You are reading a single comment by @Settle and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Settle
Just wanted to add a little note on this here thread about blackface and if you see it anywhere in your communities to please challenge it and call it out as being wrong.
Speaking from my experiences over the last year, I moved the family out of London (where we had been for 10 years) to Haslemere in West Sussex/Surrey. My family and I were shocked at how different life was out there and we ended up back in London. There were quite a few incidents within the 6 months we were there.
My daughter was made fun of at the school over the way she looked. For want of a better term we are a mixed family and I guess wasn't many of us out there.
I stepped in to help calm down a gentleman who was verbally abused and then subsequently lost his cool, at the local Tesco FFS.
Then there was the other weird looks and I guess unexplained weird behavior but the use of blackface out there as some kind of traditional bullshit was really shocking.
Case in point at the end of the road there was 'carnival' planned, a quick google of the 'Liphook Carnival' and my wife spotted a picture of a child in blackface WTF, we decided not to go.
Christmas time and there was a little performance planned at the local museum by a group of amateur dramatics called 'Chiddingfold Tipteerers' thought it would be nice to take the family so once again I decided to google them and low and behold they quite enjoy a spot of inappropriate blackface bullshit, not just that but they are quite defensive of its use as a 'cultural tradition'.
Look blackface is wrong and people find it offensive it makes them feel uncomfortable please help stop it now.
I guess I am writing this here so another family/individual doesn't have the same experience we did. Sure there were a few reasons we didn't stay but the ignorance out there was truly shocking to us and a major factor in us not taking to the area. We randomly picked it as nice countryside and living in cities for so long didn't expect the racism to be so prevalent.
TLDR if you live in the countryside I guess in particular Haslemere and you see people doing blackface tell them its wrong and ask them to please stop it.