F1, Racism & BlackLivesMatter

[Siao7]

Attacks on the police in the course of doing their job are completely wrong but doesn't someone have to make the police force conform to a consistent level.
I don't know if this link with the video will work everywhere but to see a man hit his head on the floor like that and be ignored by about 30 officers with blood pouring from his head is now worldwide, as are the other incidents in that link, including a confusing shooting.

The impression I get is that there are elements of the police force and some of its procedures that are out of control and need immediate revision.

I've seen this and it is disgusting that they would push an old guy like this. It's 30+ of them, not threatened, absolutely shocking behaviour

[pokerman]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.

Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

[pokerman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

[Rockie]

So there's been looting in the UK as well because of what happened in another country, it's hard to be sympathetic with a cause on the back of such criminality, I saw some police officers get attacked as well.

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

[pokerman]

Alien, while I like your message a lot, but I have a few notes.

- I do not think that anyone said that it was all of the protesters that caused troubles. Most of the protests were indeed peaceful, just that you always have the opportunists that cause trouble and loot. And they are mostly the youth, which is somewhat normal and also sad

I never said that people were saying all the protestors were. I mean, that would be absolutely stupid to even begin to breathe that. However the attitude is that people reject the protests once there is violence by a few, hence why there are white supremacists turning up at the rallies and causing damage, to discredit the movement.

My criticism is this attitude to dismiss the protest of the many based on the actions of a tiny minority, especially when it's questionable how many of the minority are actually behind the cause anyway. Some people genuinely turn up to protests not because they are behind the protest but because they know it will give them the opportunity to riot - this is the case at nearly all organised protests with large numbers.

- I haven't seen or felt any racism (apart from jokes between friends, as bad taste as it is) in the UK. Not directly anyway, although in the 2009 recession it was all the foreigners that were let go from the place I was working back then. Could be a coincidence though! I do have friends who experienced it though post-Brexit, for example my German friend (married to an Englishman) got told of by some old guy on the street about taking the UK back and how they fought the war against the Germans, etc. It really did bring the worst out of a lot of people this Brexit kerfuffle

Right after the Brexit result there were cases of Eastern Europeans having their businesses burned down in the UK.

There were cases of black people (who aren't even members of EU nations or in some cases British born) being shouted at that they would now be "going home", openly in the street by people who felt empowered to no longer withhold their views.

There was the Windrush scandal.

When I worked at a factory of a national company producing food for major UK supermarkets in a town with a high number of immigrants, many of the top managers were openly racist including one who took delight in recounting news of immigrants getting beaten up - and in one case murdered - from the papers.

As recently as 1999 the Metropolitan Police was found to be institutionally racist. Non white people are still orders of magnitude more likely to be stopped and searched by the police.

I do not think that the UK police suffers from anywhere near the same levels of problems as American police, as the American Police force seems to have large numbers of White power members who have started openly identifying on these latest protests - as well as accounts I have heard from friends who have moved to the US and American people who have moved to Europe and talked about the difference in attitudes towards the police.

I also believe that any report of a racist incident would be taken seriously by a UK organisation, especially with any evidence.

But just because the standards are better, just because they are 'not as bad' as most other equivalent countries, does not mean we should sit back and high five each other on how much better a job we are doing. If we truly are pleased that we are doing a relatively good job and have actual pride in our attitude towards tackling racism then we should not shy away from addressing the issues that continue to exist. A competition to have the 'smallest problem with racism' is the same as celebrating having the smallest cancerous tumour.

- Hamilton speaking out as an icon, as a decent person and also a black man is absolutely fine. It is something that personally strikes a note with him, but telling off others that didn't is what I objected to. You see what happened with the New York Knicks owner. If you don't get out and support this then you are crucified in the world of Twitter. I just find this wrong, for example I do not have any social media accounts except Facebook (for specific reasons like groups I follow and meet up), so I don't post things. That does not mean that I condone racism in any form. And some people are really introverts, to be called out like this is a bit unfair. I kind of agree with the Knicks owner myself

Hamilton has spent his entire career since karting as the only black kid in the room. When he made it to F1 he had to put up with openly racist abuse in Spain and Brazil, with fans conducting themselves in overtly unacceptable ways yet not evicted from the track (they were even shown on TV I believe)

I don't believe that was the fact there had not been official statements from everyone, it was the fact that in the face of a clearly egregious event, there hadn't been any comment or reflection at all. He had to be the first person to say something. Because he was the black one.

