3 ms·

My home country (UK) has plenty of its own problems with racism, but the one thing that stands out about the US is the level of unquestioned de facto racial seg

by foldr 6y ago

My home country (UK) has plenty of its own problems with racism, but the one thing that stands out about the US is the level of unquestioned de facto racial segregation in society. For example, I lived for around a year in a smallish town in a very progressive area of Massachusetts. Almost uniformly, waiters in restaurants were white and kitchen staff were Latino. Similarly, the town was almost all white, and almost all of the African Americans in the local area lived in another town. Naturally, all of the white progressives advised me in hushed tones not to live there. Racism is so deeply ingrained in the US that a lot of it simply passes unnoticed. Similarly, a lot of British people are blind to the amount of class snobbery that still exists in British society. Sometimes you need an outsider's perspective to see clearly.

brudgers 6y ago
Sure buddy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Asians_in_association_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Asians_in_association_...
- foldr 6y ago
  I said quite explicitly that the UK also has problems with racism. In any case, a UK/US comparison is not really the main focus of my comment. I'm not saying that the UK is "less racist" than the US. (Amusingly, Brits and Americans are often each equally convinced that the other country is the more racist.) However, I do think that there is de facto racial segregation in the US on a larger scale than there is in the UK. Certainly, this difference was visible to me, and I think it is a notable feature of American society and race politics. Football is an odd one. For some reason professional sports in general, both in the UK and the US, can be very socially regressive. For example, there are hardly any out gay footballers either, but you'd be wrong to infer from this that the UK is a massively homophobic country in comparison to others. (We legalized gay marriage before the US did, and through legislation rather than a court decision.) Anyway, these are all complex issues, and "sure buddy" plus a link to a Wikipedia article doesn't really add much to the discussion, does it? Anyone can find innumerable examples of racism in both the US and the UK just by googling.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    The US legalized same sex marriage in 2003 via a ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and it came into effect in 2004. That's ten years prior to the UK. The Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution made those marriages binding everywhere in the US. Comparing a European country to the US is, in the vast majority of cases, blub provincialism. On the US scale, Qaddafi's atrocities were in every Londoner's back yard. England is the size of Alabama and the western leg of the first US trans-continental railroad was longer than all the high speed rail in France. It's that convenient smugness that glosses over the historical fact that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a European endeavor. Europeans in Europe were turning profit by selling slaves to Europeans in the Americas. And of course, same sex-marriage is still against the adopted policy of the UK's official churches which in 2016 kicked the Episcopalians out for performing same-sex marriages. The same year the Orlando Pride started playing. The next year, they moved along with the Lions to the stadium with the 49 rainbow seats.
    - foldr 6y ago
      >The US legalized same sex marriage in 2003 This an extremely disengenous thing to say. As you well know, in most of the US, it was not possible for gay couples to get married in 2003. Nor, if they did, were their rights as married couples guaranteed or enforceable across the whole nation. You should also note that the UK introduced civil partnerships in 2004. So for most of the period from 2003-2015, a typical British gay couple had better legal protections available than their American counterparts. But all this is off topic, really. >And of course, same sex-marriage is still against the adopted policy of the UK's official churches It's also against the policy of many US churches, and they are similarly not required by law to perform same sex marriages. Beyond that, you are reading much into my comment that clearly isn't there, and going off on a number of tangents. There's no "smugness", or suggestion that the UK is better than the US. I am merely talking about one specific feature of US society (extensive de facto racial segregation). Please take the time to actually read what I'm saying rather than responding to some imaginary caricature of a smug Brit. In any case I'm at a loss to see what your overall point is. Suppose that the UK is worse than the US in every way. Does that somehow mean that segregation in the US is ok? Of course not. >49 rainbow seats Those are a memorial to the victims of the Pulse shooting. It's quite sick and weird to use that memorial as evidence of progress in LGBT rights.

by foldr 6y ago

brudgers 6y ago

Sure buddy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Asians_in_association_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Asians_in_association_...

foldr 6y ago
I said quite explicitly that the UK also has problems with racism. In any case, a UK/US comparison is not really the main focus of my comment. I'm not saying that the UK is "less racist" than the US. (Amusingly, Brits and Americans are often each equally convinced that the other country is the more racist.) However, I do think that there is de facto racial segregation in the US on a larger scale than there is in the UK. Certainly, this difference was visible to me, and I think it is a notable feature of American society and race politics. Football is an odd one. For some reason professional sports in general, both in the UK and the US, can be very socially regressive. For example, there are hardly any out gay footballers either, but you'd be wrong to infer from this that the UK is a massively homophobic country in comparison to others. (We legalized gay marriage before the US did, and through legislation rather than a court decision.) Anyway, these are all complex issues, and "sure buddy" plus a link to a Wikipedia article doesn't really add much to the discussion, does it? Anyone can find innumerable examples of racism in both the US and the UK just by googling.
- brudgers 6y ago
  The US legalized same sex marriage in 2003 via a ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and it came into effect in 2004. That's ten years prior to the UK. The Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution made those marriages binding everywhere in the US. Comparing a European country to the US is, in the vast majority of cases, blub provincialism. On the US scale, Qaddafi's atrocities were in every Londoner's back yard. England is the size of Alabama and the western leg of the first US trans-continental railroad was longer than all the high speed rail in France. It's that convenient smugness that glosses over the historical fact that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a European endeavor. Europeans in Europe were turning profit by selling slaves to Europeans in the Americas. And of course, same sex-marriage is still against the adopted policy of the UK's official churches which in 2016 kicked the Episcopalians out for performing same-sex marriages. The same year the Orlando Pride started playing. The next year, they moved along with the Lions to the stadium with the 49 rainbow seats.
  - foldr 6y ago
    >The US legalized same sex marriage in 2003 This an extremely disengenous thing to say. As you well know, in most of the US, it was not possible for gay couples to get married in 2003. Nor, if they did, were their rights as married couples guaranteed or enforceable across the whole nation. You should also note that the UK introduced civil partnerships in 2004. So for most of the period from 2003-2015, a typical British gay couple had better legal protections available than their American counterparts. But all this is off topic, really. >And of course, same sex-marriage is still against the adopted policy of the UK's official churches It's also against the policy of many US churches, and they are similarly not required by law to perform same sex marriages. Beyond that, you are reading much into my comment that clearly isn't there, and going off on a number of tangents. There's no "smugness", or suggestion that the UK is better than the US. I am merely talking about one specific feature of US society (extensive de facto racial segregation). Please take the time to actually read what I'm saying rather than responding to some imaginary caricature of a smug Brit. In any case I'm at a loss to see what your overall point is. Suppose that the UK is worse than the US in every way. Does that somehow mean that segregation in the US is ok? Of course not. >49 rainbow seats Those are a memorial to the victims of the Pulse shooting. It's quite sick and weird to use that memorial as evidence of progress in LGBT rights.