Job Discussion Forums

[Hod]

[Dr X]

[Hod]

At last, sense. Who'd burgle a TEFLer anyway?

The point is, as long as we don't set out to offend, there'll be no harm done. There are probably/hopefully no racists on this forum because most of us have lived and worked overseas, seen different cultures and maybe experienced racism ourselves.

In my native UK, I'd bet £100 that most racists haven't been east of Southend, apart from package holidays to Magaluf every year. I see such people in the same light as the glue sniffing motosai taxi riders in Thailand who hate farangs (whites). They don't know any different. But if the Thai government cracked down on such behaviour by banning the word “farang” (which isn’t derogatory as far as I know) and insisting the word “of western ancestry” were used, are you telling me this solves the problem? Of course it doesn’t.

But I left Thailand over a decade ago and don’t really care about it. The UK, though, has a great opportunity now to deal with racism properly through education and integration. Forcing people to say “of African ancestry”, etc, is pointless and has if anything hindered progress.

[nimadecaomei]

Best way to spot a racist is when someone takes offense. Sure there are people who will violently attack others, though it is rare, but most racist are closeting their hate. I would add that few racists are actually White. As a white person from America, I apparently am guilty for slavery and the demise of indigenous people. Forget that my family immigrated after the civil war. I somehow did this all because...my skin is white!

[plumpy nut]

The demise of Native Americans was due to Measles and Smallpox. That was what decimated the native Americans. That is not to say that Europeans didn't mistreat the Native Americans, because they did. However there was much bad going on in the past. The Americans got rid of slavery in 1865, however the British only banned it 30 years earlier. There was a lot of bad things going on. Americans took the native Americans off of their homelands and gave little in return, but we did not systematically annihilate them. Americans also were not the only group that did bad things to indigenous groups, other Europeans in other places also did very bad stuff to indigenous groups as well.

[plumpy nut]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

Brexit may not be finished, but this thread is.