wavey
5413
Good to hear, and I think I’ll keep my donuts thankyou!
Looks like the US basically endorses the backstop. If the UK can’t get a trade deal with the EU, and can’t get a trade deal with the US, it’s going to be tough going, don’t you think?
I completely missed that. Eugh.
Sorry you have to put up with this shit, @playingwithknives.
Sorry you have to put up with this shit, @playingwithknives.
Oh, I go looking for it. Welcome to the world of dogwhistles. His post stuck out like a sore thumb, the language and syntax of The_Donald, ukpolitics, badunitedkingdom and other quarantined subreddits and their Twitter equivalents. It’s an alt right thing. Lots of nevermoose types on exmuslim are the same. They seem to think social justice, gender equality, inclusiveness, diversity and SJWs are the far left.
Which makes the Young Lib Dems the most hardcore ultra leftists on the planet. I really don’t know what they call Marxist-Leninists. Far Left³ ? Far Left∞ ?
In the UK the further left you go the more rapey it gets and its full of lots of old bigots who use the phrase “traditional working class” when demanding where focus should be placed.
Why “traditional”? The working classes of today, the manual workers, the shop floors, the catering staff, the lifters and shifters, cleaners etc are mainly immigrants. That’s why Lexiters have to add dogwhistles to their campaigns. They dont mean working class. They mean white working class.
Lexiters are a tiny percentage anyway and they’ve pretty much conceded their fight now to Remainers/2nd reffers as that’s where all the votes are.
Yes, we are still waiting for an answer to that from @draxen, aren’t we?
A pretty succinct summary I think of the situation.
Nothing to add to this, other than hoping that what seems to be Bojo’s plan works and then doesnt work.
Seems he wants to push for a no deal Brexit, or be seen to do it, but he’s hoping it fails, and then he can push for a general election as the champion of the poor and downtrodden British.
So I hope no deal fails and then I hope the election returns someone else. Not him. Not Corbyn. Maybe the lib dems.
And a 2nd referendum gets called, with less simplistic questions, I.e. with more nuance, e.g.
Exit with no deal
Exit with the withdrawal.agreement
Stay in
the word picanninie reminded of a shirt video my brother sent me.
I think you’d like it in this thread.
Fun fact: before Bojo I’d never heard the word picaninnie. What a silly sounding word.
draxen
5420
Jeez. Are we going to go around this one again. This is my final post on the subject. If you want to read more search through my older posts.
What matters is context and intent. In the context in which the word was used (a satirical article) and its intent (to attack Blair) it was not racist. It is perhaps a racist term but it was not used with racist intent.
Indeed, the suppression of language, thought or ideas when not being used in a racist fashion (e.g. to attack or assert superiority over another culture) is dangerous. I am wholly against this political correctness/woke subculture where people equate something offensive to something criminal.
The term was controversially used (“wide-grinning picaninnies”) by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell when he quoted a letter in his “Rivers of Blood” speech on 20 April 1968. In 1987, Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona defended the use of the word, claiming: “As I was a boy growing up, blacks themselves referred to their children as pickaninnies. That was never intended to be an ethnic slur to anybody.”[16] Before becoming the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote that “the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” He later apologised for the article.
That picture is telling eh? You don’t just randomly mention watermelons and picannines in the same sentence. Johnsons supporters best argument is that an upper class twit is casually racist. Gets called out. Calls it a joke.
Or Boris was aiming at pleasing the Rivers of Blood crowd in society and the Tory Party, the ones that just voted him into Downing Street.
Boris Johnson apologised again over race issues today after he was accused of condoning an article that claimed black people have a lower IQ.
The Tory mayoral candidate came under fire from Ken Livingstone and a leading black lawyer over pieces published in the Spectator magazine when he was editor.
In one, columnist Taki wrote that “Orientals … have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.” In another, he described black American bastketball players as having “arms hanging below their knees and tongues sticking out”.
What, then, was the intent? And please don’t say satire. Satire is a style, not an intent. What was Boris satirizing by writing about ‘picanninies’ and ‘watermelon smiles’?
Also, too, if you’re answering questions today:
Out of curiosity, why watermelons?
Seems very American centric.
I mean, I grew up in kenya, no shortage or ethnic etc slurs.
noone ever associated watermelons with…anything.
The language is interesting.
What happened the last time Boris campaigned for something terrible in the belief it would never succeed?
Nobody said criminal except you. We’re not saying he should be charged or locked up. We’re saying he’s used some extremely offensive slurs and that probably should inform your views as to what sort of person he is.
The use of shocking language for titillation or to encourage a feeling of complicity from the reader is quite distinct from satire. It’s more akin to writing on bathroom walls.
I wondered the same. Google is pretty helpful:
The trope came into full force when slaves won their emancipation during the Civil War. Free black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons, and in doing so made the fruit a symbol of their freedom. Southern whites, threatened by blacks’ newfound freedom, responded by making the fruit a symbol of black people’s perceived uncleanliness, laziness, childishness, and unwanted public presence. This racist trope then exploded in American popular culture, becoming so pervasive that its historical origin became obscure. Few Americans in 1900 would’ve guessed the stereotype was less than half a century old.
Yes indeed.
:O
I am hoping parliament defeats Boris.
draxen
5429
I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
There is no evidence. The evidence you are holding up is no evidence of wrongdoing other than being a badly written article that was in poor taste.
That while the use of ethnic slurs doesn’t necessarily prove racism, they idea that it isn’t at least evidence of racism is, well, absurd.
What part of it was in poor taste? Also, what was his intent in using those racial slurs? What was he satirizing?
draxen
5431
Did you watch the video I linked?
As I said it depends on the context and the intent.
An ethnic slur in and of itself is not evidence of racism. To give you an example:
A very good friend of mine is Polish, we’ve known each other for over 30 years. Since we were kids his nickname was “Polish”. So in conversation, “Hey Polish” (or Polak) and in return “Hey Limey” etc. So racial slurs but used in this context (friendship) with the intent of affection.
I am not an English buff so I can only give my layman opinion.
Satire
Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement.
The writing was in poor taste because it has offended people. Although it was written at another time and we are viewing it critically with today’s eyes.
The intent was to give the impression that the Queen (and Blair) enjoy visiting poorer nations due to the feeling of power and supplication they receive from the native inhabitants. It harks back to visiting colonies of the empire. It was intended to ridicule Blair.
Watermelons grow in the sun in the South. The South is were most of the slaves were.
