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Lots of talk about race and racism in the news these days, and I'm coming to realise that actually, I don't give that much of a fuck about it. Sorry and all that.

 

Don't get me wrong, I find it unsavoury, but I'd be lying if I said I get all outraged about it. For me, casual racism is in the same category as any pretty much any other general rudeness or ignorance I witness.

 

I know I should probably feel stronger about it, but I don't. Actually, I think I may only feel that I should feel stronger about it, because people say I should be outraged about it. I'm not though. Maybe because I'm white and lack empathy, or maybe I'm a bit of a cunt, or maybe even a racist cunt. Don't know, don't care. It just doesn't really make me angry at all. In fact, the whole subject of racism in modern britain I'm starting to find a little bit boring.

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I find it stomach churning. Recently my driving instructor said "watch out which way she's going considering which colour she is - black." Stupid cunt.

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Lots of talk about race and racism in the news these days, and I'm coming to realise that actually, I don't give that much of a fuck about it. Sorry and all that.

 

Don't get me wrong, I find it unsavoury, but I'd be lying if I said I get all outraged about it. For me, casual racism is in the same category as any pretty much any other general rudeness or ignorance I witness.

 

I know I should probably feel stronger about it, but I don't. Actually, I think I may only feel that I should feel stronger about it, because people say I should be outraged about it. I'm not though. Maybe because I'm white and lack empathy, or maybe I'm a bit of a cunt, or maybe even a racist cunt. Don't know, don't care. It just doesn't really make me angry at all. In fact, the whole subject of racism in modern britain I'm starting to find a little bit boring.

 

I was surprised that Alan Hansen using the word "coloured" was such big news, whats the big deal ?

Why do afro americans prefer to be called black , when it is fairly obvious they aren't black at all - they're brown ?

I'm not in the least bit racist , but some things do make me laugh.

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Papa John’s Apologizes for Calling Asian Customer “Lady Chinky Eyes” | GossipOnThis.com

 

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Papa John’s has been on the receiving end of some major backlash after an Asian woman who recently paid a visit to the pizza restaurant tweeted a photo of a receipt that had “lady chinky eyes” printed on it where her name was supposed to go.

 

 

Minhee Cho, a Korean-American from New York City, posted the photo of the receipt with the racial slur on it to her Twitter page, where it was quickly retweeted by hundreds of people.

 

Within hours, the photo had become viral with nearly 30,000 views.

 

“Hey @PapaJohns just FYI my name isn’t ‘lady chinky eyes,’” Minhee Cho wrote, along with a picture of the receipt, which was issued from a Papa John’s store on Broadway.

 

Cho’s tweet resulted in the pizza chain firing the employee who was responsible for the offensive receipt.

 

Reps for Papa John’s also used the pizzeria’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to issue apologies.

 

A message posted to their Facebook page read:

 

“We were extremely concerned to learn of the receipt issue in New York. This act goes against our company values, and we’ve confirmed with the franchisee that this matter was addressed immediately and that the employee is being terminated. We are truly sorry for this customer’s experience.”

 

Addressing the matter via their Twitter feed, Papa John’s told their followers that they have “issued an apology, are reaching out to customer & franchise employee is being terminated.”

 

Despite their numerous attempts at an apology, Reuters notes that Papa John’s is likely to experience more backlash from customers, given the nonchalant response of a few employees at the offending store.

 

An assistant manager at the store told New York City based website Gothamist, “We’re all of different races here in this store. So she didn’t mean any harm, didn’t mean to stereotype against her, to discriminate against her, but that’s how she took it.”

 

Franchise owner Ronald Johnson, who runs five Papa John’s locations, including the one where the incident took place, was also sympathetic to the employee who was fired.

 

“I bet I’ll talk to her and she won’t know why this is offensive,” Johnson told Gothamist. “She needs to know, and she will know. If I fire her, two years from now, she won’t even remember why she got fired. If I sit her down and talk to her, I can help her.”

 

Meanwhile, a Papa John’s manager who simply identified himself as “Jerome” (for obvious reasons) blames Cho for the negative publicity the company has received from the incident.

 

“It’s affecting how we work,” Jerome complained to the New York Post. “This is a place of business. I truly don’t think it’s fair what she did; it’s just crazy … I think the lady put it out there just to get some attention — some people like that type of attention. I truly don’t think it’s fair. It’s been taking up all our time. It’s been very disruptive.”

