Quote Originally Posted by blue lewj View Post
I joined it to question the gammon name that was in the second post in the thread.

If you didn't like me mentioning it or thought it took the thread off track then replying to me doesn't help. I actually gave my opinion on the subject matter in the first sentence of my first post.

You say it is the red face that people are drawing attention to. Do you think a black man would be described as a gammon? If you do then we will have to disagree.
If it is specifically aimed at white people purely because of the colour of their skin, regardless of political leanings, then again we'll have to disagree.
I took a lot of time to put my last message to you together, but reading this reply, I feel like it was time wasted. I'm just going to say one more thing on "gammon" and then I'm finished with this particular discussion.

There was something on Twitter and You Tube a few years back highlighting about ten of the audience in an episode of Question Time whose appearance was very similar - they were all middle aged or older, they were all men, they all had ruddy complexions, they all appeared to be very agitated and they all had the same opinion on Brexit.

Now, if they had all been sat together and right in the middle of them was a black man who was agreeing with everything they were saying and then said his piece to great applause from the others, then I wouldn't think to myself "they're gammon except for the black bloke", I would just think "they're gammon", so, for me at least, the colour of the skin is not as important as their opinion.

Moving on to more general matters, it seems to me that there are a lot of people who think of a racist as someone who behaves and speaks in a manner which says they may as well have "I'm a racist" stamped to their forehead. I'll admit that until their last few weeks, I was one of them, but I'd say that one of the lessons from the aftermath of George Floyd's death is that the penny has dropped for at least some of those who thought that - racism is more subtle than that and I'm coming around to thinking that "institutionalised racism" is not too strong a description for what we have in this country.

I accept that many of those saying that they aren't racist are being genuine when they say that - they abhor the sort of stereotypical racist I mentioned above, but the problem some of them apparently have with the concept of BLM is revealing. On the radio yesterday I heard the thinking behind BLM alluded to in a way which, for me, captured what that movement is about - when people said "save the whale", was it taken to mean that they meant it should be saved at the expense of every other species? Of course they didn't, that didn't need saying and yet some are expecting that needless proviso from BLM backers now.