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Ok, this proves that at least one other person thought this sounded strange; I thought maybe I was missing some minutia since I'm just some goofy American.
by tombert 6y ago
Ok, this proves that at least one other person thought this sounded strange; I thought maybe I was missing some minutia since I'm just some goofy American.
- 5thaccount 6y agoAFAIK there were no African slaves brought to Britain. In British colonies but not in Britain, and certainly not in numbers that lead their descendants being a significant minority of the overall population. Most black people in the UK are recent immigrants from either the Caribbean or Africa. And that isn't splitting hairs as that is important in the context Cleese wrote about. Americans are hyperaware of and hypersensitive about slavery, whereas the British don't have day-to-day reminders, and slavery is not as defining in the culture as, say, 2 world wars and one world cup. Think of it like Seattle vs New Orleans. The cultural consequences of geography and settlement/migration patterns creates a slightly different culture in each city, despite a shared US history.