Oh no!!!! not another racism thread

rsynnott

KnowItAll wrote:

The Irish went to countries that were newly discovered eg USA and Austrailia.

Yes, newly discovered countries like the UK, the US in the 19th and 20th century...

Zombrex

KnowItAll wrote:

This is a common misconception. There are not more Irish people abroad than there are in Ireland. There are people who, even if they just had an Irish great grandfather, would consider themselves Irish.

Well considering your definition of who is Irish is based more on genetics (the so called Irish "race") than if they, you know, actually live here, by your own warped idea of what is Irish there are close to 30 million Irish people living in America alone, the vast majority had family arrive in the 19th century or later (ie only a couple of generations ago) .. so should the US kick out all these non-Americans (what ever that is) and send them back home to Ireland where the Irish race belongs?

Wibbs

While I agree with you with regard to KnowItAll's definition of the Irish "race", I would have to disagree with your example of America. America and countries like Australia were colonies of Europe whose recent existence was based and driven by immigration. They are immigrant nations by definition. Indigenous populations notwithstanding, the current population are all non Americans in a way. Ireland would be a different case altogether IMHO. Ireland never had that culture of mass immigration and the last time that a different culture landed here, it didn't go so well.

Maybe it's a holdover(or race memory ) from the Ulster plantations that has some Irish people so freaked out about immigration.

rsynnott

Wibbs wrote:

Maybe it's a holdover(or race memory ) from the Ulster plantations that has some Irish people so freaked out about immigration.

Invasion is a little different to people coming to escape oppression or in search of a better life.

amp

Wibbs wrote:

While I agree with you with regard to KnowItAll's definition of the Irish "race", I would have to disagree with your example of America. America and countries like Australia were colonies of Europe whose recent existence was based and driven by immigration. They are immigrant nations by definition. Indigenous populations notwithstanding, the current population are all non Americans in a way. Ireland would be a different case altogether IMHO. Ireland never had that culture of mass immigration and the last time that a different culture landed here, it didn't go so well.

So the Irish spontaniously evolved on this island?

Maybe it's a holdover(or race memory ) from the Ulster plantations that has some Irish people so freaked out about immigration.

Speak for yourself. I'm not freaked, I see it as the way it is and the way it's always been. Humans travel, sometimes they settle where they travel.

Victor

amp wrote:

So the Irish spontaniously evolved on this island?

Nah, I think its obvious we were invaded by little white men.

rsynnott

Wibbs wrote:

Maybe it's a holdover(or race memory ) from the Ulster plantations that has some Irish people so freaked out about immigration.

Nah, I think it's probably just stupidity. World-wide, stupid people are freaked out about immigration, homosexuals, and programming video recorders.

KnowItAll

Wicknight wrote:

(the so called Irish "race")

Ok... I know Irish people are not a pure race all of their own. What I was saying is that Irish people are among the most homogeneous people in the world based on fact (haplogroup 1)

Wicknight wrote:

Well considering your definition of who is Irish is based more on genetics than if they, you know (the so called Irish "race"), actually live here, by your own warped idea of what is Irish there are close to 30 million Irish people living in America alone,

Those Irish-Americans would not be the same as Irish people at home actually, if your basing it on what I called the Irish race.

rsynnott

KnowItAll wrote:

Ok... I know Irish people are not a pure race all of their own. What I was saying is that Irish people are among the most homogeneous people in the world based on fact (haplogroup 1)
.

Ireland uber alles.

Hmm, that's nice. Is it in any way relevant to ANYTHING, though? Really, give me some idea why this "race" stuff matters.

Wibbs

amp wrote:

So the Irish spontaniously evolved on this island?

I never suggested they did. I just contend that regardless of one's position on the matter, comparing the US and Ireland with regard to immigration is a bad example. The US is a country entirely based on immigration from it's relatively recent inception to today("Bring me your huddled masses" and all that). It was and is one of the corner stones of it's culture. By contrast Ireland has had few large scale immigrant populations. The Normans, vikings and even the celts made up small numbers by comparison to the "natives" and they were driven by totally different motives. If anything Ireland in recent centuries has been a country with a culture tending towards emmigration.

amp wrote:

Speak for yourself. I'm not freaked, I see it as the way it is and the way it's always been. Humans travel, sometimes they settle where they travel.

