactly covering themselves with glory.
There are a lot of reasons why some majority African neighbourhoods are violent but I'm pretty sure that "race" (a thouroughly discredited concept - biologically speaking) isn't the main factor.
Anyhoo, enjoyable as this discussion is - we should leave some space for other posters. If you want to talk about it in greater depth I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you in the forums
WTF, Toldpuddle? Is that the best you can do? Those are people at sports games and public rallies. They're being rowdy, but it sure as hell ain't the same as walking through a black neighborhood and getting shot at every other block.
TRAC - the fact that a place is violent is not down to the melanin content of it's resident population.
Many years ago the most violent groups in your country were the Italian mob, the Irish mob and - oh yeah, the KKK!
Context, time, place, local history. Oh fuck it, I'm talking to TRAC. Might as well try and talk sense into a stone.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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