Labour advisor : "You're white and your entire existence is drenched in racism.".

Even academics jump on bandwaggons anyway. In fact academics may even have invented bandwaggons.

Oxford University stood up for Biggar too because it knows that you don't have to agree with a person's viewpoint for it to be useful and worth listening to for learning purposes. It's worth studying the good parts of empire (in the what did the Romans ever do for us way—quite a lot as it turned out) as well as the bad parts.

Actually, I suspect that Biggar has a nuanced viewpoint, or several viewpoints, about empire and colonialism. He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't.

Didn't "the LGBT community" write off Peter Tatchell as not one of them because he made so bold as to disagree with something the "community" thought he shouldn't disagree with?
You couldn't make it up really.
But, of course, he is 66 and a baby boomer so his voice is irrelevant now. Probably.

Like ours, eh, jal?

A thing doesn't have to be left-wing to report the truth.

Of course not. I'm not saying that what The Times reported isn't 'the truth'. What I'm saying is that it is written to deliberately place the subject in a bad light.

The reason I'd like to see something from the LBGT 'community' is that I don't know if those comments were banter or not and I don't know if they would have caused offence in Bergdorf's circle of friends/acquaintances. I'm not sure, though, if I really have the energy to minutely analyse the concept of an 'LBGT community'.

So just write me off as sceptical about the Times article.

I doubt if Biggar is that objective Baggs he is an Anglican priest very much a part of the established church which arguably has a record of colonialism that it would really like to see improved or white washed.

As a famous abolitionist once said, "You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know."
A bit like the Anglican church.

Well, I was just thinking that Baggs

I doubt that either Dawn or Munroe are eagerly scouring the posts on Gransnet to source ideas.

It's concerning that slavery still goes on today.

Actually, I suspect that Biggar has a nuanced viewpoint, or several viewpoints, about empire and colonialism. He wouldn't be where he is if he didn't.

He's a Professor of Theology, Baggs. I'm not sure that makes him any sort of expert on empire and colonialism. And a project on the 'Ethics of Empire' The whole concept and its realisation were unethical. 'Empire' is a vast and complex topic; at times it may have been beneficial to all concerned, but it was never ethical.

How do you know the Times isn't reporting correctly what Bergdorf said, maiz? Serious question.

Also, if one finds an attitude disgusting why shouldn't one show it in a bad light? The Guardian does that all the time (I'm not complaining, just stating). Why should the Times or any other paper be different?

Off to look for Bergdorf's "defence".

The view that empire, the concept or actuality (European or otherwise), is never ethical may well be true. But that still doesn't mean that everything done by empires is unethical.

Making empires does seem to be something human beings from all over the world have rather tended to do when they have developed advantages that other groups of people lack.

I wonder if chimpanzees are similar.

Um... I just flipped the thread (I read them upsidedown, so to speak) and read the Guardian article. It gives exactly the same quotes as the Times does so I think any suggestion of untruth is scotched right away.

Attitudes to what MB said are another matter. Hasn't the Guardian supported the sacking of people who have done things it disapproves of? Weinstein, for instance? What's the difference?

Not that I do support l'Oreal's sacking of MB for saying things they thought wrong, as I said earlier.

Going back now to look for her defence. .i'm presuming there's a link somewhere...

Oh, btw, what is the other bit of MB's mixed race? Black is one. What's the other?

Hmm, I see she says in another Guardian article that racism isn't learned, it's inherited.

Bollocks.

imo

Oh. Just seen her other half is white. So by her own reckoning she's racist too.

Which kind of reduces what she's saying to nonsense. The words racist and racism have been thrown around far too readily of late. They have lost meaning in the process.

She sounds like a mixed up kid.

I mean the half of her parentage that isn't black.

This is an interesting passage:

Unsurprisingly, Bergdorf made some people uncomfortable, made some people cheer and pissed off many others, including her mother, who is white and reads the Daily Mail. “That was an awful conversation. I’m half-white. My mum thought I was lumping her in with everyone, but this isn’t about individuals. To understand my point, you have to take yourself out of the conversation – it’s not about you – and truly think about society, structurally, economically, as a whole.”

But isn’t that the trouble? Lots of people won’t and don’t understand. Not everyone reads Frantz Fanon and Patricia Hill Collins for kicks – academic theory will only go so far in convincing the average person on an average street that institutionalised, systemic racism is just as damaging as a violent, racist attack.

“I don’t regret what I said,” she says, calmly. “I’m an activist. Being an activist means calling people out, not just saying what everyone else is saying and what everyone else wants to think and upholding the common consensus. L’Oréal knew that when they hired me.”

Let's hope she learns to be a little more diplomatic in her activism. I wish her well but she really shouldn't be (can't be) surprised at the reactions her words caused.

Society is made up of individuals. You can't go lumping a whole 'race' of people together in aggressive statements and then telling them to "take themselves out" because it's not about individuals.

And anyway her implication that white society is rotten and racist to the core is rot. It wasn't even when countries full of white people had empires.

I'm reading Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind. He argues that morality is partly innate (evolved intuitions) and partly learned "(as children learn to apply those intuitions withina particular culture). We're born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about."

By people like us I think he means people in the same culture because, as he has already shown in the book (from a study he published in 1993) different cultures find different things disgusting and disrespectful (as well as some of the same things).

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this post is because it's a partial retraction of my bollocks post. Perhaps some form of fear of others is part of one of those evolved intuitions. It actually made sense for tribal people to have certain fears of, or prejudices against, other tribes. However, I do not accept that 'white' western cultures have not moved on from this and so I do not accept that white people are inherently racist as a group or that their societies are.

I am half Irish, My mother growing up in Bermondsey remembered boarding houses having big signs saying "No Irish, No children, No dogs. Other businesses like pubs just banned Irish, and the Irish were discriminated against in the job market.

How much of that remains? British culture moved on from this form of racism. To suggest that we are not moving on from the egregious racism of the 1960s and 70s is puerile. A member of the Royal family is marrying someone of mixed race heritage, the next but one Marquis of Bath (Longleat) will be part Nigerian.

How do you know the Times isn't reporting correctly what Bergdorf said, maiz? Serious question.

I didn't say that they weren't reporting it correctly, just that they were 'slanting' what they were reporting by not giving it a coherent context.

The tweets they reported could have been perfectly acceptable to her circle of friends and followers. We just don't know one way or the other. But we were clearly meant by the reporter to find them offensive.

I see that my first comment on this thread has been ‘deleted at poster’s request’.

I’d just like to make it clear that I didn’t ask for my post to be deleted, and I didn’t report anyone else's post either.
I haven’t contacted GNHQ about this thread at all.

That is worrying, do we have 5th columnists on Gransnet

Maybe you should contact them Janea?

Reading this thread I find myself musing on what the reactions from some posters would be if this Bergdorf character had been appointed to something by the Conservative Party.?

Wisnae me, janea, even though I think it might have been the post where you asked me to post a picture of myself for people to criticise. I would contact HQ if I were you and ask them to correct what they've posted or reinstate your post.