UK beats USA (this is quite an old article)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2137729.stm
We even recognise that we are
And this is unlikely to improve under Johnson.
1 Like
Not for USians. For them I’m a Latino (which is weird, that (a) for Latino guys in US brazilians aren’t latino, as we speak Portuguese, not Spanish and (b) Latin America is from RIo Bravo below) I have the perception that this came with the Divine Manifesto crap
2 Likes
There are.
- Loud conversations on cell phones and playing loud music aren’t polite. Be discreet and use a headphone instead.
I guess you’ve never ridden a bus?
But - yes - And they’re strictly enforced.
13 Likes
There absolutely are rules about behavior on public transport? In my country by purchasing a ticket/pass you agree to the Terms & Conditions which includes a lengthy section about what you are not allowed to do on the vehicles and areas covered, which includes listening to music or radio in a way that bothers other passengers (ie. without headphones), busking, panhandling/begging, being drunk/high, being excessively dirty/stinky, behaving indecently or outrageously, etc. etc… it’s quite lengthy. Generally speaking, anything that can reasonably bother others is against the rules.
Obviously these rules are not strictly observed or enforced (or at all, for that matter), but technically people are well within their rights to say, call the cops/security on you for say, singing loudly and not complying when other passengers ask you to stop.
5 Likes
Is it any wonder that I say I don’t have a country? The last 3 years have only solidified an already existing feeling…
6 Likes
i thought he said he needs id from the victim to know who he’s talking to? and looks at his passport?
Not that defending cops is something I’m interested in doing, but when the person who appears to be holding the camera points out that providing ID is not a requirement, the cop says, “I understand that.” He’d also prefaced the request with “Do you mind showing me…”
You wrote, “Victim shouldn’t have to give up passport imo,” and in my understanding, this victim indeed didn’t have to.
Anyway, your initial point about knowing one’s rights in any particular state is a good one.
4 Likes
Recognizing racial bias is helpful, though. This video has been posted on other threads. You might find it interesting:
8 Likes
That was a contrived example, but since you mention it, there’s plenty of metric in the US as well. All US-based science and most US-based engineering is done in metric, US manufacturing (automotive and CNC) is almost all metric, the US aerospace industry is mostly metric, and it’s sneaking in to common life as well. Soda is sold in liters and milliliters, power is metered in kilowatt hours, etc.
The US did actually legislate to make metric official in 1975, but it wasn’t made mandatory, so conversion is going very very slowly.
2 Likes
Yes, prejudice is something that almost all of us have baked into us by the age of probably 8 or 10, and we can spend the bulk of our lives learning to identify and then, ideally, nullify it. This I wholly agree with.
However, I’d say there’s a (big) difference between societally-induced prejudice that one is working through, and arguing that pretty much everyone (who is presumably white?) is a latent supporter of white power. That itself is a highly prejudiced perspective, obviously.
1 Like
I’m pretty sure that it just so happens that we didn’t invent some sort of equally arbitrary “freedom unit” to measure electric power usage rather than any push toward metrification.
(But hey, there’s still time for Trump to declare that power bills must now be expressed in horsepower rather than those other socialist measurements.)
4 Likes
Maybe that depends on what you mean by “latent,” but it seems to me that being classified as white while circulating in a white-supremacist social order-- like the one in the U.S. still is-- and thereby contributing to and benefiting from white supremacy, certainly makes one a latent, de facto supporter of white power.
It’s like being in an exploitative economic order, which we all are. With most of the purchases I make, I’m taking part in and contributing to, and thereby helping to perpetuate, an economic order that ruthlessly exploits a lot of people who have less advantages than I do. I don’t have to be a conscious enactor economic exploitation to take part in exploitation.
9 Likes
Participating in a racist system because there’s not really another option, while doing what you are empowered to do to shift that culture, in contrast with “actively supporting” white power/supremacy, are things that I tend to differentiate. I don’t think it’s a useful conflation, as a died in the wool member of the KKK essentially has the same status, in this ontology, as a very aware and progressive lifelong civil rights worker. I think language is more useful when such radically different things are not lumped into the same category.
I also disagree with your point that anyone is actually truly benefitted by living in such a problematic culture. Maybe at a surface level, but I would prefer to live in an egalitarian society, so we could all spend more time working together to solve major issues like climate change, etc. I think we’d all be much more benefited by having a society that had left stupid things behind, like thinking people are really any different because of something as silly as ethnicity/skin color, not to mention a host of other things. Living in a damaged society holds me back, it is not helping me or anyone else, really.
Seems like a largely semantic argument at this point, so I will be ending my participation in this conversational thread here. Happy New Year!
Fine, claim the last word and then flounce. Not like I’ve never seen that before in these kinds of discussions.
Happy New Year to you too, I guess.
6 Likes
I’m from Argentina and for sure I don’t like that the term “America” has been coopted by the citizens of the United States.
But then again, their colonialist politics make them think they OWN all the continent, so it’s only natural that feeling bleeds over the language.
4 Likes
As I said, metrification was not mandated by the 1975 bill, so anyone doing it is doing so by choice. The power companies could be billing us in horsepower-hours, BTUs or foot-pounds per second, but they don’t. Metrification would go a lot faster if it was mandated, but here we are. Gas companies are still using Therms, so it’s pretty much chaos, but the common belief that nothing in the US is metric is further off the mark than most people realize.
5 Likes
It’s not about getting the last word, it’s about the fact we’ve each made our points (as usual) and have established the differences in our points of view (as usual). Is there much more point in continuing the conversation? Feel free to engage with the perspective I’ve expressed, feel free to ask me questions about it, and as you most certainly have, feel free to disagree, which you have (as usual!) what prey tell is the point of continuing at this point? You want me to acknowledge that I support white power? I most certainly do not, but I most certainly do participate in a highly problematic set of systems, as do you (as you’ve acknowledged). shrug
I’ll just note that iirc, you haven’t asked me any questions about the perspective that I’ve expressed, and indeed, you’ve ignored several points that I’ve made.
Anyway:
Here’s one way that you’ve been ignoring some of what I’ve been saying. Participating in a highly problematic system like white supremacy means that we do “support” it. One doesn’t have to actively think they’re doing so in order to do so.
I too “would prefer to live in an egalitarian society,” but I’m not going to pretend that race and racism don’t matter in the ways I’ve been saying they do.
Yes, Black/African American culture, for example, it’s so “silly,” isn’t it? Why can’t they just leave such things behind? And why don’t they just stop all that complaining too about how a white supremacist society continues to treat them, so we can all get together and work on more important things? So divisive, tsk tsk.
8 Likes
Well that’s a dead cert, if he’s let out of the country by Dominic “Classic Dom” Cummings, at any point.
