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Thanks- it’s complex and has many different aspects to it and at many levels is misunderstood.
Your reply made me sad that the feeling of not fitting in and feeling that the whole of white population is against you is so strong. I naively thought that there had been a lot of progress since the days of Enoch Powell but I guess that those experiences and injustices run deep. Something that I’d not really ever thought too much about...
Main thing is I think that we are all willing to listen to each other and reflect and do something about it however insignificant we think that might be.
johnnettles2
I was trying to write a response to your questions, but it gets difficult and sticky really quickly. The black community can't answer what is black, because its lots of things and nothing, but mostly its about how those who are of an ethnic background define themselves and the culture they have created/inherited, vs how we are defined by 600 odd years of slavery and racism, within the white societies we live in.
It's complex and you'll never really find a perfect answer, its bound up in class, religion, imperialism, and language, I usually define it as if you're darker than a caucasian, then you're black no matter you're ancestry/cultural history, because that's how white society will view you, and if that's the case we (people of colour) can discuss the differences between us of how we are same same, but different, because we understand what it's like to be "other" within this country and how it feels to be discriminated against.
White society doesn't care about the distinctions, because " we all look the same".