 

What do you think? Did Cho just want some attention … or was she truly offended by being called “Lady Chinky Eyes?”

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the employee is being terminated. We are truly sorry for this customer’s experience.”

 

Addressing the matter via their Twitter feed, Papa John’s told their followers that they have “issued an apology, are reaching out to customer & franchise employee is being terminated.”

 

I should hope they stick to their promise to terminate this person.

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Pappa John's franchise owner Ronald Johnson.

 

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Ronald Johnson, the operating manager who runs the Papa John's in question, told Gothamist, "I bet I'll talk to her and she won't know why this is offensive. She needs to know, and she will know. If I fire her, two years from now, she won't even remember why she got fired. If I sit her down and talk to her, I can help her. You still need a certain decorum and level of professionalism, and that may help her more in the long run." As to why the insulting name appeared on the receipt in the first place, a manager at the store told the Post, "It's a busy place, and it was a way to identify her and her order. [7] Some employees still think the whole incident was blown way out of proportion: "I think the lady put it out there just to get some attentionsome people like that type of attention," a manager named Jerome told the Post. "I truly don't think it's fair. It's been taking up all our time. It's been very disruptive." An assistant manager at the store told us that the teen meant no harm with the slur she used to identify Cho: "We're all of different races here in this store. She didn't mean any harm, didn't mean to stereotype against her, to discriminate against her, but that's how she took it." Jerome agreed with her, saying employees use slang to identify customers: "It's a busy place, and it was a way to identify her and her order. [4] The cashier did in fact refer to Minhee Cho as "Lady Chinky Eyes." What do the managers of this particular franchise think of the incident? Well, the manager handling this incident, Mr. Johnson, was kind enough to give a couple of words exclusively to Gather News. He says that the young woman cashier responsible for this racial incident is being required to go through sensitivity training. Certainly, there will be people calling for the firing of this young woman, but the fact of the matter is this is a poor employment climate right now. Mr. Johnson probably doesn't want to fire one of his employees over this misstep when the problem can be solved with some sensitivity training. He's obviously thinking and looking at the "big picture" with this incident. What could he solve by firing the offensive cashier? She would just end up hired by another fast food establishment where she may make the same mistakes, again and again. Without the sensitivity training and proper discipline, this bad employee won't have the chance to become a good employee. Mr. Johnson was very apologetic on the phone about the incident involving Minhee Cho, and he shared the sentiment that people just don't behave like that in these modern times -- or at least they're not supposed to. Here's to hoping that Minhee Cho can brush this incident from her shoulders and get on with her life. [2]

 

I dont know if I should fire her." Johnson said it's normal practice for cashiers to identify customers with phrases like "lady with blue shirt" or "man with Yankees cap." He reasoned that the cashier, a high schooler who works for minimum wage, could benefit more if she got sensitivity training, and if he took the time to help her understand what was offensive about what she wrote: "I bet I'll talk to her and she wont know why this is offensive. She needs to know, and she will know. If I fire her, two years from now, she won't even remember why she got fired. If I sit her down and talk to her, I can help her. You still need a certain decorum and level of professionalism, and that may help her more in the long run." [18]

 

 

Papa John's apologizes for receipt's racial slur. - NewsFeed Researcher - papa, john, johns, employee, receipts, employees, receipt, cho, people, customer, customers, like

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A black guy in work pulled the race card today. Funny stuff. Was saying to his boss 'man, you cant talk to me like that, yo think this is the 18-hundreds? you all look at me like I'm an alien! '

 

It got 'elevated' to the directors office.

 

True story.

 

I'm down with Noos on this though. I'm not offended by racism, I find it tedious and when people (black, yellow or other says, for that matter - obviously not yellow, really.. they work hard unlike the other colours) say things like 'such and such keeps me down, it ain't fair I don't have a job, no respect, money' etc I just think.. 'nope, you keep yourself down with that attitude'.

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What gets me is the double standards, to call someone black is not an insult, it is descriptive as it would be to call someone white.

There are so many people getting offended on others behalf it makes me sick.

Hansen's 'coloured' comment wasn't offensive, yet everyone in the media acted like he had just shat on someone's chest live on the beeb, i just think a lot of folk do not know what to call people of different ethnicities due to pretty much every term (n****r excluded) being defined as OK to use at one point in time or other, only for the standard to change a few years later.

