New words and phrases

and equally read my response about an unfortunate choice of words - my response was in no way taking an attack stance and I am surprised that you thought that way of it. I took exception to the inference which could be taken by your words and was inclined to say so.
In this forum, I was called a racist because I thought that dubbing out the name of Guy Gibson’s black Labrador dog was the wrong thing to do in the Dambusters film shown on the TV… so perhaps you might see where I am coming from (or perhaps not!)

Sorry, Graham, you won’t be getting a debate with me about this subject. I was just attempting to put the phrase into context. Of course all lives matter and it would be ridiculous to say otherwise but, right now, if you post that one phrase after quoting someone else saying Black Lives Matter you will be challenged.
Izzy x

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Doesn’t that just show how fragile society is just now Izzy.
But thank you for your contribution, comments and support.

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Sadly most good causes do get hijacked

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You’re very welcome Graham. We are indeed living in fragile, bizarre and dangerous times.
Izzy x

Loved the question about his hairdresser!

I fear you are hoist by your own petard here, Mike, and falling into your own trap with the “genetically (predominantly) white” comment.

Mixed race people experience stigmatisation in the same way that all “non-white” people are stigmatised in “white society”. “White” people define the characteristics of whiteness, and their judgement is definitive and final.

Apartheid South Africa had this pinned down ‘scientifically’ and legally codified, as did the Nazis when it came to defining Aryanism and stigmatising Jews, down to “the last drop of blood”.

Some “predominantly white” individuals can “pass as white” (as the ugly phrase would have it), but they live in fear of being “outed” by giving birth to children with the “taint of négritude”. If you don’t believe this, you aren’t living in the same racist world as most of us are.

My own mother used to refer to her mixed race children as “half-castes”, and “touch of the tar-brush” was part of her lexicon. Her grandchildren, my own flesh and blood, hated her.

You will know the old saying, “Give a dog a bad name…?” It will live up to it, so watch out for your shin bone, you bought it on yourself! :meat_on_bone::grimacing::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I come from a very mixed family, so skin tone is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about my relatives.
But I once worked in an office with a Scotsman and an Indian (Sounds like one of those stories coming on!) After about a month, I suddenly noticed that the Scotsman was the darker of the two. So it seems to me that people perform some complicated mental gymnastics in making judgements about a person’s “colour.”
I think people find it easier to live with their own inadequacies by identifying others as being inferior to themselves.

When I was an undergraduate my best friend (who is half-Japanese) and I (who have a Viêt great-grandmother), were busy demontrating against the régime then prevalent in South Africa and realised that were we to live there, she would be classified as ‘white’ and I would be ‘coloured’.

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