To make a point about cross-cultural awareness (US/UK) as regards racism, here's something that might help explain why there can be such a level of concern expressed that it comes across as accusatory, especially toward you Brits--

The degree of racial violence here in the US was and sometimes still is extreme, and it has continued behind the scenes long after it seemed to no longer be considered acceptable.

A feeling-- frequently justified by developments (in the world, not here)-- has resulted that when the surface layer appears to be ambiguous, about "racial" matters, people of color are going to be hurt.

There has been such a lack, historically, of white folk owning up to what had been done and still is done, that people of color and their allies have gotten into a habit of assuming that wrong is either happening or just on the verge of happening. It's expressed as "sounds racist to me" and I am sure it feels very accusatory, but it's actually an expression of fear. "I'm scared, do I need to be?" It never quite feels safe enough to even name it as a fear. It masquerades as vigilance, but it's fear. And remember-- an often-justified fear.

When people react to that historically-justified fear by getting defensive that "we are not about that", it tends to reinforce the fear rather than reduce it.

Now, I understand that the UK is not responsible for US upsets. But we do see, here at Mudcat, quite a lot of transatlantic judgmentalism in both directions on a variety of topics, and a corresponding amount of mutual defensiveness and puzzlement.

What to do? Well, I for one would like to see a greater US awareness that British people here at Mudcat tend to be the ordinary working folk who've been held down in their own society-- not the folk who have made a fortune off the labor of others-- and that UK Mudcatters are under an onslaught in your own culture now, to be robbed of your culture by forces we here in the US cannot quite understand.

In that, UK Catters have something in common with people of color in the US-- who also were robbed of a culture. There's a wide patch of common ground there. Isn't there?

Commonalities can be harder to discover, but much more satisfying to note, than the things that tend to divide people.

I'd want to see UK folk tell us all about these traditions, and how and why they are valuable to you individually-- as a celebration, not as a defense against a perceived charge of racism. Telling us gets complicated, because reading the descriptions here, speaking just for myself-- I have NO IDEA what you're talking about! :~) I'm not even sure where to start, to form a question! :~)

~Susan