No. I think most Americans just don't understand what that right means.
I cannot comment on what most Americans understand regarding this. All I can say is that the Americans I have spoken to seem to understand the concept fine. They may not be a representative sample, but do anyone of us have one?
It seems like we are missing the mark here, whether deliberately or not. As I understand it, you cannot scream racist abuse in someones face in America. Is that correct? You certainly can't in the UK. The issue which I and many Conservatives agree on is that the ever increasing encroachment over what you can or cannot say is leading to a highly policed society, rather like China. It is a bit like bringing the speed limit down so low that everyone breaks the law. By continually redefining acceptability, you oppress others freedom of expression. Everyday communication consequently becomes a minefield. And you blunt humour, which is often based on pain.
Another area is where you overprioritise the rights of a tiny group so that they are not offended, but in the process piss-off the vast majority of people. Take the transgendered in sports. I won't attribute a gender because we have over 70 of them now, just to confuse everybody. You have biological men having sex changes and then trouncing the women in sports events. It has become a farce. You have the transgendered in female prisons raping women. How things are going, I can see a man claiming to identify as woman being allowed to go to a female prison instead, without any transgendered modifications. Anything less will be seen as discrimination against the rights of the biological man to have the gender identity of a woman. Next we will have grown men claiming to identify as being a child, hanging around the toilets at the local school.
The slippery slope is a very real phenomena.
The way forward, as I see it, is tolerance. Instead of seeking (faux) offence, understand that people may say things that inadvertently offend. People put their foot in it all the time. In a thread somewhere on this forum, I recently cited the case about the footballer Cavani. He used a commonly used phrase, considered perfectly acceptable in Uruguay, and spoken in Spanish, saying, "Gracias Negrita". The UK Football Association, after extensive investigation, said they did not think he had any intention of being racist at all. He was just thanking a friend of his for their kind comments towards him. Yet he gets fined £100K and a 3 match ban because it might potentially offend, in some circumstances. Plus they want him to go on an awareness course on racism. The poor guy has only been in the UK for about 2 or 3 months. If you get punched in the head by someone in the UK, you just get a warning the first time, no fine. The offences hardly seem comparable.
This is where I see the danger of political organisations like BLM. The Football Association or rather the Premier League coverage, has Black Lives Matter at the top of all games at the beginning of the match. Then everyone is taking the knee. In that context, everybody goes overboard in dealing with people like Cavani. I personally think, as I have said many times on this forum, that BLM is a racist organisation, starting with the name. If it was Black Lives Matter Too, I would have no problem with that because I agree with the sentiment. But it doesn't say that. So, you end up with vast numbers of people thinking that if you are Black, you should have preferential treatment. This is racism.
I understand very well the history of racism towards Blacks, slavery over the centuries and the unequal treatment. But this is about perspective. No one seems to care about the Jews. They were also put into bondage and slavery in death camps during the Second World War. Over 6 million of them. Jews are white. But it was racism because they were perceived to be a race of their own, the Jewish race. Death camps aside, there were about 11 million foreigners put into forced labour during the war, mostly white. This is also slavery. So in more recent times, there was way more slavery amongst white people than black. These are inconvenient truths. [Edit: I am not sure if they included the 6 million exterminated Jews in the 11 million foreigners figure or not.]
Please correct me if I am wrong, but this just came to me as I am typing this out. I've often felt the Jews get a hard time. Strangely, and I don't know if this is common in the US like it is in the UK, but the left seem to have lots of anti-semitism within its ranks. The UK Labour party was investigated for it recently and the findings were damanging. With the lefts focus on racial issues, I find this contradictory.
I'm interested in hearing arguments from those who think that there was more black slavery in the last 100 or so years than white slavery. It is assumed that slavery and blacks is synonymous and that if you mention white slaves, you are some kind of denier and a white supremacist. But lets talk with facts rather than slurs. Where did I get it wrong? I am interested to know.
Imagine it the other way around. If 6 million blacks were exterminated during the war, and 11 million put into forced labour, but the whites were demanding reparations for slavery for what happened further back in history, would those from the black community think the whites case was stronger and that the black community should trump up the money?
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