I was neither speaking for myself, nor indeed anyone else in the first place. I was joking, hence the smileys.

Nah, I think it's probably just stupidity. World-wide, stupid people are freaked out about immigration, homosexuals, and programming video recorders.

True(especially regarding VCRs, 00.00 blinking spawns of satan they are). I don't automatically make the mistake of assuming stupidity in those that differ in opinion to me. Mostly it's ignorance of the facts and the fear that comes from that. Sometimes, very rarely, they may have a point buried in their fears. Thinking of them as stupid can underestimate the danger posed in certain ideas many of them may hold. Education and debate would be the better route IMHO.

rsynnott

Wibbs wrote:

True(especially regarding VCRs, 00.00 blinking spawns of satan they are). I don't automatically make the mistake of assuming stupidity in those that differ in opinion to me. Mostly it's ignorance of the facts and the fear that comes from that. Sometimes, very rarely, they may have a point buried in their fears. Thinking of them as stupid can underestimate the danger posed in certain ideas many of them may hold. Education and debate would be the better route IMHO.

Yes, I acknowledge that it's unfair to assume that all racists are stupid. I'll amend that to that all EDUCATED racists are stupid. Ignorance really isn't an excuse for most people in this country.

KnowItAll

rsynnott wrote:

Hmm, that's nice. Is it in any way relevant to ANYTHING, though? Really, give me some idea why this "race" stuff matters.

Why does anything matter? Thats the kind of attitude thats destroying the hill of Tara and the Irish countryside and heritage in general. None of that matters, only the money saved/made matters.

rsynnott

KnowItAll wrote:

Why does anything matter? Thats the kind of attitude thats destroying the hill of Tara and the Irish countryside and heritage in general. None of that matters, only the money saved/made matters.

No, you didn't answer my question. Lots of things matter. A person's "race" is not one of them, as far as I can see. Can you give me actual REASONS, or are you just babbling?

amp

Wibbs wrote:

I never suggested they did. I just contend that regardless of one's position on the matter, comparing the US and Ireland with regard to immigration is a bad example. The US is a country entirely based on immigration from it's relatively recent inception to today("Bring me your huddled masses" and all that). It was and is one of the corner stones of it's culture. By contrast Ireland has had few large scale immigrant populations. The Normans, vikings and even the celts made up small numbers by comparison to the "natives" and they were driven by totally different motives. If anything Ireland in recent centuries has been a country with a culture tending towards emmigration.

And this "native" majority, where did they come from?

Wibbs

amp wrote:

And this "native" majority, where did they come from?

Europe, after the last Ice age receded. In any event, that's nitpicking and not addressing my original point. You cannot compare the immigration history of a country like the US with Ireland. The timescales alone make it different. Even the nature of the immigration that formed the primary population of Ireland is different.

amp

Wibbs wrote:

Europe, after the last Ice age receded. In any event, that's nitpicking and not addressing my original point. You cannot compare the immigration history of a country like the US with Ireland. The timescales alone make it different. Even the nature of the immigration that formed the primary population of Ireland is different.

What is your original point then? That certain countries are immigration/emmigration based? If you look at Ireland pre-Great Famine we were an immigration based country of around 8 million people. Post famine we became a emmigration based country. The Great Famine was in 1847 which is relatively recent. Losing half the population was a terrible thing that destroyed this country and is something that takes many years to recover from. We've only recently managed it. And now that we have we are now once again an immigration based country.

I dunno maybe it's just me. Maybe it's because in my working career I've met people from all over the world that came here to work. I worked in a call centre and shared a floor with people from all over europe. They came here because my company simply couldn't find enough people who spoke various languages fluently .