- The China and Bahrain thing is something personally I have not heard before, to be accused that he is not speaking out about these causes. And here lies the bigger issue for me. He is not a social warrior, if he speaks out for everything on Earth then he won't have time to do anything else. He just spoke about the thing that personally affected him and kudos for that as he speaks from experience (and not because it is a trend). But where does it stop?

There will always be other issues, and using that as a reason to speak out about nothing will mean that nothing ever gets said.

- I also think that the statement that speaking out will achieve nothing is somewhat wrong. The policemen would have gotten away without any charges if there wasn't a huge demonstration, it has happened many times before. Speaking out achieves things. Not always, but "forget it, it won't work" sends out the wrong message, especially for celebrities that want and can make a difference. There are a lot of thing that can be said about some countries, from the human rights point of view, from how they treat women or how China imposed the social credit scheme. The list is long

I'm talking about effectiveness about speaking out against China and Bahrain. Clearly speaking out about issues in America and Europe are productive and that actually validates Hamilton and others making such a noise on their platform about these issues.

China censors its own press and citizens, and it sure as hell does not allow any foreign press critical of China to be shared within its borders. I don't know much about Bahrain's relationship with its press, but even if it uncensored they are unlikely to care much what people think.

Again eastern europeans are white so Brexit racism wasn't based on skin colour.

[Alienturnedhuman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

Brexit was about Britain's relationship with the EU, but after the vote was successful there were many, many cases of racism towards non EU, non white individuals who were told by uneducated racists that the result meant they would be forced to leave the UK.

Brexit empowered racists in the UK, even though Brexit as a political event was solely about the EU.

That is why I very carefully worded that part of my post the way I did.

[Alienturnedhuman]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

[Rockie]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.

Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

Damn I'm now sorry I engaged you on this in the words of Maya Angelou “When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.”

[Siao7]

So there's been looting in the UK as well because of what happened in another country, it's hard to be sympathetic with a cause on the back of such criminality, I saw some police officers get attacked as well.

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

This is interesting and I haven't heard that before. Is this true? More lock-down fines and more deaths dues to Covid for the BAME? Do you have a link for this?

[Rockie]

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

This is interesting and I haven't heard that before. Is this true? More lock-down fines and more deaths dues to Covid for the BAME? Do you have a link for this?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... s-research

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ame-people

[pokerman]

So there's been looting in the UK as well because of what happened in another country, it's hard to be sympathetic with a cause on the back of such criminality, I saw some police officers get attacked as well.

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

Rockie

Pokerman, the two instances have nothing to do with one another. Some of the most absurd reasoning you can witness.

You’re basically saying, “I don’t support a cause I normally would have because some other people I have never met or have anything to do with rioted in the name of that cause. So I can no longer support that cause” Even though those rioting may not even be genuine with the intention and likely just people looking for trouble like riots generally are.

That’s like saying, I can no longer support Lewis Hamilton because a very tiny portion of his fan base - I don’t agree with there actions.

It's unfortunate that such protests beget violence from others with different agendas causing far more violence than the original incident, it becomes a catch 22 incident, you protest against violence knowing it's going to create even more violence, or given how young they were maybe I'm given them too much credit in realising the possible consequences?

[Siao7]

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

This is interesting and I haven't heard that before. Is this true? More lock-down fines and more deaths dues to Covid for the BAME? Do you have a link for this?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... s-research

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ame-people

Thank you, I did not know that. Very interesting, I am not sure how race affects the mortality with COVID, but the numbers seem to support this.

[pokerman]

So there's been looting in the UK as well because of what happened in another country, it's hard to be sympathetic with a cause on the back of such criminality, I saw some police officers get attacked as well.

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

[pokerman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

Brexit was about Britain's relationship with the EU, but after the vote was successful there were many, many cases of racism towards non EU, non white individuals who were told by uneducated racists that the result meant they would be forced to leave the UK.

Brexit empowered racists in the UK, even though Brexit as a political event was solely about the EU.

That is why I very carefully worded that part of my post the way I did.

Well I think we both can appreciate that racism tends to come fom the dregs of society, like I said the racism wasn't based on skin colour, eastern europeans are white.

[pokerman]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

[Tufty]

Xenophobia and racism aren't quite interchangeable terms. What you're describing Poker is xenophobia, which is equally abhorrent. But racism is literally down to skin colour.