What really pisses me off is the level of abuse gingers get (I'm not ginger BTW), if other ethnicities got the same level of shit, there would be hell up, yet the day-walkers just laugh it off / put up with it.

 

Don't get me started on positive discrimination and ethnicity quotas, if someone is good enough to a job, who gives a fuck what colour there skin is, madness i tell thee.

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I find it hilarious listening to someone try to describe someone who's black without referring to their colour as they consider it a faux pas to even mention it.

 

"You know John, he's the guy with the glasses, the bloke who had blue trousers on yesterday, the bloke who wears a grey coat"

 

What, you mean the black guy?

 

"Ssshhhh! yeah him"

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Guest The Big Green Bastard

I remember a black guy i worked closely with used to tell me on a daily basis how much he hated pakistani's. The reason for this was because they cheat at cricket.

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Why should anyone be offended by someone being called black?

 

I can only think of one reason and its that these people see black as something less worthy.

 

If they are like me who see everyone as equal they would not give it a second thought whatever description they used.

 

Its not discremination to call a black person black, its stating a fact.

 

If people could start doing something about the everyday racism out there, the discrimination etc then it would be a discussion worth having, this hysteria about someone saying the wrod black well to me its pretty pathetic and it gets the fight against racism nowhere, in my view it undermines it and takes away focus of the real problem.

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Why should anyone be offended by someone being called black?

 

I can only think of one reason and its that these people see black as something less worthy.

 

If they are like me who see everyone as equal they would not give it a second thought whatever description they used.

 

Its not discremination to call a black person black, its stating a fact.

 

If people could start doing something about the everyday racism out there, the discrimination etc then it would be a discussion worth having, this hysteria about someone saying the wrod black well to me its pretty pathetic and it gets the fight against racism nowhere, in my view it undermines it and takes away focus of the real problem.

 

My driving instructor doesn't talk as negatively about white drivers. When he does he doesn't refer to them by the colour of their skin - he reserves it for black and other ethnic minorities. It's because he's a racist.

 

Not hard to follow. I could draw a join-the-dots diagram if you like?

 

I find it offensive.

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What gets me is the double standards, to call someone black is not an insult, it is descriptive as it would be to call someone white.

There are so many people getting offended on others behalf it makes me sick.

Hansen's 'coloured' comment wasn't offensive, yet everyone in the media acted like he had just shat on someone's chest live on the beeb, i just think a lot of folk do not know what to call people of different ethnicities due to pretty much every term (n****r excluded) being defined as OK to use at one point in time or other, only for the standard to change a few years later.

What really pisses me off is the level of abuse gingers get (I'm not ginger BTW), if other ethnicities got the same level of shit, there would be hell up, yet the day-walkers just laugh it off / put up with it.

 

Don't get me started on positive discrimination and ethnicity quotas, if someone is good enough to a job, who gives a fuck what colour there skin is, madness i tell thee.

 

Dear idiot

 

Using the word 'ginger' in any kind of discussion about racism makes you look like an idiot

 

Ginger people do not have a history of slavery and subjugation that spans hundreds of years, and as such - quite correctly - cannot be used as a sensible comparative norm when discussing racist terms like 'black bastard' or 'nigger' or whatever

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Dear idiot

 

Using the word 'ginger' in any kind of discussion about racism makes you look like an idiot

 

Ginger people do not have a history of slavery and subjugation that spans hundreds of years, and as such - quite correctly - cannot be used as a sensible comparative norm when discussing racist terms like 'black bastard' or 'nigger' or whatever

 

 

Dear Tool,

You are completely missing my point, i was referring to using the words 'black or coloured' in general use to describe someone and not as part of an insult.

I.e. if someone asks say, who 'John' is, you may respond: the black guy over there' (assuming he is in a room full of white people or other ethnicities). The problem is that this is not deemed politically correct. You would have no problem saying the fat/ginger/blond....etc. Whatever differentiates from the rest. N****r of course has the connotations of slavery & subjugation as that is where the term originated from and as such is rightly unacceptable in modern society.

Does any terminology regarding someones appearance have to relate to previous generations oppression of that race/creed/nationality for it to be considered racist ?

 

If so then surely this applies to the Celts and therefore gingers, using you own logic ? And pretty much every other colour/creed on the planet at some point in time.

