[Zyx]

You don't change the world by just changing your vocabulary and by performing a few high profile "cleansing" acts of contrition.

Out of sight out of mind, QatzelOk. One can change the world by changing the incoming 'text.' The world is as we imagine it. No one knows the world without images.

Real change would mean media being seriously questioned.

She played no role in as much. You ought to realize QatzelOk, that your wit is an earned one that is not a human universal. Carol Thatcher had no apparent will to question the media; instead, she seemed to be its puppet who played wrong. *snap*

The last article I posted - Darryl Pinckney, he's a black guy, a writer who lives in the UK,

In a racist world this would mean much; unfortunately, being a black guy does not naturally endow anyone with any particular powers with regards learned society. Darryl, in this context, speaks on the wrong side, hence he is wrong, blackness notwithstanding.

[sploop!]

I don't entirely disagree, to be honest, K...

[Zyx]

You'd have to elaborate on what was agreeable, sploop!

[sploop!]

Sorry! this:

Kumatto: Someone tried to ridicule someone else based on his race, and proper society said that, that was a 'no, no.' End of story.

At heart I agree with this. It's offensive for exactly the reason you describe. But I am really intrigued by the mixed opinion in British society on the matter. What's that all about?

[Zyx]

It's hard to say. I imagine that it has to do with her being sacked over 'PC;' although, I admit that this may well be a miscommunication on the part of the 'media.' This may not be PC insomuch as this is a gesture against the community to which she tried to foster. It looks 'PC,' but recall that people were genuinely irked by her comment. It was not so much "don't say that or you'll be sacked" insomuch as this was an example of someone saying something that facilitated racial hatred and bigotry and the better part of society opposing this. I'd think that the mixed opinion comes from misreading this story and believing that she only came into trouble because of the words that she used and, of course, the initial article suggests as much by saying that she would not be in trouble had she done this in a more private institution; however, as far as this latter reading is concerned, it misses the best point for punishing her. It is true that had she said what she had in her living room, no punishment would come to her, but it is untrue that saying as much in her living room is excusable. Some people wrongly believe that it is, hence the mixed opinions (I think.)

[guzzipat]

Real change would mean media being seriously questioned. Carol Thatcher was lambasted and fired so that media can "look" good without really changing in any significant way.

I can only prresume you are making these claims out of ignorance. The fact is that large sections of the media, typically the most right wing section, backed Thatcher. The Mail with two opinions, the Telegraph, the Times and the Independant all carried opinions that either supported Thatcher or attacked the BBC. I haven't checked the tabloids but I would be surprised if they are different.
Your idea that making the media "look good" was the motivation for her being fired, isn't supported by the facts.

Not that it is the least unsual for you to create theories based on nothing, you and evidence seem to be total strangers.

[Dave]

guzzipat, Qatz rejects evidence in the first place. He claims that all "texts" are biased and that "textual" opinions (fact-based opinions) are far more shallow than personal ones (emotional, baseless opinions). I had a thread where I challenged him on some arbitrary figure he produced about the composition of the US federal budget, and I produced detailed statistics. He stood by his original, false claim and said that it proved his point. I retorted that his point could only be proven by lying.

So in short, you're right about mush.

[QatzelOk]

the world is as we imagine it.

No, the world is the world no matter how differently we imagine it to be. People used to imagine it was flat, for example.

Words - on the other hand - are whatever we imagine they are. And this is the problem with history and with text-based 'facts.' They are usually just a pile of carefully-selected words waiting to be interpreted by the reader. The careful selection is done to protect national security - meaning, the entitlement of the elites.

large sections of the media, typically the most right wing section, backed Thatcher. The Mail with two opinions, the Telegraph, the Times and the Independant all carried opinions that either supported Thatcher or attacked the BBC.

The Independent is hardly what anyone would call "right wing." I find your right-vs.-left explanation of this media moment to be very inadequate and mushy.

Is this what you do with "facts?" Turn them into a simple narrative that falls apart before it even leaves your fingertips?

[Ombrageux]

She thought a mixed-race person looked like a 'golliwog'? I don't think she's racist so much as manifestly stupid.

I don't think people should be fired for off-the-cuff, backstage remarks like this.

[QatzelOk]

I don't think people should be fired for off-the-cuff, backstage remarks like this.

But it's so much easier to fire her than it is to remove the institutional racism from our media.

[Ombrageux]

Qatz - People are going to think what they are going to think. To overreact whenever there is an incident like this is only to lead people to repress those thoughts publicly. They'll still have them, we'll just end up with the paralyzed discourse of race relations that we have in the US.