[pokerman]

Xenophobia and racism aren't quite interchangeable terms. What you're describing Poker is xenophobia, which is equally abhorrent. But racism is literally down to skin colour.

Fair enough but stiill then I was right in saying that Brexit wasn't fuelled by racism?

[JN23]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

The policeman kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes, including after he became unconscious. Whether he resisted arrest or not is absolutely irrelevant to that.

[Herb]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

The policeman kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes, including after he became unconscious. Whether he resisted arrest or not is absolutely irrelevant to that.

Eight minutes. Frankly ridiculous. It was no accident Poker.

I can't believe anybody is even slightly condoning or excusing the cops' actions here. Deadly force should only ever used as an absolute last resort when other lives are at risk. I can't believe that even needs to be said.

[JN23]

So there's been looting in the UK as well because of what happened in another country, it's hard to be sympathetic with a cause on the back of such criminality, I saw some police officers get attacked as well.

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

The virus itself isn’t racist, it’s the structural racism within our society and means it has disproportionately affected BAME people.

[pokerman]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

The policeman kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes, including after he became unconscious. Whether he resisted arrest or not is absolutely irrelevant to that.

Without doubt it was unlawful man slaughter but why go with the story that he was being benign at all times, that being said the police officer is accountable for what he did, now would he have been brought to justice without the protests?

[pokerman]

So a fellow human being killed due to the colour of his skin recorded live and you saw that makes it hard for you to support a cause due to a few anarchists doing what they do best take advantage of the situation.

This kind of logic is what racists and racist apologists use in denigrating the cause, this is akin to the people who scream all lives matter when there is a protest of an unjust killing of a black man and black lives matter protest, absolutely disgusting take!

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

The virus itself isn’t racist, it’s the structural racism within our society and means it has disproportionately affected BAME people.

I heard it had something to do with the amount of sunlight different coloured skins could absorb but we're going with racism against BAME people?

Ive just read the article forwarded on this page and it says that before Covid-19 more white people were dying from various diseases so structural racism, really?

[Schumacher forever#1]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

As well informed as ever, Alienturnedhuman.

I find it unfortunate that even in this forum we have people who focus not on the peaceful protests that are now occurring around the world, but of the very small percentage of people who have been involved in riots and looting.

It is known among the black community who have previously had to protest these same issues, that police use unjust methods to rebalance the media's favour towards who is morally right, deflecting the issue of systemic racism and towards riots and looting. The videos of undercover police smashing the first few windows are out there.

And even that being said, I can't fathom to understand the rage these minorities had to contain to peacefully protest. To me, it's unacceptable for us to type on our laptops about how terrible the rioters are, when we have never experienced the type of oppression they experience on a daily basis.

As Pusha T said,

'You keep saying, "It's horrible that an innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop". Try saying, 'its horrible that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop"'

George Floyd wasn't even the last black person to be brutally murdered by the police in the USA. People seem to keep commenting about how these casualties in these protests need to stop, but fail to recognise that it is the police that are committing these crimes, not the protestors.

And to tie it in with Formula 1, I believe Bernie Ecclestone endorsed Donald Trump when he was CEO of Formula 1. So yes, it is definitely right for the F1 community to be involved in this discussion.

[Siao7]

Thanks Mod.

Now I think there are two different things. Supporting the protest is one side, everyone understands what happened and why people are protesting. Also good news, the officers are facing trials on murder charges. But when things turn violent, then that is not a peaceful protest anymore. They have something like 6+ dead people in the protests so far, with people and police officers being shot alike... There are also the opportunistic looting that happens in these cases, but this is a different matter.

I'll go on a limb that this is the part that Poker won't support, rightly so if you see some of the images on this article: https://www.startribune.com/protests-bu ... 869672/#21.

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

The policeman kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes, including after he became unconscious. Whether he resisted arrest or not is absolutely irrelevant to that.

This is correct.

Let me play the devil's advocate here. I could accept two things regarding the police's mentality. We need to keep in mind that firstly this really tall guy, under the influence and carrying drugs (he was shown throwing bags with white powder in the videos apparently) is resisting arrest. One could understand the police being cautious and have 4 officers there.

Secondly the police must have heard a million excuses from people being arrested, just to get a chance to escape. So it just may be the reason that they ignored his pleas for air.


Having said that, what the policemen did was indeed appalling, the extra force was unnecessary; the guy was cuffed, subdued and on the floor with 4 people around. He wasn't going anywhere. 8 minutes of kneeling on his neck, even after being unconscious, is just without any excuse.