 

If someone is called a black/white/fat/ginger/yellow/pink bastard, surely the offensive part is the word bastard, as the descriptive word defines who you are aiming the insult 'bastard' at.

 

Wind your neck in !;)

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Official anti-racism: the new nationalism? | Mick Hume | spiked

 

Once the British state and establishment used the politics of race to boost its authority. Today, in pursuit of the same self-serving ends, they are instead engaged in a phoney moral crusade behind official anti-racism. Is that anything to celebrate?

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The conviction of two men for the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 has sparked a national celebration of this apparent victory over the evils of racism. Every section of the media and political elite has jostled to line up behind Lawrence’s parents and sign up to the official anti-racist consensus. As one leading press figure put it, the guilty verdict is ‘a triumph’ not only for the Lawrences but for British justice, policing, politics and the media.

For those of us who campaigned against racism in the bad old days of the 1980s, this looks like so remarkable a turnaround in attitudes that one might almost wonder if we are living not just in another century but on a different planet. Thirty years ago when I joined a group called Workers Against Racism, there was no sympathetic media coverage or mainstream political support for the Asian families being burnt out of housing estates or the black youth being routinely brutalised by the police. The national debate was all about the scourge of ‘immigrant scroungers’ and black ‘muggers’. Those who fought against racists were branded extremists, the flipside of the fascists.

Let’s be clear. This was not the ‘unwitting’ prejudice described by the Macpherson inquiry into Lawrence’s murder as the basis of ‘institutional racism’ in the UK. It was deliberate, politicised and vitriolic racism, popularised from the top down and enforced by the state as a weapon to divide the working class and consolidate white support for the authorities.

Living in Moss Side, Manchester during the 1981 riots, I remember police vans cruising the streets while riot cops beat their batons on the side and chanted ‘Niggers, niggers, niggers – out, out, out!’. A veteran comrade of mine recalls being arrested in east London around the same time while carrying some Workers Against Racism pamphlets, and being repeatedly asked by the police ‘Do you like monkeys?’ and ‘Why do you live in a monkey cage?’ (that is, his largely black council estate in Hackney). After the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham exploded in a riot sparked by police brutality in 1985, in which an officer was killed, the Metropolitan Police arrested hundreds of youths and told the white kids to cooperate because ‘we only want the blacks’. And so it went on. The incompetent police investigation into the Lawrence murder should have come as little surprise.

And the problem went far beyond police ranks. Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher is remembered for her declaration about British culture being ‘swamped’ by immigrants. But there was little more sympathy for the victims of racism among leaders of the Labour Party and trade unions. In 1982, we marched from London to Brighton to call on the TUC to take a stand against racial discrimination and violence. Our message was not well received.

Now look at the contrast with the carnival of official anti-racism around the Lawrence murder verdicts this week. What has brought these remarkable changes about? New Labour home secretary Jack Straw summed up the widespread view that, ‘if Britain has changed for the better in the intervening 19 years… that’s above all down to two extraordinary people, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s parents’. Are we really to believe that the Lawrences have magic powers to transform a nation?

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What has happened over the past two decades is that Britain has undergone a major cultural shift as the old politics of nationalism and race have lost their grip on public consciousness. This would have happened whether or not Stephen Lawrence had been murdered by racists. Indeed, the fact that his killing remains the benchmark for racist violence 19 years on shows how rare such incidents have become.

But here is the thing. The truth is that the less overtly racist British society has become in recent times, the more the authorities have started preaching about the evils of racism and launching new crusades against it. What has altered most is the perception of racism. Where once it was society’s guilty secret, now there is a concerted effort to trawl for and publicise any hint of racially incorrect language or behaviour from the school playground to the football pitch. The less racism is in evidence, the more everything appears to have been racialised. Why?

Official anti-racism has become the beleaguered elites’ political weapon of choice. The old British Establishment used the traditional politics of nationalism, race and empire to assert its authority. Those days are long gone. Instead, today’s political and cultural elites have seized upon the new orthodoxy of official anti-racism to try to give them a sense of moral purpose. Official anti-racism has also become a tool both to demonise and to discipline the white working-class people whom the elites fear and loathe.

The Lawrence case has indeed played a big part in this process, though not in the way widely assumed this week. The key was not so much the murder itself, but the publication of the 1999 Macpherson report into the case, which formally rewrote the state’s doctrine on the politics of race.

