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  • You made up the demos you went on with black people. If they were real you'd have led with them instead of using your hilarious photo of Seattle. Thanks for the entertainment. You're pretending to be a social justice warrior and doing a terrible job. By rights I should tell you to piss off and troll somewhere else, but I'm going to continue to debate your points because I care deeply about climate change and race relations in the UK. I've spent hundreds of hours helping neighbours (4 black, 1 white) who've been mistreated by the police or their employer or the DWP. Why don't you stop pretending you care and start doing something helpful in the real world?

    As for demos, what I said was "I don't think I've ever seen a black climate protester in the UK." This is just a statement of fact. It doesn't imply racism. There are a few black people at demos, but they're underrepresented. This is also a statement of fact. See all the photos and videos of UK climate protests. A photo of one black person has been found. Your Seattle photo, and many similar ones, show that there are lots of African Americans committed to climate justice. We need a similar scenario over here. There must be reasons why the UK is different. Perhaps it's our information sources and how they're perceived. (I like to analyse this, perhaps because I used to work in journalism and PR.)

    By the way, we're all using anecdotal data and making generalisations about this subject, because there are so few stats to rely on. My generalisations are based on chit chat with random people in Brixton. They're nearly all working class. I only have one middle class black friend. (She's a genius who used to work for a former PM. I exclude her from my generalisations.)

    I should add that I don't like to describe someone as black. Race is a redundant and divisive notion. But I need shorthand terms when talking about a group comprised of British people of Afro-Caribbean heritage. I don't like to say Afro-Caribbean either. The people I know are from families who came here from Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Eritrea, Egypt, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda and Martinique. They all get lumped together as 'black' by the police and the media.

    To return to black climate demonstrators, I'm surprised that you and the many other opinionated experts here haven't mentioned fear of arrest? The consequences are typically worse for non-whites. You could be beaten up or killed, or tricked by an undercover cop, or photographed, identified and fitted up. All good reasons for staying at home and letting someone else go to the demo.

    I'll come back to other points tomorrow.

  • I should add that I don't like to describe someone as black. Race is a redundant and divisive notion.

    you should have left this bit for the end for an even greater comedic effect

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