The current ‘buzzword’ seems to be BAME – for those of us unused to hearing this, it stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and describes anyone who isn’t basically a ‘white’ skinned person.
Why this is important completely defeats me – what possible difference can their be if a person has blue green or yellow skin? Surely it’s what’s inside that counts?
Apparently I’m in a minority myself thinking this way, and as we’ve seen recently, after a series of black people who’ve been beaten and even killed by the police in the United
States, a movement is in progress.
To a great extent I agree with the idea of the movement – principally to be clear the ‘Black Lives Matter’, but sometimes I do feel that that is overtly racist against white people.
Surely EVERBODY matters, and the simple fact that this movement seems to be aimed at black people makes it detrimental to white people?
The knock-on effect is now being felt as well – cosmetics group L’Oreal are removing words that could be ‘misconstrued’ from their advertising – toothpastes no longer ‘whiten’ your teeth’ etc. the photographic co-op Magnum has announced it’s hiring three ‘black’ photographers to ‘even the balance’…
Are black and white photographs soon to be renamed? I suppose we actually already have ‘monochrome’ so that would stand up, but isn’t this all getting out of hand?
Of course there are racist people in the world – everywhere you look – in some places worse than others. In India, for example, the situation is incredibly racist in terms of the caste system, and the people are all the same colour! At least, in America, the police know which colour to beat up (but then these policemen are pretty thick as a general rule, and need all the help they can get, so colour-coding the people must have seemed like a Godsend)
Trump, my favourite world leader, is true to himself, and couldn’t give a shit – aside from his re-ellection, which seems to be hanging on by an ever thining thread, and his bank balance, the country to go to hell in a handbasket for all he’s concerned. And judging by his efforts, probably will…
Sanity will ultimately prevail – but sadly not before a lot more damage has been done. Destroying statues, and our history, is not an answer in my opinion – it was particularly refreshing to hear a black historian interviewed on French television the other day – in his opinion, tearing down statues erected to slave traders and the like was simply a denial of our history – far better to learn why the person ‘celebrated’ by having a statue erected was, in our current thinking, wrong.
I agree – otherwise we risk becoming like China and Russia whose authorities have rewritten parts of their history books to hide/deny earlier historical events.
Are we really that naïve?