Macpherson introduced two landmark changes. First, it introduced a new official definition of a race crime. A racial incident is now ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’. Such a sweeping subjective definition of a race crime has inevitably confused debate and fostered the view that racism is everywhere and that ever more laws and initiatives are required to police it.

Second, Macpherson defined the problem of ‘institutional racism’ at the heart of British society, leading to the reorganisation of the police and other public institutions around this assumption. But whereas the Sixties radicals who coined the phrase were talking about the deliberate wielding of power by a racist state apparatus, Macpherson explicitly rejected any such link between institutional racism and the exercise of power. The report stated that the Metropolitan Police was not racist; the problem was more the ‘unwitting words and actions’ of individual officers acting together.

Once racism is reduced to a problem of the individual rather than the state or society, the solution becomes re-education to alter individual attitudes. This is an open invitation to the state to intervene to police people’s words, actions and even thoughts – particularly those of the white working class now seen as the source of the problem. Macpherson even proposed that the use of racist language in your own home should be made an explicit criminal offence. The report led to an explosion of race-based codes of conduct, awareness training and surveillance measures throughout British institutions.

New laws have made it possible to charge people with ‘racially aggravated’ offences, rather than just old-fashioned assault or criminal damage, and sentence them more stiffly on conviction. The law has thus extended into punishing an individual, not just for what he had done, but for what he was assumed to be thinking when he committed an offence - his supposed ‘racial motivation’. This was reflected in the sentencing of those two men for the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Redefined on this individualised basis, racism has been taken up as the cause of the moral crusade. Declaring that you are not a racist has become the bottom line that helps mark you out as one of the ‘right-thinking people’, in the words of one police chief. In an age when many of the old moral certainties have been badly eroded, distancing yourself from racist remarks and following the new etiquette is seen as one of the few ways to draw a clear line between Good and Evil.

That is why every British leader and institution is now so keen to swear their abhorrence of racism, as a pass to the moral high ground that might once have been provided by declaring their belief in God. As the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission boasted after the Lawrence verdicts, racial prejudice is now seen ‘as a secular sin that is not to be tolerated’. And the worst sinners are now deemed to be the white working classes, who must have the new catechism/etiquette of official anti-racism drummed into them at every opportunity. That is why, for example, any hint of racism around football, patronisingly seen as a modern opiate of the masses, is made such a public example of today.

It was against this background that the killing of Stephen Lawrence was belatedly singled out by the authorities as so important. It became more than a murder inquiry; not just a criminal case, but a political cause, as the Met’s deputy commissioner Cressida Dick effectively admitted this week: ‘All murder cases are absolutely dreadful, but this case for reasons you will all understand is extremely important, not just for the Metropolitan Police, but for society at large.’ It had become a way for the state to regain some moral authority around official anti-racism.

I have little sympathy for the two men jailed for the killing of Stephen Lawrence. But for some of us who campaigned against racism on the basis of a belief in freedom, equality and democracy, the wider changes the case has become a vehicle for have not been for the better.

Indeed, some of the most worrying political and legal trends evident in recent years have been promoted in the name of official anti-racism post-Lawrence. These include the rewriting of the law along subjective, arbitrary lines through the redefinition of a race crime; the spread of conformist codes of conduct that police language and thought and suppress open debate; the institutionalisation of mistrust and mutual surveillance; and the notion that people are to be judged on their private attitudes at least as much as their public actions.

In the name of ‘zero tolerance’, the codes of official anti-racism have turned intolerance of offensive views into a ‘value’, even a virtue. Indeed, such is the intolerance of those suspected of harbouring sinful thoughts today that anything can apparently be justified to get them – up to and including, as Brendan O’Neill argues on spiked today, the abolition of such an historic principle of the justice system as the law against double jeopardy. This is the modern elite’s version of the old corrupt copper’s mantra – if they’re wrong’uns, anything goes to get them.

On spiked, and even before that in LM magazine, we have argued from the start that there is no benefit for those who believe in freedom in the phoney moral crusade of official anti-racism launched around the Lawrence case. As I wrote here 10 years ago, ‘It is the new thought police, rather than the old racist ones, who are running riot through Britain today’. The exploitation of the Lawrence verdict this week confirms that official anti-racism is now every bit as authoritarian and intolerant as the state racism of old.

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