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How the self-serving 'racism' industry works.
darkisland
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The link to a Daiily Telegraph story (below) illustrates perfectly just how the 'racism/offence' industry has capitalised on one particular murder. It seems that some lives are more worthy than others.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100229154/the-murder-of-stephen-lawrence-and-the-strange-case-of-the-missing-wikipedia-entries/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100229154/the-murder-of-stephen-lawrence-and-the-strange-case-of-the-missing-wikipedia-entries/
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In modern Britain it seems there are racist killings, and racist killings. And some are deemed very important. And some are “non-notable”.
BIB - perhaps it would help to understand where you're coming from if you explain what you mean by this 'industry'. At the moment it comes over as vague as the 'PC brigade' and other such bogeypersons/organisations.
and we need the stupidity of using the term "institutionalised racism" in this instance to be exposed.
It has been said that it was deliberately done and as it was almost too stupid to be credible, I think they may be right.
The term had been used for the worst type of racism eg South Africa, where it was intentionally written into law (and other institutions). It was used in this case for the mildest form, unknowing unintentional disproportionate disadvantage.
I only ask because I notice that comments at the foot of the page are closed. This normally only happens when an article is pulled up from the files.
Either way it is an interesting one, to which I would add Kriss Donald.
What happened to Stephen Lawrence was despicable, The scum that did it should be put away for life.
But, even though I was appalled by it, I didn't follow the case too thoroughly yet I can name his parents, the friend who was with him on the day and 4 of the suspects off the top of my head and without trying. All through media coverage, of which there has been , quite rightly, a lot.
In all of the cases listed in that report from the Telegraph, I knew nothing about any of them and only heard about Kriss Donald and the torturing to death that the 15 yr old school boy went through when somebody mentioned it in a post on DS
I couldn't have named his parents or killers which were a gang of young Asian Men.
My point was, the Steven lawrence case is a lot more high profile because it involved those institutions(forgive my stupidity, I can't think of another term). Murders, horrible murders, some racially motivated, some not, happen on a daily basis. Of course Wikipedia isn't going to list them all.
Welll....you say that and the facts are quite different.
Although S.Africa has grown up a lot and is far better place than what it was in the 80's.
Sorry, you've lost me there
And was there ever a term more misunderstood by most people?
The case got a lot of profile due to incompetence, the campaign and the report that a) used evidence of incompetence as evidence of racism and b) used a term for that racism that in many people's mind's had a significant element of intention.
There were comments in the McPhersen reports about the way the family was treated being the most regrettable and symptomatic of institutional racism. This totally ignored the way many (probably most) families were treated regardless of race. It was a disgraceful dismissal of the experiences of many murder victim families at that time and before it.
Of course the good thing is that they have had to improve on this across the board as a consequence. The danger now is that they sometimes go overboard and meander into councelling territory.
Fair point. My view is that since the (ill conceived and socially disatarous) Macpherson report, we have two classes of crime victim in the uk.
It seems that an entire generation has been inculcated in the ways of self-loathing, proxy offence taking, and that any serious debate on the issues is far too dangerous territory for most to dare tread.
Christ almighty, that's me told. I promise never to use the term again. I was trying to make a point to the OPs question why the Stephen Lawrence case has remained high profile, while other cases havnt. I shall choose my words more carefully next time.
So what if the term is widely used? Here or other countries? Is there a law against that?
I don't think i SUGGESTED ANYTHING OF THE SORT
For another thing, there are racist murders of white people that are well-covered on wikipedia - Kriss Donald and Ross Parker, off the top of my head. So clearly it's not a straightforward "racist murders of black people are newsworthy, racist murders of white people aren't" thing.
is it? the facts speak otherwise
murder rape and burglary have tripled since the 70s
its 30 times the uk rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
There are a lot of unadvisable things that are not against the law.
Very true. Most people have seen that term, without looking at what it means, and just made the assumption that the Met are all racists, which is why they messed up the investigation.
A rather over the top response to a reasonable point I thought.
I wasn't actually having a pop at you. merely pointing out that the term is known by all, yet understood by few.
Secondly the blog entry seems to be in general a comment about the way Wikipedia is considered a de facto source of information and the way its contributors debate and decide which stories should have pages on it.
I'd heard of all the stories listed in the blog except the Charlene Downes case which is exceedingly sad. But there is an entry in Wikipedia on her.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Charlene_Downes
It's sad that these other deaths were not championed to continue to be in the public limelight. I think they should be.