The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #114788   Message #2456422
Posted By: Phil Edwards
03-Oct-08 - 10:46 AM
Thread Name: not bad for an englishman
Subject: RE: not bad for an englishman
By this vey remark you are portraying the English as a nation of right wing racist thugs.

I think you're misreading Jim's argument. I think the point is that there just isn't that much anti-English bigotry around, precisely because historically (or even in the last 100 years) there's been a lot more oppression by people claiming to be English than oppression of people labelled as English.

I don't entirely agree with Jim about laughing this kind of thing off - I think it's wrong & shouldn't be condoned - but I do agree that anti-English bigotry just isn't a political problem in the world out there, in a way that (say) anti-black bigotry very definitely is. Think of it as a statement about statistical probability - if you take any random incident of national bigotry, anywhere in the North Atlantic Archipelago, how likely is it that the victim has been singled out for being English? Not very likely, I suspect.