Time and again it is the same issue, the same thing that famously got Tony Martin done, he shot the two kids that were fleeing. It is the excess of violence that is the biggest issue. And they didn't even use guns!

[JN23]

So George Floyd actually did resist arrest, he's 6ft 6 a big stong guy and 4 officers were unable to get him inside the police car, this is how law abiding people react to being arrested?

We know he was a serial criminal before looking to turn his life around, his last and most heinous crime was armed robbery were he held a gun to a pregnant woman while her house was being burglared, she was pistol whipped twice to stop her screaming.
Had he just commited another crime, if so it was just a petty crime, he certainly didn't deserve to be killed albeit was an accident, but I think we have to review the unnecesary excessive force on someone so big and strong upon initial stories that he was not resisting arrest and then you wonder if a certain narrative was more important to be put forward.

Without doubt the whole thing is triggered by racial prejudice against black people in particular by the police and such things are always a ticking time bomb but George Floyd is hardly a Martin Luther King and white people get killed by the police as well.

One thing they need to review is leaning on people's necks in order to subdue people resisting arrest.

Thanks for the link Saio.

This was indeed a terrible thing he did. It also happened in 2007 so has absolutely no bearing on the incident with a forged banknote (something that can happen to anyone) that he ended up being killed over.

Yes just a petty crime at the worse if deliberate, also perhaps unfortunate that a past criminal ends up with a forged bank note, but I have to ask strange for him to resist arrest and strange that intially this was never mentioned, we were led to believe this was unnecessary force used on a benign person.

The policeman kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes, including after he became unconscious. Whether he resisted arrest or not is absolutely irrelevant to that.

This is correct.

Let me play the devil's advocate here. I could accept two things regarding the police's mentality. We need to keep in mind that firstly this really tall guy, under the influence and carrying drugs (he was shown throwing bags with white powder in the videos apparently) is resisting arrest. One could understand the police being cautious and have 4 officers there.

Secondly the police must have heard a million excuses from people being arrested, just to get a chance to escape. So it just may be the reason that they ignored his pleas for air.


Having said that, what the policemen did was indeed appalling, the extra force was unnecessary; the guy was cuffed, subdued and on the floor with 4 people around. He wasn't going anywhere. 8 minutes of kneeling on his neck, even after being unconscious, is just without any excuse.

Time and again it is the same issue, the same thing that famously got Tony Martin done, he shot the two kids that were fleeing. It is the excess of violence that is the biggest issue. And they didn't even use guns!

I don’t really understand why you are playing devil’s advocate here.

[JN23]

All I'm saying is that one act of violence shouldn't justify all the violence that came after, are we not supposed to be civilised?

How does an unlawful death in America justify looting and attacks on police in London?

Also this is during a pandemic which makes such protests potentially life threatening for some people taking part and really is not legal on that score but of course you have to appreciate the situation at hand.

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

The virus itself isn’t racist, it’s the structural racism within our society and means it has disproportionately affected BAME people.

I heard it had something to do with the amount of sunlight different coloured skins could absorb but we're going with racism against BAME people?

Ive just read the article forwarded on this page and it says that before Covid-19 more white people were dying from various diseases so structural racism, really?

That doesn’t mean that structural racism doesn’t exist and that is hasn’t contributed towards BAME people being disproportionately affected.

Editing to add: given the contagious nature of Covid-19 it’s more of a unique situation though. In simple terms, BAME people are more likely to live in crowded households/more densely populated areas/not have access to quality healthcare and are therefore are more likely to catch the virus and die from it.

[Option or Prime]

The fundamental duty of any police officer is to save life.

I really can not see any justification in the officers actions related to resistance to arrest, neither would a court. If police can't arrest a man without killing them they are incompetent and shouldn't be in the profession. The problem for me is that I doubt if there will be a conviction and I further doubt there will be any time spent in prison for it.

However, imagine 4 black officers holding down a white man! This is why there is such a furore about this, I don't expect it to die down quickly.

You can guarantee that if these officers charges are dropped or there is an acquittal more violent protests will result. That is wrong but until the police are reigned in and start showing respect for ALL life it will continue. I just don't see Donald Trump making police forces in the US accountable.

On the UK news I've just seen multiple incidents of US police pushing over individuals, dragging passive protestors way and deliberately driving at groups of people.
If I were a US citizen I would be ashamed.

