Something I've noticed...

[Lozzer]

Whenever a black teenager (with a socialect) dies because of some gang or crash related incident I feel sympathy for them, but when a white teenager (with the same socialect, or the same way of talking--you know what I mean 'boi'!) dies in the same way I feel less than sympathetic. It's really peculiar, while some will make racially disparaging comments when watching a TV news report on 'another' dead black kid I allocate all my hatred to when a white child dies. I often come across a Facebook group in memoriam to some 'innocent' chav and I get so frustrated with the literal element of the title/description/comments. The language (in my mind) seems to be a mockery of the non-standard English which might emanate from predominately black inner-city area. I dislike non-standard English anyway, but I can't help but feel that black teenagers from inner city areas have an excuse too? I'm not even sure if that's racism, but when it's used by a young black man I understand that his language is a reflection of the poverty and breakdown in his neighbourhood.

So I pity the deaths of black teenagers more than I do of white teenagers because of my pedantry with language. It's pretty damn silly, but white middle-class chav idiots don't tickle my pathos bone when they hit the dust. I consider it a blessing that another fucking idiot has been taken out by a speeding car.

[tattuchu]

I thought black people in England talked normal. No?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I thought black people in England talked normal. No?

The only ones who speak normal in England are the Merkin tourists.

[War Arrow]

I thought black people in England talked normal. No?

The only ones who speak normal in England are the Merkin tourists.

Innit though.

[tattuchu]

I thought black people in England talked normal. No?

The only ones who speak normal in England are the Merkin tourists.

Innit though.

What's a Merkin? I just looked it up and apparently it's a wig for the pubic area What is it about wearing a merkin that makes a person talk normal And how do you know who's wearing one

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I thought black people in England talked normal. No?

The only ones who speak normal in England are the Merkin tourists.

Innit though.

What's a Merkin? I just looked it up and apparently it's a wig for the pubic area What is it about wearing a merkin that makes a person talk normal And how do you know who's wearing one

Merkins come from Merka, that cultural center of the world on the west side of the Atlantic.

[Lozzer]

No, I was specifically talking about black teenagers who live in inner city areas. To generalise, they typically inhabit a socialect which includes (but not of exclusively) of the 'gangsta speak' we're used to hearing.

[War Arrow]

I think I've noticed the same thing, Lozzer - to some extent, though it's mainly because I was working with a load of little gangstas when I was a postman in London, and whilst there might be a few amoral fuckfaces amongst them - a lot of the kids I spent half the morning with were funny, very likable, pretty sharp witted, mostly generous and a lot different to the media image of granny-raping happy slappers, it took some time to work out the inscrutable fucking lingo of course and I doubt I'd be able to have a decent conversation about atheism with them (but then I have never had what I would call a decent conversation about atheism with anyone and nor do I intend to in future) but fuck it... basically nice kids who talk funny. I've had less dealings with what you'd call chavs (still think it's a bit of a loose term) but of those I've met who I'd definitely call chavs, for the most part they struck me as tossers.

More lentils anyone, mkay?

[floppit]

It's easy to forget how recently black people had a very different life in the UK. I remember freshers week at uni and a girl who is still a sort of friend now. She was mixed race, a black grandfather but would deny it - her mother (mixed race) had instilled in her to be careful, had relaxed and treated her hair from a young age, had despaired that her brothers looked so black. Her mother looks white apart from her blonde afro hair, her bane, her job losing mark and that history is real, her mother had lived through a different world where racism was acceptable. She had grown up in the windrush years where signs saying 'No blacks' were common place, she although born in the uk had always worked in auxiliary nursing, a black job, she grew up in a port city, Bristol, where racial tension was vivid. My friend had a child and was relieved his hair was 'normal'.

All the black people I know had parents that lived through these things, although now I admit that those I know are highly educated and not quite so stuck - none the less, this is no distant history, nothing so far back as to have been forgotten in living memory or to have been removed from how kids are raised. Hand on heart I don't know and I think I can't know what the reality is of that now - all I know is it wouldn't be plausible to conclude it has no effect.

I think people need identity, those with money enough have access to expensive forms of identity, new cars, detached housing, education - these cost a ruddy fortune in comparison to Nike trainers and a gold chain! Gangs and 'reputation' are viable if unattractive identities, and 'chav' is just a word used to dehumanise a different group of people - perhaps, but hell I hope not, it merely sums up something very, very old - that those who side with and act like the black stereotype (not the rational identity - the one given by others) are the lowest of the low, as old as the KKK and BNP, to mix or copy is worse than to be.

I'm very wary of what goes with words like chav, more wary because it's tempting but I think it's not really any different to 1000s of other dehumanised groups that have gone before. It scares me because I have joined in - when my childminder commented she saw what she thought was a lovely tracksuit in pink with little pink trainers, I teased her about being a chav and agreed my daughter would not be seen dead dressed like that!

I'm also a literacy snob, I don't use text speak when I text, I attempt (not perfectly) to punctuate well and try to correct misspellings. I remember when I was pregnant I went on a pregnancy forum - just about the only online life I've had outside of debate and academic interests. I hated the bad grammar but could never find in myself a rational reason to do so, at least nothing beyond it being harder to read and my feelings about it did extend well beyond that.

[Animavore]

Maybe you could be their White Messiah Loz?

The New York Times
January 8, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Messiah Complex
By DAVID BROOKS

Readers intending to watch the movie “Avatar” should know that major events in the plot are revealed.

Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.

This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization.

Avid moviegoers will remember “A Man Called Horse,” which began to establish the pattern, and “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.” More people will have seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai.”

Kids have been given their own pure versions of the fable, like “Pocahontas” and “FernGully.”