That is not to say that I believe there is no institutional racism. When it is apparent, it should be tackled. I also believe in muscular positive discrimination. But these kinds of remarks are just epiphenomena.. to ruin someone's career (or a trial: OJ) based on them is to avoid talking about substance.

[Dave]

Positive discrimination: racism against the native people in their own homeland to benefit foreigners. Before 1948 Britain was overwhelmingly white. Now the British people (and before anyone chips in, yes, I realize that there are multiple nations in Britain) are to be cowed to benefit aliens. Just whose country is it anyway? Does it belong to the British people, or the "golliwogs"?

Situations like what is described in the news article this thread are based are unfortunate. They demean the victim and debase the perpetrator. And they will continue inevitably, because contact theory doesn't work. More integration and more contact have done nothing to rectify the problem.

The way to truly stamp out racism is ethnic self-determination. Forced integration is an abject failure and only increases racism.

[Ombrageux]

Britain belongs to those born and raised here. No more, no less.

[Dave]

I disagree. If someone is born and raised in a country, but fundamentally in his habits and customs is not that of the existing indigenous and dominant group, is he really of that nation? And perhaps more to the point, even if he does model his behavior on the indigenous national group in every manner, if people perceive him to be alien, is he not an alien? What's very sad is that many of these people lost their old ethnonational identities, but have not been able to join that of the nation they reside in. Thus they have no true identity and are left often with alienation and seething resentment. I believe this is how many minority groups in the West feel.

[Zyx]

No, the world is the world no matter how differently we imagine it to be. People used to imagine it was flat, for example.

No one knows the world, QatzelOk. The world does not exist without imagination. If history were not recorded or retracable then history did not exist. In truth, the third son of Confucius may have beat his first child for stealing bread from a local baker out of a feeling of disgrace for his past troubles to his father. This is likely to have happened, but to say that it had is purely fallacious unless a document says as much (no matter if the document is true or not [assuming that it can not be verified.]) There are objective realities, I'll give you that, but if they are not communicated to people then they are not real to people. We are not omniscient, we are consumers of ideas. Something only happens if we believe that it happens, hence our world is imagination.

I cite the Thomas Theorem once more: "If men [or women] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

Reality is imagination.

The careful selection is done to protect national security - meaning, the entitlement of the elites.

Possibly, but that's the world. The elites protected themselves by villainizing Carol Thatcher, since had they not, they would have been doubly vilified. Carol Thatcher hence loses for her ignorance thereof of the ruthless of the 'elites.' You may think that Carol Thatcher should walk free, but it doesn't fit into any proper paradigm. I agree that she is not the villain, but what sense is there for her to continue to exist on the top? Not only is she ignorant of the elite, but she is also reactionary in her ideology (internalizing the racial dialog herself.) QatzelOk, it's best to protect those both cognizant of the elite's modus operandi and progressive in their ideologies: Carol Thatcher is the opposite, and no ones ally.

I don't think people should be fired for off-the-cuff, backstage remarks like this.

Maybe not, but being that she is ideologically reactionary, I do not care that she is fired.

--

And perhaps more to the point, even if he does model his behavior on the indigenous national group in every manner, if people perceive him to be alien, is he not an alien?

I am so sad that Dave is using similar language to me, negatively too.

[Ombrageux]

Kumatto, you are very strange. Be that as it may, traditionally in the West we pride ourselves on not victimizing others for their political beliefs.

[Zyx]

The word 'victimizing' is inappropriate, but to your phrase, I retort, "I vote for the opposite reason." Beside from that, reactionary beliefs are not something that I ought to support. Maybe some French (?) philosopher allows for it, but I do not much care for it.

[guzzipat]

So in short, you're right about mush.

As I have said before "interlectual masturbation" is a better description. Putting notions in your own head above all evidence, isn't just self agrandisment, it is destructive to any understanding.
It's about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. I think I may let the pompous fool twiter on, until he posts some even more spectactularly idiotic idea.

[Zyx]

guzzipat, I would not criticize QatzelOk therewith. He makes some sense and he is being deductive. That is, applying the theory before collecting the evidence. That the evidence is not here for some claims, does not disprove the theory. Sometimes, evidence is simply unavailable. I can not see how he paints Carol Thatcher as some noble entity, but there is some merit in his saying that the elite destroyed Carol for their protection, just as it makes sense to say that gravity works the same on the planet, if any, circling Sirius.

[Ombrageux]

The lovely thing with Kumatto is that while it prances about on its high-horse with condescending and rather forced concerned with racism, it is not above expressing prejudice towards other countries.