Diane Abbott suspended as Labour MP.

[TopCat]

yeah its annoying agreed!
but my point is people talk about hierarchies of racism because they experience them

They also talk about them as cover for appalling actions of their own.
I think myself that talking about heirachies of racism lessens anti racist solidarity and is usually the mark of a total shit.

 

[hitmouse]

I sought guidance from GB News on this this morning - Tory boy Andrew Pierce was flippant as usual and it was left to their 20 year old eminence grise Tom Harwood but he was going into raptures of ecstatic hatred against Ms Abbott.
I had to wait until about 11.45 am on Sky News to get any sense. They carried a live interview with Rachel Shabi - a regular on Sky doing the Papers.
Her view this morning was that Diane Abbot has started a debate. That she should not be expelled. That the debate should proceed.

Funnily enough if you look at Rachel Shabi's Twitter feed, yesterday luchtume she was dismayed

I guess what we have here is a very open minded person in Rachel Shabi who thinks about stuff and expresses where she is at the time.

Can't remember who it was who said it - maybe a "member of the public" but they wanted Suella Braverman expelled for racism! Quite agree.

PS it has got to something when the Labour Party - THE LABOUR PARTY - is contemplating expelling a black MP with 36 years service as an MP and more lived experience of racist abuse than any other MP. For being a racist.

Shabi seems pretty sound generally, and I don't think there's any necessary contradiction between thinking that what Abbott said was dismaying and thinking that she shouldn't be expelled from Labour?

 

[ska invita]

They also talk about them as cover for appalling actions of their own.
I think myself that talking about heirachies of racism lessens anti racist solidarity and is usually the mark of a total shit

You're a white man living in your native white majority country. This is something you have no personal experience of and can only theorise about. Why don't you feel pressure to use skin whitening cream?

 

[TopCat]

If a black person tries to explain why they think racism against black people in white-majority or white-political-power countries is different from other forms of prejudice, even if you think they've got some things wrong, should your response as a non-black person ever be to dismiss that person as an idiot or to call them a racist?

I think Abbott is an idiot because her judgement as a politician should have prevented her for sending that letter. But I don't dismiss her as an idiot for thinking what she thinks. I'd debate it with her, and challenge various points (the Nazi example is a hard one to include in her schema), but I wouldn't call her names for thinking that.

Take Lee Jasper as an example. He has put forward similar views for decades. I say it’s because he is a thieving racist shit.

To be shy of calling him what he is, because you yourself are white is racist in itself.

 

[TopCat]

You're a white man living in your native white majority country. This is something you have no personal experience of and can only theorise about. Why don't you feel pressure to use skin whitening cream?

My kids are brown. Why don’t they feel pressure to use skin whitening cream?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

If a black person tries to explain why they think racism against black people in white-majority or white-political-power countries is different from other forms of prejudice, even if you think they've got some things wrong, should your response as a non-black person ever be to dismiss that person as an idiot or to call them a racist?

I think Abbott is an idiot because her judgement as a politician should have prevented her for sending that letter. But I don't dismiss her as an idiot for thinking what she thinks. I'd debate it with her, and challenge various points (the Nazi example is a hard one to include in her schema), but I wouldn't call her names for thinking that.

That would certainly be a more convincing position than to have made the statement and then issued a statement hours laters dissociating yourself from your first statement (the letter). That's the bit I just don't understand.

 

[TopCat]

Anyway, Diane Abbott, not a thief but a dunderhead. I recollect that after decades of being the local MP she sent her kids to private school. Totally tin eared.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That would certainly be a more convincing position than to have made the statement and then issued a statement hours laters dissociating yourself from your first statement (the letter). That's the bit I just don't understand.

She fucked up, then she realised she'd fucked up and appears to have panicked. The subsequent statement is ludicrous. It reads like it was written by somebody else, or under the direction of somebody else.

 

[bimble]

Yep. If she'd followed up by trying to explain what she meant, instead of 'disassociating completely' from her own letter then maybe there'd have been a conversation worth having but as it is the whole thing just looks like a stupid and unforced brainfart.

 

[CH1]

Anyway, Diane Abbott, not a thief but a dunderhead. I recollect that after decades of being the local MP she sent her kids to private school. Totally tin eared.

