A group of traditional Morris Dancers were forced to abandon a city centre performance on Saturday after they were threatened and accused of being racist for painting their faces black.
Witnesses claim the group, from Alvechurch, were heckled and threatened by a minority of onlookers during performances on Corporation Street and New Street near the Bullring .
The dancers were one of more than a dozen morris groups who were in the city centre on Saturday to celebrate Plough Monday - the traditional start of the agricultural year.
Witnesses claim the Alvechurch group arrived at 11am and had performed without incident in pubs, to groups of local and visiting football fans and to the majority of shoppers.
A source close to the group said: “The atmosphere had been great with the vast majority of people, but I was absolutely amazed by the vitriolic abuse they started to receive.
The Alvechurch group featured in the Mail last week after more than 100 villagers watched their annual New Year’s Day performance.
The dance group, dressed in black and with black painted faces, gave a traditional rendition of a mummers play where they slayed a dragon to crowds outside the Crown Inn pub.
The historical dancers, who formed a group in 1989, perform centuries-old dances including the White Ladies Aston, the Dilwyn, The Evesham Stick Dance and the Bromsberrow Heath.
Morris dancers have performed with black face make-up since the origins of the dancing tradition in the 16th century.
Known as ‘Border Morris’ the tradition sees performers wearing a full-face of black paint in order to disguise themselves.
Of course, it's not racist for Asians to attack white people doing their traditional festivities, is it?
We get these guys performing at our fairs and fetes, should I go take a swing at one of them?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
It's nothing to do with minstrel shows Ray you fucking wind up merchant!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Gob wrote:It's nothing to do with minstrel shows Ray you fucking wind up merchant!
Sorry. I put up with the Philly Mummers every New Years Day so I'm prone to get confused very quickly. (If you see one blackface you see them all.) I'll try not to let it happen again.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
This reminds me of the ignoramuses who get offended by the word "niggardly":
"Niggardly" (noun: "niggard") is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly". It can be traced back at least to the Middle English word nigon, which has the same meaning, and is perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla, which means "to fuss about small matters".[1]
"Nigger", a racist insult in English, derives from the Spanish/Portuguese word negro, meaning "black", and the French word nègre. Both negro and noir (and therefore also nègre and nigger) ultimately come from nigrum, the accusative case singular masculine and neuter form of the Latin masculine adjective niger, meaning "black" or "dark".[2]
On January 15, 1999, David Howard, an aide to Anthony A. Williams, the mayor of Washington, D.C., used "niggardly" in reference to a budget.[3] This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (Howard is white), identified by Howard as Marshall Brown, who misinterpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25, Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.[4] However, after public pressure, an internal review into the matter was brought about, and the mayor offered Howard the chance to return to his position as Office of the Public Advocate on February 4th.
Julian Bond, then chairman of the NAACP, deplored the offense that had been taken at Howard's use of the word. "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding", he said. "David Howard should not have quit. Mayor Williams should bring him back—and order dictionaries issued to all staff who need them." [8]
Shortly after the Washington incident, another controversy erupted over the use of the word at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At a February 1999 meeting of the Faculty Senate, Amelia Rideau, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly. She later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C., controversy that came to light just the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."
In late January or early February 2002, a white fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, was formally reprimanded for teaching the word and told to attend sensitivity training. The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur.[11]
Bell's teacher's association, the North Carolina Association of Educators, told her not to speak about the situation, so her son, Tarl Bell, spoke to the newspaper. Tarl Bell said his mother received a letter from the school principal stating that the teacher used poor judgment and instructing her to send an apology to the parents of her students, which was done. The principal's letter also criticized the teacher for lacking sensitivity.[11] The daughter of the complaining parent was moved to another classroom.
Dennis Boaz, a history teacher, sued the administrators of the Mendocino County Office of Education for defamation.[12] Boaz, who was bargaining for Ukiah schoolteachers, wrote a letter saying that the "tenor of the negotiation tactics of the district office has become increasingly negative and niggardly." The response was a memo from one defendant of the lawsuit that implied that Boaz was racist, and a letter cosigned by the other defendant and nine other individuals in the Mendocino County school system stating that Boaz's comments were "racially charged and show a complete lack of respect and integrity toward Dr. Nash, Ukiah Unified District Superintendent," who is black.
Last edited by Lord Jim on Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"Healing from Toxic Whiteness provides white anti-racists with crucial missing tools for the most challenging aspect of our work - navigating our own emotional reactions when confronted with the realities of white supremacy.
These tools help us to work through our knee-jerk tendency to reject ourselves or other white people when we encounter how racism operates through us. With these tools, we can take on one of our most crucial responsibilities - to engage in productive dialogue with those who knowingly or unknowingly defend white supremacy.
This program has helped me to become a more effective change agent by becoming more accepting of what is, within me and around me - so that I can be present to it, honor it, and transform it with courageous compassion." - Lenore
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
One of the most unfortunate effects of these charges of "racism" over things that have absolutely nothing to do with race, (like the case in the OP or the ignorant accusations about the word niggardly) or moronic, self-evidently unfounded accusations like, "anyone who criticizes a black football player for refusing to stand for the national anthem is a racist" is the way that these sorts of completely bogus attacks trivialize the problem of genuine racism...
True racism definitely exists. It's a real thing. It has a serious and cruel impact on the lives of many people. These kinds of wrong-headed garbage accusations (I remember mediator once said that anybody who ever called any black person "lazy" was a "racist") only detract from and undermine what should be the legitimate focus.
When self-righteous fools who can't be bothered with facts or serious thought run around getting attention by mindlessly hurling false accusations of racism, it just turns a lot of people off to any discussion of the topic.
The problem is our racist culture. Particular groups are assumed by bigots to be inferior. The members of those groups recognize that emotion bias. A 'new' label becomes acceptable for that group because it is new and thus free of the emotional baggage. But the bigotry remains. It soon slops over to include the insult contained in the old label. Two syllables are heard--ni/gar--the emotional buttons are pushed and no data get thru after that which is not tainted by the emotional baggage now carried by a word that once was used to refer to a geographical region and river in Africa. In spite of the history of the NAACP, no white person with a smidgen of sensitivity would call a group 'colored people.'
I think the other thing that sometimes arises is the use of a word that is not used very often; while the word "boy" may be offensive to black people, the term is still widely used in a nonracist way and is usually not objected to; niggardly, while a perfectly good word, is rarely used and can prompt the negative reaction among those who hear it. Sure, no racism may have been intended, but the use of an unfamiliar term that sounds like a racist word can prompt the reaction (much as the word mastication can prompt a laugh or even mild outrage, except among dentists). In any event, if there is another way of saying the same thing (and there usually is), I would think it best to avoid use of such a word (not that someone should be fired or even reprimanded because of its use, just that it behooves all of us not to cause unnecessary offense).
Last edited by Big RR on Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I am now worried about "blackmail" and "blacklisted" and "blackguard", "Blackburn Rovers" (the Redskins of the UK) et al. OTOH, is "whitewash" all that non-insulting? Or "whitened sepulchres"? "White with fright"?
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
I suppose next time the Navy SEALS or Delta Force 6 or the British Special Boat Service or the Israeli Shayetet 13 have to pull off some sort of commando raid under the cover of darkness, they will no longer be allowed to use lampblack or boot polish to darken their faces either.
On second thought, maybe not the Israelis. They have already proven that they don't much give a damn about world public opinion; they will take whatever action they believe is in their best interests, letting the chips fall where they may, and if the rest of the world gets outraged they can go and pound sand. -"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?
[8]
The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur.[11]