[Option or Prime]

As if to reinforce the insane thinking of the mentality of the Buffalo riot squad how about this. The two officers who shoved one solitary isolated 75 year old man backwards who then cracked his head on the ground then walked by completely ignoring him were suspended.

The entire group has resigned from the squad in a show of solidarity at the penalty of these two offenders. It seems shoving old men over and ignoring a bleeding skull is perfectly acceptable.

Here is the wimpy part though, they haven't resigned from the force, just the riot squad, don't want to lose our pay and privileged positions now do we?

The US Police seem totally out of control at the moment, they seem to believe they are untouchable, perhaps they are.

[Johnson]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

That isn’t even necessarily racism. If you pay taxes for 25 years, then have a child and continue to pay taxes for another 20 years. You’ve paid into the UK economy for 45 years. I don’t think it is racist to say you only want people of the UK getting free NHS services, priority on council housing, school places for there children..

Brexit was voted for because people were in that scenario above, paid in all there lives and there children were priced out the housing market and couldn’t get council housing. A Bulgarian family that have been in the country 1 year jump there children in the council housing list. It is for reasons like that, that Brexit got voted for.

I voted remain just to clarify.

[Johnson]

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

This is interesting and I haven't heard that before. Is this true? More lock-down fines and more deaths dues to Covid for the BAME? Do you have a link for this?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... s-research

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ame-people

Thank you, I did not know that. Very interesting, I am not sure how race affects the mortality with COVID, but the numbers seem to support this.

It is most likely jobs, housing and risk-reward.

BAME are much more likely to be in higher risk jobs and closer to poverty. Poverty means desperation. It means 5-6 people in a household with grandma there too.
I had a Syrian Uber driver a few weeks ago, I asked him if he was worried at all - he had no fear, he had escaped a civil war, it makes you a lot less scared of something that has a 1/1000 chance of killing you when you have had that life experience.

[Alienturnedhuman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

That isn’t even necessarily racism. If you pay taxes for 25 years, then have a child and continue to pay taxes for another 20 years. You’ve paid into the UK economy for 45 years. I don’t think it is racist to say you only want people of the UK getting free NHS services, priority on council housing, school places for there children..

Brexit was voted for because people were in that scenario above, paid in all there lives and there children were priced out the housing market and couldn’t get council housing. A Bulgarian family that have been in the country 1 year jump there children in the council housing list. It is for reasons like that, that Brexit got voted for.

I voted remain just to clarify.

I am seriously going to lose it if people don't actually read what I wrote instead of replying to what they think I wrote.

I never said that Brexit itself was an issue of race. I never even said that people voted Brexit because of racism (although some will have).

What I said was that the result of the Brexit referendum empowered racists in the country.

THE LITERAL NEXT DAY AFTER THE VOTE there were literally countless incidents of people in the street the next day going up to brown coloured British people and telling them that they would now be being 'sent home' because of the Brexit result. It's 4 years ago and a very difficult thing to now find the news articles for because the key words bring up countless editorials published in the mean time, and I'm not going to waste any more time on this further to explain this.

[pokerman]

This is tone deaf and will be the last of this back and forth I will go with you, as you are intentionally being obtuse about the situation.

No one has justified it.

Also you ask why during a pandemic? now think deeply that during this pandemic not only are BAME people the ones dying the most, they are also suffering institutional racism.

Lock-down fines have somehow being disproportionately issued to ethnic minorities, so fighting two different pandemics at the same time, whilst your privilege affords you the right to sit on your high horse and you can't empathise only denigrate the movement based on the actions of some miscreants.

A black man was put in a vegetative state by heddlu police in Cardiff whilst being arrested he would have survived the brain damage but was left in the van for 30 mins without receiving medical attention.

Do a research on 'Stop and Search' in London and see the devastating effects, just because they are not being killed which is due to British police not carrying weapons.

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

The virus itself isn’t racist, it’s the structural racism within our society and means it has disproportionately affected BAME people.

I heard it had something to do with the amount of sunlight different coloured skins could absorb but we're going with racism against BAME people?

Ive just read the article forwarded on this page and it says that before Covid-19 more white people were dying from various diseases so structural racism, really?

That doesn’t mean that structural racism doesn’t exist and that is hasn’t contributed towards BAME people being disproportionately affected.