You worry that mass immigration to these shores will cause problems. Of course it will, in the short term. But it will in the long term be benificial. History shows I'm right.

pickarooney

What's people's beef with the use of the word 'coloured'? It's a term used by many people either of mixed ethnicity (as in South Africa) or a blanket term for non-white (like the coloured cycle in a washing machine), such as the people represented by this group.

mycroft

pickarooney wrote:

What's people's beef with the use of the word 'coloured'? It's a term used by many people either of mixed ethnicity (as in South Africa) or a blanket term for non-white (like the coloured cycle in a washing machine), such as the people represented by this group.

Minor aside theres a hilarious episode of quantum leap, very early on.

Sam jumps into a elderly black man (and kinda kickstarts the civil rights movement) leaving aside the obvious irony, Hoover believed that the black panthers must have had a white "brain" because he didn't believe the negroes could organise themselves that well. the episode filmed in the late 80s/ early 90s features two disturbing gems in what is supposed to be a "right on liberal show"

Sam (on leaping into a black man's body)
"Al don't you know what if this means, if I can leap into this body, anything is possible" (the inference being theres a genetic difference which makes this leap astonishing)

Sam (to elderly white racist)

In a few years time, you won't call us "negroes" because thats too close to ******, you'll call us "blacks" " (Ironic because within a few years "blacks" and "coloured" was replaced by "african americans")

It's funny and relevant because of a show from fifteen odd years ago, trying to be PC, falls so flat on it's face in such a short space of time.

I dislike the term "coloured" and "white" because of the disturbing history of the terms, I'd prefer, the nationalility, or region to be of greater importance than skin tone.

pickarooney

I'm the complete opposite in that I abhor terms such as 'African American'.
To make another televisual aside, on an episode of The Cosby Show, little Olivia comes home and tells her mother she saw three Santa Clauses, one who was 'white', one who was 'black' and one who was 'Chinese'. Denise corrected her, telling her she should say 'Caucasian', 'African-American' and 'Asian'. The child was simply describing what she saw using the visual clues available to her, yet her mother saw fit, based on a second-hand account to extrapolate a dual-nationality/ethnicity from one such clue. She had no way of knowing the darker-pigmented Santa Claus was from France, Ghana, Australia or Indiana, yet felt it acceptable to pigeonhole him as both African and American. In the case of the oriental (meh, can't think of a better word, even though these equates to North African in France, for example) Santa, she figured expanding the net from one vague geographical area to a larger one was somehow inherently less judgmental. And the white guy was simply Caucasian, which as far as I know refers to a small region in Russia.
I'd prefer to take Roy Walker's advice and say what you see, rather than say what you think you can get away with assuming under the guise of non-confrontational pigeonholing.

Don't get me started on the Fresh Prince

mycroft

pickarooney wrote:

I'm the complete opposite in that I abhor terms such as 'African American'.
To make another televisual aside, on an episode of The Cosby Show, little Olivia comes home and tells her mother she saw three Santa Clauses, one who was 'white', one who was 'black' and one who was 'Chinese'. Denise corrected her, telling her she should say 'Caucasian', 'African-American' and 'Asian'. The child was simply describing what she saw using the visual clues available to her, yet her mother saw fit, based on a second-hand account to extrapolate a dual-nationality/ethnicity from one such clue. She had no way of knowing the darker-pigmented Santa Claus was from France, Ghana, Australia or Indiana, yet felt it acceptable to pigeonhole him as both African and American. In the case of the oriental (meh, can't think of a better word, even though these equates to North African in France, for example) Santa, she figured expanding the net from one vague geographical area to a larger one was somehow inherently less judgmental. And the white guy was simply Caucasian, which as far as I know refers to a small region in Russia.
I'd prefer to take Roy Walker's advice and say what you see, rather than say what you think you can get away with assuming under the guise of non-confrontational pigeonholing.

I will not take a life lesson from a man who wearing jumpers that the late late show's toy show stylist looks at and goes "now thats too tacky"

Don't get me started on the Fresh Prince

The only subject of discussion is this;

Will Smith should he be drown in,

A) pig slurry.

cow slurry.

rsynnott

Yes; <insert group>-American is nausiating, especially when Americans refer to NON-American people using it (As in: Nelson Mandela is an African-American (yes, I've seen this)). Really, I don't know why people have to dwell so much on SKIN COLOUR, of all things, at all.