Things We Won't Say About Race

Did anybody else catch it last night?

I recorded it as I was working my way through various bottled beers that tasted like stale sick at the time and I wanted to digest it with a clear head (the show, not the beer) so I have just watched it now.

Fascinating stuff and I found myself nodding along in agreement with a lot of the things Trevor Phillips was saying.

It was refreshing to hear someone like Phillips acknowledge that the political and intellectual elite in this country have got quite a lot of things regarding this issue so wrong for so long.

Here's what The Grauniad thought:

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/20/things-we-wont-say-about-race-trevor-phillips

i recorded it as well so haven't seen it yet, this is the one where Farage made his comments about scrapping the race laws isn't it?

Yup.

He basically says that they'd scrap a lot of the current legislation because it's redundant because we as a society have moved on, so it serves no real purpose but is used, on occasion, to further a political or personal agenda by undeserving individuals.

Ie, (and this is my interpretation of what he meant, not a direct quote) "You're sacking me because I'm a Pakistani!"

No, I'm sacking you because you're shit at your job, you never turn up and when you do, you do fuck all.

Pakistani bloke goes away, sees lawyer and comes back with threatening letter.

Employer backs off and Pakistani bloke keeps job and carries on doing fuck all and being shit, but now he's sporting a massive, smug grin.

And the programme then segued nicely into Tony Blair basically agreeing with Farage by saying that we as a country have indeed moved on.

But he stopped short of agreeing that the laws are now redundant.

Because he could never been seen to be agreeing with Loony Nige on camera, could he?

the thing that annoys me most about race is the people who always try to play the race card to deflect any kind of criticism anway from them. People are scared stiff of being accused of being a racist so they tend to back off.

How times have changed. Haven't they?

Norpig wrote:the thing that annoys me most about race is the people who always try to play the race card to deflect any kind of criticism anway from them. People are scared stiff of being accused of being a racist so they tend to back off.

That was kind of the whole theme of the programme.

As a society, we've moved too far towards upholding the rights of minorities at the expense of rational, fact based debate because as soon as anyone says:

"Yes, there is evidence that the vast majority of grooming rings involve Pakistani men and white teenage girls."

....somebody cries "Racism!" and everybody's too scared of voicing their opinion for fear of being branded a racist.

And that's not healthy for anybody and we'll never be able to tackle these issues.

Breadman wrote:

Norpig wrote:the thing that annoys me most about race is the people who always try to play the race card to deflect any kind of criticism anway from them. People are scared stiff of being accused of being a racist so they tend to back off.

That was kind of the whole theme of the programme.

As a society, we've moved too far towards upholding the rights of minorities at the expense of rational, fact based debate because as soon as anyone says:

"Yes, there is evidence that the vast majority of grooming rings involve Pakistani men and white teenage girls."

....somebody cries "Racism!" and everybody's too scared of voicing their opinion for fear of being branded a racist.

And that's not healthy for anybody and we'll never be able to tackle these issues.

What you are both describing are problems with the implementation of the law rather than the law itself.

Having a law that prevents folk from being discriminated against solely on the basis of their ethnicity (or gender/Sexuality etc etc) is a good thing even though discrimination is something that everybody does all the time with everyone they meet - it's a fundamental primaeval instinct.

Breadman wrote:Did anybody else catch it last night?

I recorded it as I was working my way through various bottled beers that tasted like stale sick at the time and I wanted to digest it with a clear head (the show, not the beer) so I have just watched it now.

Fascinating stuff and I found myself nodding along in agreement with a lot of the things Trevor Phillips was saying.

It was refreshing to hear someone like Phillips acknowledge that the political and intellectual elite in this country have got quite a lot of things regarding this issue so wrong for so long.

Here's what The Grauniad thought:

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/20/things-we-wont-say-about-race-trevor-phillips

I watched it and thought it was very interesting although I wasn't surprised by what I saw.

Yes and that was the whole point of the programme, Lusty.

New Labour set about trying to enforce change by pressurising people into not saying "racist" things, in the hope that they'd eventually stop thinking them - Phillips says as much during the programme.

He then acknowledges that it was a naive, stupid idea and completely made things worse by disenfranchising the majority and making them feel as though they weren't represented in Parliament.

Hence the rise of UKIP.

And I agree with him.