Editing to add: given the contagious nature of Covid-19 it’s more of a unique situation though. In simple terms, BAME people are more likely to live in crowded households/more densely populated areas/not have access to quality healthcare and are therefore are more likely to catch the virus and die from it.

That still doesn't address what I said, more white people die from other diseases but that obviously doesn't have the same political message.

[pokerman]

The fundamental duty of any police officer is to save life.

I really can not see any justification in the officers actions related to resistance to arrest, neither would a court. If police can't arrest a man without killing them they are incompetent and shouldn't be in the profession. The problem for me is that I doubt if there will be a conviction and I further doubt there will be any time spent in prison for it.

However, imagine 4 black officers holding down a white man! This is why there is such a furore about this, I don't expect it to die down quickly.

You can guarantee that if these officers charges are dropped or there is an acquittal more violent protests will result. That is wrong but until the police are reigned in and start showing respect for ALL life it will continue. I just don't see Donald Trump making police forces in the US accountable.

On the UK news I've just seen multiple incidents of US police pushing over individuals, dragging passive protestors way and deliberately driving at groups of people.
If I were a US citizen I would be ashamed.

It wasn't 4 white officers that held down George Floyd, apparently they were white, black, hispanic and asian, obviously the white officer was the chief instigator, Floyd's breathing was also impaired by the officer leaning on his back, but again loose reporting to give a different overview and I have to wonder why?

[Johnson]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

That isn’t even necessarily racism. If you pay taxes for 25 years, then have a child and continue to pay taxes for another 20 years. You’ve paid into the UK economy for 45 years. I don’t think it is racist to say you only want people of the UK getting free NHS services, priority on council housing, school places for there children..

Brexit was voted for because people were in that scenario above, paid in all there lives and there children were priced out the housing market and couldn’t get council housing. A Bulgarian family that have been in the country 1 year jump there children in the council housing list. It is for reasons like that, that Brexit got voted for.

I voted remain just to clarify.

I am seriously going to lose it if people don't actually read what I wrote instead of replying to what they think I wrote.

I never said that Brexit itself was an issue of race. I never even said that people voted Brexit because of racism (although some will have).

What I said was that the result of the Brexit referendum empowered racists in the country.

THE LITERAL NEXT DAY AFTER THE VOTE there were literally countless incidents of people in the street the next day going up to brown coloured British people and telling them that they would now be being 'sent home' because of the Brexit result. It's 4 years ago and a very difficult thing to now find the news articles for because the key words bring up countless editorials published in the mean time, and I'm not going to waste any more time on this further to explain this.

I was replying to Pokerman’s post, but yes there were a few rare extremist sprouting racist things like that preceding Brexit, the same people that were probably actively racist beforehand.

[pokerman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

That isn’t even necessarily racism. If you pay taxes for 25 years, then have a child and continue to pay taxes for another 20 years. You’ve paid into the UK economy for 45 years. I don’t think it is racist to say you only want people of the UK getting free NHS services, priority on council housing, school places for there children..

Brexit was voted for because people were in that scenario above, paid in all there lives and there children were priced out the housing market and couldn’t get council housing. A Bulgarian family that have been in the country 1 year jump there children in the council housing list. It is for reasons like that, that Brexit got voted for.

I voted remain just to clarify.

I voted remain as well.

I watched the BBC leftist news with concerns over the NHS giving priority to British Nationals over immigrants during this pandemic.

[Option or Prime]

The fundamental duty of any police officer is to save life.

I really can not see any justification in the officers actions related to resistance to arrest, neither would a court. If police can't arrest a man without killing them they are incompetent and shouldn't be in the profession. The problem for me is that I doubt if there will be a conviction and I further doubt there will be any time spent in prison for it.

However, imagine 4 black officers holding down a white man! This is why there is such a furore about this, I don't expect it to die down quickly.

You can guarantee that if these officers charges are dropped or there is an acquittal more violent protests will result. That is wrong but until the police are reigned in and start showing respect for ALL life it will continue. I just don't see Donald Trump making police forces in the US accountable.

On the UK news I've just seen multiple incidents of US police pushing over individuals, dragging passive protestors way and deliberately driving at groups of people.
If I were a US citizen I would be ashamed.

It wasn't 4 white officers that held down George Floyd, apparently they were white, black, hispanic and asian, obviously the white officer was the chief instigator, Floyd's breathing was also impaired by the officer leaning on his back, but again loose reporting to give a different overview and I have to wonder why?