Read Wikipedia - her son says he asked to go there.
Not only that for part of the time he was educated in Accra. His father, Diane's ex-husband/partner is Ghanaian and no doubt they agreed it would be culturally beneficial for him to experience Ghana.
Ghana is a country with zero crime (at that time anyway). What parent of a half-Ghanaian boy would insist on an inner London comprehensive in preference to a relatively inexpensive non state-funded educational experience in Ghana?
Why does everything have to be so simple - so BLACK and WHITE?

 

[Red Cat]

Is it any wonder that people panic in a world that is so censorious.

 

[xenon]

It’s probably best labour MPs just don’t pontificate with mentions of Jews Jewish people. Every time they do they fuck it up.

 

[TopCat]

Read Wikipedia - her son says he asked to go there.
Not only that for part of the time he was educated in Accra. His father, Diane's ex-husband/partner is Ghanaian and no doubt they agreed it would be culturally beneficial for him to experience Ghana.
Ghana is a country with zero crime (at that time anyway). What parent of a half-Ghanaian boy would insist on an inner London comprehensive in preference to a relatively inexpensive non state-funded educational experience in Ghana?
Why does everything have to be so simple - so BLACK and WHITE?

Try reading her words. Here is a link to an interview at the Daily Mirror on the subject.

Diane Abbott: I sent my son to private school so he wouldn't end up in a gang

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[Idris2002]

the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jewish race by industrial organized genocide.

This is a point that is getting more and more "lost in the shuffle".

 

[TopCat]

Read Wikipedia - her son says he asked to go there.
Not only that for part of the time he was educated in Accra. His father, Diane's ex-husband/partner is Ghanaian and no doubt they agreed it would be culturally beneficial for him to experience Ghana.
Ghana is a country with zero crime (at that time anyway). What parent of a half-Ghanaian boy would insist on an inner London comprehensive in preference to a relatively inexpensive non state-funded educational experience in Ghana?
Why does everything have to be so simple - so BLACK and WHITE?

He went in 2003 to the city of london school, ten grand a year at the time. Twenty one grand equivalent now.

 

[A380]

I don’t want to get into the whole ‘hierarchy of discrimination’ bun fight on this thread.

Her letter is a gift to Starmer though. Gets rid of an iffy Corbynite and looks ‘Strong and decisive’ in comparison with the PM’s missteps/weakness on party discipline.

If I were a cynical man ( heaven forfend) I might think it too much of a good thing. Abott’s not always been completely wedded to her principles after all ( private school for her lad for example). Lady Harringay for services to politics and making Starmer look good, has a ring to it…. She isn’t a stupid woman.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don’t want to get into the whole ‘hierarchy of discrimination’ bun fight on this thread.

Her letter is a gift to Starmer though. Gets rid of an iffy Corbynite and looks ‘Strong and decisive’ in comparison with the PM’s missteps/weakness on party discipline.

If I were a cynical man ( heaven forfend) I might think it too much of a good thing. Abott’s not always been completely wedded to her principles after all ( private school for her lad for example). Lady Harringay for services to politics and making Starmer look good, has a ring to it…. She isn’t a stupid woman.

harringay?

 

[A380]

harringay?

Yeah, it’s a tiny village in NE Scotland. Surprised a man of your erudition hasn’t heard of it…

 

[likesfish]

found out a few years ago my great grandmother was jewish so that counts means i could have joined the idf! ( I was drunk at the time and we were asked to leave instead ).

it would have been enough to send me to the camps so yeah the whole anti semitism isn't based on a problem with people not eating bacon or getting saturday off its based on bollocks, Israel and the palestinians are used as an excuse by some to go full on anti semitism not that the Israeli government and its supporters doesnt accuse anyone who suggest using heavy artillery against "terror kites" might be a tad excessiveas being worse than hitler.

 

[Brainaddict]

All she had to say (if she needed to say anything at all) is that the racisms that different groups experience are different, due to the historical weight behind the particular material and cultural harms experienced by that group. Lots of people would have agreed with her that the quality of racism black people experience is different from racism against other people. Instead she had to say others don't experience racism, with some apparent historical ignorance thrown in there (Roma slavery as many have pointed out), and it's just really difficult to defend it. So difficult that she decided not to even defend it herself. It's baffling how she ended up writing that in the first place.

And as Danny has pointed out, race is constructed by people being racist. The debate about who is or isn't a race is a complete red herring. If the racists are able to treat you as a 'race' then you suffer racism. You might appropriate their designation to try and show pride in your 'race', but race continues to be a fiction, even where it becomes a temporarily useful one.

