Giok, that is outrageous. Have you no idea of the overtones of the word "crusade"?

Megan may be making a point in a subtle way that we see little posting specifically on or in Scottish dialects.   Or she may not.

And Azizi answers (I wonder why no-one else did) my question about the difference between above the line and BS. Although the above the line may be focussed specifically on unappetizing topics for African-Americans (anglocentric music being irrelevant to them and blues being an unpleasant reminder), they might post below the line but find constantly being challenged, sometimes in unpleasant or at least thoughtless terms. Hence the Mudcat is indeed difficult for people of colour. Why do so few of the white posters here acknowledge botht hat and the logic of that?

I wonder, however, if I may suggest that there is a distinction between colour prejudice and antisemitism. It is this. Today we can see that African-Americans and the black communities in England both suffer from relatively low achievement, as contemporary defnitions of "success" go. I don't know if there are figures showing the position for the relative success of Jews in the USA or England, but my guess would be that the figures will not be the same.   Hence we see I think no shortage of both observant and non-observant Jews ready to identify themselves as such - although we see few discussions of specifically Jewish music forms (some on Klezmer, but not all that many).   So for this purpose semitic people will not feel the same reaction as "people of colour". Also, before some smartass with a spectrometer says it, it's not about colour as such for semitic people.

It will take more than a few courageous souls like Azizi before we have a forum that treats the African-Americans here and/or the black communities from Englad in the same way as the "Anglos" (which includes "Euros" for this purpose). We owe you Azizi a vote of thanks, not the carping you get. There will be time to develop a lightness of touch when the wall has fallen. More power to your elbow.