Slightly confused I didn't actually mention the colour of the officers, did you assume I did?

The point I was making in this and the previous post is that the US police seem to be out of control. They are behaving as if they a not responsible to the people who they are supposed to 'protect and serve'.

The thing that angers me the most though is the lack of convictions against the US police and the re-instatement of individuals who clearly do not have the temperament to do the job.

[pokerman]

Regarding the protests and the escalation of looting and violence, there are several things that need to be addressed.

The first is that these protests have been attended by tens of thousands - if not more - and the vast vast majority of those have been conducted peacefully, and what is seen on TV are the most extreme cases because they make the best TV, and if you are seeing the same brief few seconds of the same handful of incidences that is not representative of the conduct of the vast majority of people.

These are not a collective mind, these are not being run by a central authority that dictates to people how to behave. So when a small group of people start rioting and looting, it is in no way reasonable to hold the protest movement null and void- or the ideology accountable - in the same way as an organisation should be held accountable for the actions of its employees (such as the police force), as organisations select, train and vet their employees.

All of this is true even if those conducting the violence are all genuine protestors. Unfortunately it seems that this is far from the case, as there has been many documented incidences of people not affiliated with the movement (one who even looks like an undercover law enforcement officer) smashing windows in the background of peaceful protests. There has been documented videos clearly showing white people shoving black protestors into police officers to trigger the officer to beat them.

This is because it’s known that arson and rioting is a good way to turn the middle ground from softly supporting the protestors to being firmly against them.

“I would support them if they protested peacefully”

Well - as many have pointed out by now - they tried protesting peacefully, the whole taking a knee thing, and that got banned.

An American friend of mine shared a post that essentially said that racism has become part of America’s identity because people are condemning protests against racism as being anti American. That was highlighted with the banning of the taking a knee and it’s resulted in where we are today.

As for how this ties in with Hamilton, both being British and an F1 driver, well neither of those disqualify him from speaking out.

First,while it is true that racism is not as big an issue in the U.K. as in the USA, it’s still an issue and a bigger one than people are prepared to admit. Post Brexit racism has spiked, but even when the U.K. was at its most accepting there were still problems.

If the defence is “We don’t have as much racism as in America” or “We are one of the least racist countries in Europe” then what you are actually saying is the level of racism that exists is fine. If you are truly against racism then you should support the efforts to eradicate it. And the best ways most people can help fight racism don’t even cost anything. They are a) don’t be a racist and b) call out people who are racist

As an F1 driver, Hamilton is equally entitled to speak out. F1 is a global sport with a global platform and people look up to these drivers.

"But why isn’t he speaking out against China or Bahrain?! Hypocrite!"

No. For one thing it is not a racism he has personally faced in his life, it’s also an issue he probably won’t be as informed about. But more significantly,China and Bahrain are not countries that have free speech. That’s also not a good thing and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed too, but speaking out against those atrocities will achieve nothing.

The USA meanwhile is a Western ally that purports to uphold the basic values that other Western cultures hold in high regard. These include free speech, civil rights and not being oppressed by your government.

On these issues America is fundamentally failing its black citizens, and with Liberty being an American company it only underlined the issue why It is appropriate for people in F1 to speak out about it.

One thing, Brexit racism wan't against black people it was against foreign workers taking UK jobs, we've seen racism against Polish people and similar and these are white.

That isn’t even necessarily racism. If you pay taxes for 25 years, then have a child and continue to pay taxes for another 20 years. You’ve paid into the UK economy for 45 years. I don’t think it is racist to say you only want people of the UK getting free NHS services, priority on council housing, school places for there children..

Brexit was voted for because people were in that scenario above, paid in all there lives and there children were priced out the housing market and couldn’t get council housing. A Bulgarian family that have been in the country 1 year jump there children in the council housing list. It is for reasons like that, that Brexit got voted for.

I voted remain just to clarify.

I am seriously going to lose it if people don't actually read what I wrote instead of replying to what they think I wrote.

I never said that Brexit itself was an issue of race. I never even said that people voted Brexit because of racism (although some will have).

What I said was that the result of the Brexit referendum empowered racists in the country.

THE LITERAL NEXT DAY AFTER THE VOTE there were literally countless incidents of people in the street the next day going up to brown coloured British people and telling them that they would now be being 'sent home' because of the Brexit result. It's 4 years ago and a very difficult thing to now find the news articles for because the key words bring up countless editorials published in the mean time, and I'm not going to waste any more time on this further to explain this.

