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Location: england
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 5,601
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Originally Posted by
kcjack
I see your point but they do seem to say it as it is, I feel we are made to feel its wrong to say "proud to be white british" like its a dirty sentance.
I have friends from every walk of life and agree some things in the past they have done have riled me but as there policys stand in that list make much better reading than the other partys.
I believe the BNP are a racist organisation and i would not be happy to see police etc on the list as i feel it would be a conflict of interests.
It is not racist to be proud of you who are, as long as you are accepting and respectful of other people. I beleive the tabloid papers have a lot to blaime for raising this idea that it is racist to be proud to be white and British......... that idea just riles people.
Being proud of who you are does not mean that you have to put down others. "Normal" (i.e. not racist!) British people (espeically English) should celebrate all that is good about English culture...IMO, and enjoy celebrating it without doing down other people who are different to themselves. I say especially English as the Welsh, Scottish and Irish seem to have managed to keep their sence of identity.
Many of the stupid over publicised headlines that you read about, for example, schools not celebrating certain christian festivals anymore, are usually wrongly reported and also stem from a misunderstanding of what racism is.
I have always been passionate about the subject and my dissertation was about racism and responces to racism in schools. It was really interesting research to do and one of the problems seemed to be that people were under this misunderstanding that you couldn't celebrate anything if you were white, and particularly if you were English. This feeling then seems to breed contempt....so because people were loosing their own identity they start attacting members of society who have a strong identity. There was also this odd assumption that only white people could be racist. Another odd thing is that people seemed to struggle with what to call people who weren't white.......and a lot of the time their sentances faded away when faced with what to call someone or they used words like "coloured", "them" and "those"!! I would be offended if i was refered to with any of those terms. I think people who genuinly like people and are not harbouring racist grudges are open with other people and people recognise this and are happy to answer questions from people who are geniunly interested and respectful.
I, unfortunately, have worked with many rasict people, which i find appauling, especially as i have worked for years in the Early Years Care and Education sector. I will not tollerate racism and challenging it has made me unpopular many times, but, it has also opened people's eyes and turned some people's views around. People are individuals and should be treated as such.
I beleive education and respect is the answer. One of the stupidest thing i ever saw was a programe about a member of the BNP, he was canvasing outside a shop when his daughter came to see him with her new boyfriend. This boyfriend obviously had some afro/carribean descendents, but the girlfriend didn't draw her dad's attention to this. The boyfriend was polite and respectful and when they left the dad was saying what a nice boy he was and it made a difference from her usual boyfriends. The intervewer then raised the issue of the boys ethnicity.....and the dad was shocked, he really thought/assumed he was white with a suntan. he didn't know what to say, said things like "really? oh i will have to ask her, is he really one of them".
This man who was campainging to return his neighbourhood to a white neighbourhood didn't even know who he was fighting against, and when faced with a nice boy, only saw the nice boy and not the colour of his skin......now if that man could only have his education or other people taken further he had the potential to become a tollerant giving member of society insted of fighting to remove anyone who wasn't like him from his neighbourhood.