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Gammon is not racist

Right off the top of my head, and I'm ready and willing to be corrected because this is guesswork, I'd say that in Europe where manual agricultural work made people go brown then a way of spotting people who lived off surplus value was that they managed to remain 'gentle men' and 'fair ladies'. It was how to spot people who didn't work, or who worked without getting dirty.

'White collar' and 'blue collar' is much the same idea.

I daresay other places came up with other ways of doing much the same. Brahmins must have had a way of spotting each other.


It's interesting that when the term 'white n-----' came up it was used when and where this system got broken. It was a common term in 19th C United States for Irish people and apparently for French Canadians at much the same time.

So it's symbolic of more power and status, even when that's largely imaginary as in the situation of poor white people in the Southern States.

Whether or not 'racist' only means how the historic oppressor describes the historically oppressed is a matter for usage. That seems to be part of this debate. Either way I think that if PoC or other white people use terms for white people like 'gammon' it plays into those white people's hands.

And it probably needs a word to describe it.

As I said before it's highly tempting to give people who bandy around words like 'snowflakes, cucks, remoaners' as if that was a sensible thing to do a bit of their own medicine, but really it's descending to their level of discourse.
 
Right off the top of my head, and I'm ready and willing to be corrected because this is guesswork, I'd say that in Europe where manual agricultural work made people go brown then a way of spotting people who lived off surplus value was that they managed to remain 'gentle men' and 'fair ladies'. It was how to spot people who didn't work, or who worked without getting dirty.
alternatively they could have just looked at their hands. and you seem to have missed the entire chivalry / military service thing among the ruling classes
 
alternatively they could have just looked at their hands. and you seem to have missed the entire chivalry / military service thing among the ruling classes

So fighting on a horse was more noble than fighting on foot, because it showed you had a horse.

And could run away more easily!

You're right about hands, but they couldn't be seen from such a distance.
 
I just did

no one else seems interested in why the concept of whiteness exists

I'm interested in that point, and some if the others you've made. But you seem to skip from one to another, with little coherence.

What's the central point you're trying to make? It's it that people who are considered white (at a given time and place) cannot be victims of racism, because racism requires more than racial predjudice; to be a victim of racism requires being part of a group that is oppressed on racial grounds because of structural power differentials (regardless of relative individual power dynamics in the specific incident)?
 
So fighting on a horse was more noble than fighting on foot, because it showed you had a horse.

And could run away more easily!

You're right about hands, but they couldn't be seen from such a distance.
nothing to do with that, you're on about people from the lower orders being tanned / dirty. so would campaigning or practicing soldiers.
 
As I said before it's highly tempting to give people who bandy around words like 'snowflakes, cucks, remoaners' as if that was a sensible thing to do a bit of their own medicine, but really it's descending to their level of discourse.
When I used to take racial abuse as a kid I used to get incredibly frustrated that there were no insults for white people of equal weight that I could respond with, so I get why today's PoC youngsters are co-opting some of these terms. In most cases it's seen as retaliatory but that doesn't make it right or even effective in achieving their aims. In many cases I disagree that one shouldn't descend to an opponent’s level as it's quite often an effective tactic. I use it frequently. With regards to racist language though, it propagates stuff like "it's ok to be white" and perpetuates the nastiness.
 
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Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. - Fanon

The problem of the twenty-first century, then, is the problem of the color-blind. This problem is simple: it believes that to redress racism, we need to not consider race in social practice, notably in the sphere of governmental action. The state, we are told, must be above race. ... We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium. - Prashad
 
Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. - Fanon

The problem of the twenty-first century, then, is the problem of the color-blind. This problem is simple: it believes that to redress racism, we need to not consider race in social practice, notably in the sphere of governmental action. The state, we are told, must be above race. ... We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium. - Prashad
Athos asked you a question above. Why not have a go at debating with him? He often has more patience than others.
 
So fighting on a horse was more noble than fighting on foot, because it showed you had a horse.

And could run away more easily!

You're right about hands, but they couldn't be seen from such a distance.

You can feel a hand when you shake it though. people, especially men IMO, still judge each other by their handshake. And rough/smooth does come into that judgement.
 
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