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Racism Part two


Demitri_C

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46 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Probably because its wrong, an I cannot believe people think having  BLM, LGBT+XYZ etc, rammed down your throat nearly every living day, is the same thing as paying your respect to our fallen heros once a year.  

Nobody said it's the same thing. But they're both political issues, which is the point being made

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47 minutes ago, bickster said:

Could you post any evidence at all of this please? Either do that or retract a completely unsubstantiated claim about people that post on VT. BTW if you can't substantiate this, it is most definitely posting for effect

You'll find it in this site, it was debated a while ago, it's certainly not posted for effect. 

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10 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

You'll find it in this site, it was debated a while ago, it's certainly not posted for effect. 

I don't need to find it, you do

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No, no, hang on. 

I’ve read it wrong, turns out you can still say Christmas and gays cannot, repeat cannot, force themselves down your throat.

I’ve made a right chump of myself here.

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4 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

Nobody said it's the same thing. But they're both political issues, which is the point being made

Was surprised the response wasn't poppies aren't political which to be fair neither is racism

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nearly 300 people dead and 800 injured in a train crash in India today. Think I first saw the report in online media about 10 hours ago.

No mention on here, no mention on my social media, not headline news on radio earlier (headline was a protestor disrupting a horse race) no mention, including by me, when I was out with family/friends in pub earlier. 

I'm confident if this happened in the states, France, ROI, Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain etc, etc then we are all talking about it. It so happens to have taken place in India but it could have been many other countries where people have a different skin tone so it hardly gets a mention.

I am not pointing the finger at just others here as I am pointing the finger just as much at myself, but I can't help but think, if not racism, but something ingrained in terms of when tragedies happen in India/African nations etc then the value of life doesn't matter so much.

I don't know if I have explained the above very well but I hope others get the jist of where I am coming from/what I am trying to say.

Edited by markavfc40
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13 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

Nearly 300 people dead and 800 injured in a train crash in India today. Think I first saw the report in online media about 10 hours ago.

No mention on here, no mention on my social media, not headline news on radio earlier (headline was a protestor disrupting a horse race) no mention, including by me, when I was out with family/friends in pub earlier. 

I'm confident if this happened in the states, France, ROI, Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain etc, etc then we are all talking about it. It so happens to have taken place in India but it could have been many other countries where people have a different skin tone so it hardly gets a mention.

I am not pointing the finger at just others here as I am pointing the finger just as much at myself, but I can't help but think, if not racism, but something ingrained in terms of when tragedies happen in India/African nations etc then the value of life doesn't matter so much.

I don't know if I have explained the above very well but I hope others get the jist of where I am coming from/what I am trying to say.

It was and remains the top story on the bbc news app as well as related stories. 

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39 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

It was and remains the top story on the bbc news app as well as related stories. 

It literally came on my phone as an alert when there were only 100 injured and no dead in the reports

Edit: Just checked, that BBC newsflash was at 17:30 yesterday UK time

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16 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Nearly 300 people dead and 800 injured in a train crash in India today. Think I first saw the report in online media about 10 hours ago.

No mention on here, no mention on my social media, not headline news on radio earlier (headline was a protestor disrupting a horse race) no mention, including by me, when I was out with family/friends in pub earlier. 

I'm confident if this happened in the states, France, ROI, Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain etc, etc then we are all talking about it. It so happens to have taken place in India but it could have been many other countries where people have a different skin tone so it hardly gets a mention.

I am not pointing the finger at just others here as I am pointing the finger just as much at myself, but I can't help but think, if not racism, but something ingrained in terms of when tragedies happen in India/African nations etc then the value of life doesn't matter so much.

I don't know if I have explained the above very well but I hope others get the jist of where I am coming from/what I am trying to say.

I don't know about this particular article or news story but in theory it's a lot to do with how the news is categorised. This scenario (although it was South Africa rather than india) was used as an example of how to teach (On my Uni course in the 90's) how to rank news story's importance to the audience dependant on whether it was national/regional/local news outlets (radio tv and even print back then). It always amazed me how the answer they were looking for was that massive loss of life far away isn't that news-worthy and the tutors and I agreed to disagree. nearly 30 years later and the marketplace the news outlets operate in is now a global one - hence the BBC covering much more American stuff intimately - it's a huge market. Maybe that's changed over time? But anyway, I kind of understood the point you were making but I think it's just born out of systematic failings/shortcomings/fallacies rather than a particularly racist intention.

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Re: the Indian train crash. I don't think it's racism as such, but there is definitely a widespread perception that Indian railways are historically unsafe, overcrowded and suffer frequent catastrophic accidents. Therefore, it seems unsurprising and so somehow less newsworthy. Mass shootings in the USA are going the same way. 

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16 hours ago, bickster said:

It literally came on my phone as an alert when there were only 100 injured and no dead in the reports

Edit: Just checked, that BBC newsflash was at 17:30 yesterday UK time

Yes in fairness you and @Seat68are spot on in terms of BBC and some other news outlets it is even now headline news. When I posted yesterday I saw it on the guardian online first thing then didn't check any news outlets until I put the radio on about 4pm and the lead story was about a protester at a horse race.

I think probably my point was more about people talking about it. I don't think other than this particular line of conversation I have seen it mentioned on VT, I haven't seen it mentioned on my social media, I haven't spoken about it to family/friends I have been with over last couple of days. It is not just this particular tragic incident I could say this about many tragedies in that part of the world or in parts of Africa or other countries where we don't seem to have the same reaction to mass loss of life. 

This may well not be the the right thread for this in fairness.

 

Edited by markavfc40
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VT rarely mentioned the floods in Bangladesh. The reporting of human catastrophe in the region and the aid that will be required to rebuild.

But don’t worry, there will be another opportunity to discuss it next year, and the year after.

U.S. Mass shootings now need something novel about them to make the grade.

Are there no more tragedies to report in Iraq? Or Libya? Syria? No drive by shootings in Mexico?

We are more likely to get clicks for having the word Schofield in a headline, than Nigeria. I don’t think it’s a racist thing, I just genuinely think it would be seen as more ‘unusual’ if there was a large train accident in Japan, rather than India so if you’re only going to consume basic headline news, you’re not going to see a lot of stuff. But it will be out there and reported, if you have the interest to look for it.

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18 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't know if I have explained the above very well but I hope others get the jist of where I am coming from/what I am trying to say.

I do get what you mean. I think we will always resonate more with a disaster in Western Europe, or USA, or Australia, as we can almost imagine being there and in that scenario. Rail crashes in India, earthquakes in Turkey, floods in Bangladesh, executions in Iran, it all just feels like a different world to us, and in countries that a lot of us will never visit. It's like we filter it out. I don't think we do it deliberately, it's just an unconscious thing. 

There will be exceptions of course based on personal experience. Bali bombings, Bangkok nightclub fire, terrorist incidents in Egypt/Tunisia, as people have been there and experienced the places, and can show more empathy I guess?

 

 

 

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It is one of the advantages of a shrinking world and the access to travel that we can relate to other places and other cultures.

Whether that is compensation enough for the environmental damage caused by weekenders in Magaluf is another debate.

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