Banter or Racism

Current Affairs
101

Aluko, who wasn’t even at the meeting and is a lawyer hasn’t produced any evidence and because it’s not the Lionel hutz school of law hearsay isn’t allowed. You do realise if people make allegations they have to prove them

102

The system is stacked against her mate. You’d swear British justice was watertight, nobody was ever fitted up and there has never been a miscarriage of justice in Britain the way you are carrying on here.

103

This Ms Aluko character is obviously very uncomfortable being a black person.

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104

The audit trail would suggest otherwise

105

You might think that but has aluko provided anything but hearsay and inference?

106

Wasn’t part of her complaint about a film of them training when coaches were mic’d up and made a few throwaway disparaging comments like “she’s lazy”? Christ, if every coach was deemed guilty of bullying for every critical comment mumbled about a player during training or matches there’d be no coaches left!

107

It’s 2017 mate, coaches can’t be going around identifying weaknesses and faults and the like. It’s just not on.

Context is everything, but banter is losing ground to racism big time in this PC world. Cork GAA fans going around with Confederate flags is a good example - all told, they probably don’t subscribe to the tenets of slavery and the oppression of Africans (although you never know with Cork lads) - possibly they just like big red flags associated with rebels, but it’s just too much of a good opportunity these days for people to get offended to pass up. Speaking of red flags, imagine if the episode of Fr Ted with the Chinese lads and the Nazi memorabilia came out now? You’d have feminist, post-vegetarian college students from Kildare blogging about how traumatising they found the whole thing.

108

Fr Ted was comedy, the Cork flag is stupidity.

109

Right-wing snowflakes deliberately missing context in order to be offended is so 2017.

You’ve just produced a textbook example.

110

Well, to go along with the topic of the thread then, are Confederate flags at Cork games banter or racism?

111

Number 3

Stupid.

112

I’d imagine this Sampson cunt is like Buddy Stephens behind the scenes.

113

They’ve been waving that particular flag for years, possibly even going back to when O’hAilpin was still playing. Not much made about it back then.

Probably only young lads waving a big flag with red in it not familiar with the intricacies of the US civil war.

There’s a lad who sells flags in Buttevant (on the Cork side) every Friday evening. Loads of them from different counties. Always has the confederate flag when I pass. Highly doubt he realises the racist connotations with it and neither do any purchasers. They just want to sell and buy a red flag.

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114

“Touch somebody!” :smile:

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115

Up to some years back it could have been put down to ignorance or at best only a very tenuous and incomplete understanding of what the flag means.

The ignorance excuse is no longer believable, if ignorance persists now it’s wilful ignorance.

People did a lot of things years ago that were considered acceptable then.

The argument that “it was considered acceptable years ago, so why not now” is a really dumb one.

On that basis you could bogusly attempt to legitimise any sort of abhorrent practice that was considered acceptable at one time but which quite correctly no longer is.

It’s also an argument for the world to stand still.

A Nazi flag is a red flag.

116

The owner of the confederate flag at Sunday’s match had put the iconic picture of Che Guevara on it.

Obviously figured that having a marxist revolutionary on it would take the harm out of it. :grinning:

117

The Nazi flag has an awful lot more relevance and recognisability in Ireland mate, the confederate flag is probably known by a tiny percentage of Irish people, the swastika symbol probably close to 100%, it’s not an excuse but it is a reality. I’d say 80% of history graduates wouldn’t tell you the first thing about the civil war unless it was part of their final year course

118

I’m mostly right and it’s always definitive.

119

That may have been the case, but the ignorance factor around it now is not an excuse. It’s been widely discussed and is a big factor in USA at the moment. The 80s and 90s had the confederate flag with no real knowledge of the background to it. That knowledge is increasing massively in the past 12 months alone.

120

There has historically been much more awareness of the toxic meaning of the Nazi flag than the toxic meaning of the confederate flag, which is why you can give Cork supporters who flew the flag in the 80s and 90s the benefit of the doubt in a way you would never have given it to anybody who attempted to fly the Nazi flag.

However the subject of Cork supporters flying the confederate flag has been a subject of objection since around 2001 and it has grown steadily to the stage where ignorance is no longer an excuse.

The confederate flag isn’t a mere historical artifact - its meaning in the 1860s was indivisible from racism and slavery, and it still is - but it’s a living, breathing symbol of racism and toxic far right ideology today.

Ireland in the 1980s and most of the 1990s was a largely monocultural, mono-ethnic country - that isn’t the case today. There’s no excuse now for anybody who flies it.