 

[LDC]

found out a few years ago my great grandmother was jewish so that counts means i could have joined the idf! ( I was drunk at the time and we were asked to leave instead ).

it would have been enough to send me to the camps so yeah the whole anti semitism isn't based on a problem with people not eating bacon or getting saturday off its based on bollocks, Israel and the palestinians are used as an excuse by some to go full on anti semitism not that the Israeli government and its supporters doesnt accuse anyone who suggest using heavy artillery against "terror kites" might be a tad excessiveas being worse than hitler.

Have you ever thought of writing a quick letter to the Observer?

 

[Pickman's model]

All she had to say (if she needed to say anything at all) is that the racisms that different groups experience are different, due to the historical weight behind the particular material and cultural harms experienced by that group. Lots of people would have agreed with her that the quality of racism black people experience is different from racism against other people. Instead she had to say others don't experience racism, with some apparent historical ignorance thrown in there (Roma slavery as many have pointed out), and it's just really difficult to defend it. So difficult that she decided not to even defend it herself. It's baffling how she ended up writing that in the first place.

And as Danny has pointed out, race is constructed by people being racist. The debate about who is or isn't a race is a complete red herring. If the racists are able to treat you as a 'race' then you suffer racism. You might appropriate their designation to try and show pride in your 'race', but race continues to be a fiction, even where it becomes a temporarily useful one.

it's not much of a fiction if it intrudes into the world of experience, is it.

 

[CH1]

Try reading her words. Here is a link to an interview at the Daily Mirror on the subject.

Diane Abbott: I sent my son to private school so he wouldn't end up in a gang

www.mirror.co.uk

According to Wiki her former husband is David Ayensu-Thompson. Mirror has Richard Thompson but marriage dates agree.
Diane seems able to hold two opposing views at the same time in her head - but this is not uncommon is it? Especially in Labour politics.

BR But you criticised Harriet Harman and Tony Blair for sending their kids to selective schools then you went and sent yours to a fee-paying one?
DA I didn’t really criticise Harman.
BR You said what she did made Labour look like they’re saying one thing while doing another.
DA Yes, I did say that. But that was the only criticism I made.

Who is Brian Reade, the interviewer? According to Wikipedia he wrote an article about Migration Watch which led to the paper being successfully sued for damages by Sir Andrew Green (as he then was). So I guess Brian Reade takes no prisoners.

 

[_Russ_]

Clue: when Jews were sent to the camps, it wasn't to do with their religion. Beyond the term "human race" all other references to "race" are a social constract. Jew is a social construct as much as the terms Black or White.

A social contract?, Yea great If that's the case I can still completely disagree with your classification criteria and there lies a big gap ready to be filled by cunts with their own definitions Like the guys that set up those camps

 

[danny la rouge]

A social contract?

Social construct.

 

[Pickman's model]

A social contract?, Yea great If that's the case I can still completely disagree with your classification criteria and there lies a big gap ready to be filled by cunts with their own definitions Like the guys that set up those camps

 

[danny la rouge]

it's not much of a fiction if it intrudes into the world of experience, is it.

Many real effects have been wrought as a result of erroneous ideas.

 

[Pickman's model]

Many real effects have been wrought as a result of erroneous ideas.

and quite a bit as the result of correct ones too

 

[Knotted]

I'm absolutely gutted that she's been suspended from the Labour party and I can't wait to see her back, because she's and endless source of entertainment.

Even though I'm White, anti-White racism isn't something I really care about, as it doesn't affect me as there aren't any woke middle class liberals around here.

This is fash surely. Capitalised "White".

 

[CH1]

The lunchtime interview shown on Sky News with Keir Starmer in shop/food bank in South London was interesting.
For some reason he looked out of sorts - or terrified.
Even more so when the questioner moved on to "Why haven't you been pointing out the bad effects of Brexit on the cost of living?"
If I go to the Beehive tonight I'll do a straw poll of what customers think of Labour vs Abbot.
Not that it's relevant to polling as we don't have an election - but surely from a black person's point of view (meaning one who is not engaged in debating how many angels can dance on a social democrat's pin head) this hounding of an older black woman seems draconian?
Kate Hoey didn't get that treatment. But then again she and John Mann sailed down the Thames on Nigel Farage's riverboat.