I would say skin colour wasn't the main factor.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 18.1451308

[pokerman]

The fundamental duty of any police officer is to save life.

I really can not see any justification in the officers actions related to resistance to arrest, neither would a court. If police can't arrest a man without killing them they are incompetent and shouldn't be in the profession. The problem for me is that I doubt if there will be a conviction and I further doubt there will be any time spent in prison for it.

However, imagine 4 black officers holding down a white man! This is why there is such a furore about this, I don't expect it to die down quickly.

You can guarantee that if these officers charges are dropped or there is an acquittal more violent protests will result. That is wrong but until the police are reigned in and start showing respect for ALL life it will continue. I just don't see Donald Trump making police forces in the US accountable.

On the UK news I've just seen multiple incidents of US police pushing over individuals, dragging passive protestors way and deliberately driving at groups of people.
If I were a US citizen I would be ashamed.

It wasn't 4 white officers that held down George Floyd, apparently they were white, black, hispanic and asian, obviously the white officer was the chief instigator, Floyd's breathing was also impaired by the officer leaning on his back, but again loose reporting to give a different overview and I have to wonder why?

Slightly confused I didn't actually mention the colour of the officers, did you assume I did?

The point I was making in this and the previous post is that the US police seem to be out of control. They are behaving as if they a not responsible to the people who they are supposed to 'protect and serve'.

The thing that angers me the most though is the lack of convictions against the US police and the re-instatement of individuals who clearly do not have the temperament to do the job.

Then you wasn't comparing like for like when you said 4 black police officers.

In respect to the police officers they are obviously poorly trained, they didn't even know how to administer CPR, but then because of the pandemic maybe they chose not to?

[JN23]

I'm not going to disagree that there is racism against black people, I'm not sure were you are going with Covid being a racist virus though?

The virus itself isn’t racist, it’s the structural racism within our society and means it has disproportionately affected BAME people.

I heard it had something to do with the amount of sunlight different coloured skins could absorb but we're going with racism against BAME people?

Ive just read the article forwarded on this page and it says that before Covid-19 more white people were dying from various diseases so structural racism, really?

That doesn’t mean that structural racism doesn’t exist and that is hasn’t contributed towards BAME people being disproportionately affected.

Editing to add: given the contagious nature of Covid-19 it’s more of a unique situation though. In simple terms, BAME people are more likely to live in crowded households/more densely populated areas/not have access to quality healthcare and are therefore are more likely to catch the virus and die from it.

That still doesn't address what I said, more white people die from other diseases but that obviously doesn't have the same political message.

The mortality rate is higher for white people in the UK because on average, they are older than BAME people.

[Option or Prime]

The fundamental duty of any police officer is to save life.

I really can not see any justification in the officers actions related to resistance to arrest, neither would a court. If police can't arrest a man without killing them they are incompetent and shouldn't be in the profession. The problem for me is that I doubt if there will be a conviction and I further doubt there will be any time spent in prison for it.

However, imagine 4 black officers holding down a white man! This is why there is such a furore about this, I don't expect it to die down quickly.

You can guarantee that if these officers charges are dropped or there is an acquittal more violent protests will result. That is wrong but until the police are reigned in and start showing respect for ALL life it will continue. I just don't see Donald Trump making police forces in the US accountable.

On the UK news I've just seen multiple incidents of US police pushing over individuals, dragging passive protestors way and deliberately driving at groups of people.
If I were a US citizen I would be ashamed.

It wasn't 4 white officers that held down George Floyd, apparently they were white, black, hispanic and asian, obviously the white officer was the chief instigator, Floyd's breathing was also impaired by the officer leaning on his back, but again loose reporting to give a different overview and I have to wonder why?

Slightly confused I didn't actually mention the colour of the officers, did you assume I did?

The point I was making in this and the previous post is that the US police seem to be out of control. They are behaving as if they a not responsible to the people who they are supposed to 'protect and serve'.

The thing that angers me the most though is the lack of convictions against the US police and the re-instatement of individuals who clearly do not have the temperament to do the job.

Then you wasn't comparing like for like when you said 4 black police officers.

In respect to the police officers they are obviously poorly trained, they didn't even know how to administer CPR, but then because of the pandemic maybe they chose not to?

Thats the thing though isn't it, you automatically thought white officers.

The mind plays funny subconscious tricks!