It’s a pretty serviceable formula. Once a director selects the White Messiah fable, he or she doesn’t have to waste time explaining the plot because everybody knows roughly what’s going to happen.

The formula also gives movies a little socially conscious allure. Audiences like it because it is so environmentally sensitive. Academy Award voters like it because it is so multiculturally aware. Critics like it because the formula inevitably involves the loincloth-clad good guys sticking it to the military-industrial complex.

Yet of all the directors who have used versions of the White Messiah formula over the years, no one has done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron in “Avatar.”

“Avatar” is a racial fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. He ends up working with a giant corporation and flies through space to help plunder the environment of a pristine planet and displace its peace-loving natives.

The peace-loving natives — compiled from a mélange of Native American, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other cultural fragments — are like the peace-loving natives you’ve seen in a hundred other movies. They’re tall, muscular and admirably slender. They walk around nearly naked. They are phenomenal athletes and pretty good singers and dancers.

The white guy notices that the peace-loving natives are much cooler than the greedy corporate tools and the bloodthirsty U.S. military types he came over with. He goes to live with the natives, and, in short order, he’s the most awesome member of their tribe. He has sex with their hottest babe. He learns to jump through the jungle and ride horses. It turns out that he’s even got more guts and athletic prowess than they do. He flies the big red bird that no one in generations has been able to master.

Along the way, he has his consciousness raised. The peace-loving natives are at one with nature, and even have a fiber-optic cable sticking out of their bodies that they can plug into horses and trees, which is like Horse Whispering without the wireless technology. Because they are not corrupted by things like literacy, cellphones and blockbuster movies, they have deep and tranquil souls.

The natives help the white guy discover that he, too, has a deep and tranquil soul.

The natives have hot bodies and perfect ecological sensibilities, but they are natural creatures, not history-making ones. When the military-industrial complex comes in to strip mine their homes, they need a White Messiah to lead and inspire the defense.

Our hero leaps in, with the help of a pack of dinosaurs summoned by Mother Earth. As he and his fellow freedom fighters kill wave after wave of Marines or former Marines or whatever they are, he achieves the ultimate prize: He is accepted by the natives and can spend the rest of his life in their excellent culture.

Cameron’s handling of the White Messiah fable is not the reason “Avatar” is such a huge global hit. As John Podhoretz wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance.” The plotline gives global audiences a chance to see American troops get killed. It offers useful hooks on which McDonald’s and other corporations can hang their tie-in campaigns.

Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron applies it, is kind of offensive?

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind — even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains.

[Lozzer]

I don't think bad about dismisses people who appear to be 'chavs' as 'chavs'. It's not just about clothing but their attitude towards other members of society. Language is another way of forming a personal and collective identity, and I'd say they've managed to make themselves look like fools. They aren't hippies for god's sake, their only underlining motive for being who they are is to intimidate. But they aren't a 'people' like a black minority, they're a social group who's membership is open to anyone who wishes to be a pathetic and unproductive human being. You can't say 'oh please don't generalise' when discussing chavs. When walking the a street at night with a group of boys in their tracksuits and hoodies entail, you have to make that mass assumption that chavs mean you harm. You have to generalise because chances are they do mean you harm either psychologically or physically.

If you were placed in that uncomfortable situation, and if you were to hear them shout abuse at you, couldn't you gather from their dialect and carefully selected words that they're stupid?

[Animavore]

What about people who wear pyjamas when out shopping?

[floppit]

I don't think bad about dismisses people who appear to be 'chavs' as 'chavs'. It's not just about clothing but their attitude towards other members of society. Language is another way of forming a personal and collective identity, and I'd say they've managed to make themselves look like fools. They aren't hippies for god's sake, their only underlining motive for being who they are is to intimidate. But they aren't a 'people' like a black minority, they're a social group who's membership is open to anyone who wishes to be a pathetic and unproductive human being. You can't say 'oh please don't generalise' when discussing chavs. When walking the a street at night with a group of boys in their tracksuits and hoodies entail, you have to make that mass assumption that chavs mean you harm. You have to generalise because chances are they do mean you harm either psychologically or physically.

If you were placed in that uncomfortable situation, and if you were to hear them shout abuse at you, couldn't you gather from their dialect and carefully selected words that they're stupid?

I don't want to give the impression I'm beyond a chav joke, I'm not - I don't see it the same as race. It's just that while I'm giggling at my own funniness (hard to believe I know) I do think about it, whether it's become too easy. Sometimes I've heard jokes that cross the line for me and I do think it can be used to dehumanise. I'm not so sure as you that each and every one is so easy to judge, I think often what someone wears is the result of quite mundane things, a friend's older brother's fashion, a video, just stuff. Yes, I do think they look foolish but my memory is bigger than my desire to feel too superior - FFS I wore fuchsia pink tights, a black skirt, fuchsia shirt and a baggy black belt as a teen in the 80's! Teens wear and do stuff that makes them look like bloody idiots sometimes and that's something that makes me glad I can remember being just as daft.

I don't make the mass assumption chavs mean me harm, I'm probably more wary but it's not something I encourage in myself nor is it something I class as entirely rational. I try not to do that with any group, I mean presume motive, overall I've found it's safer not to, it just gives off a better message, one that makes actual harm less likely. It seems to pay me well as since I left school I have never been even almost attacked and that's not been because I avoid certain groups, quite the opposite.

I'm not neutral or liberal when it comes to violent cultures, violence does breed violence and it's hell's own job to do anything to stop it but all kinds of people get caught up along the way for so many reasons it doesn't make sense to imagine there is no variety, no good people dressed in tracksuits or even that the most rum bugger can't have a gentle side. I don't like hatred whether it comes from a chav or is aimed at one it remains recognisably the same thing - I'm even more careful where I feel some inclination to join in.