Soldato
I need to use Wikipedia more.
Too white, Too Straight.
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Slavery has been part of civilization ever since civilization was invented.
The surprising thing about the modern world is that we do NOT have slavery as a matter of routine.
To my mind, Britain did abolish slavery, but not in the way most people would think.
It was the Steam engine that put the slavers out of business, not moralistic posturing.
With the spread of industrialization and mechanized power, the need for raw human muscle was reduced and it simply became easier to exploit people through employment than by outright ownership.
That's why slavery lost popularity.
If Oil went up to $1000/Bbl, Coal $1000/ton, and Electricity £10/unit. Slavery would be back in a flash!
Man of Honour
Ridiculous.. I'm assuming this is because of representable proportioning but this is where it fails. You can't force any group of people to go for a job.. if 10/10 people come for a job that happen to be all white British.. then that's that. That's true random selection.
The mere point of making positions proportional is discriminatory in itself because it's been made an issue of to segregate people from one other.
Racism sexism etc.. will only be no longer a problem if equally, people stop making things such a ***** issue of things..
The mere point of making positions proportional is discriminatory in itself because it's been made an issue of to segregate people from one other.
Racism sexism etc.. will only be no longer a problem if equally, people stop making things such a ***** issue of things..
Britain was rich anyway, we hardly needed slavery to make us rich, our colonies did that
Britain did indeed abolish slavery and used its naval power to end it in other countries. That included capturing slave ships and attacking African ports where slave traders were still trying to operate.
Like many (most?) other countries, slavery was part of English society even before the Romans, and certainly during the Roman times. So my white English ancestors were probably also slaves. Where are my reparations?
Like many (most?) other countries, slavery was part of English society even before the Romans, and certainly during the Roman times. So my white English ancestors were probably also slaves. Where are my reparations?
'Hi, I'd like to join the army. It's my dream job!'
'OK, what's your background? Any related experience or qualifications?'
'Yes! I carefully prepared for this role by taking a degree in classical Greek literature at the University of Wolverhampton.'
'Perfect, welcome to HM armed forces!'
That happens more than you think. I knew a Warfare Officer that had a drama / dance degree.
The logic is that if they have gone through all of that studying, then they can commit to things and do better jobs than the scrotes who join up with nothing. Which is not always the case...
Man of Honour
Because that doesn't matter to the job. Having a degree is considered important.The subject of the degree is considered far less important or completely irrelevant. That might not be the best approach, but it is how it is.
That's far from the worst example. Roman citizens had the right of free movement within the empire and there were some good reasons for Romans from elsewhere in the empire to move to Britain. By the time most of Britain became part of the Roman empire, there were a lot of Romans with darker skin (all of North Africa had been Roman for a couple of centuries by that time). Travelling from north Africa to Britain wasn't a particularly big deal at that time - boat along the coast all the way, only the last couple of dozen miles with any significant degree of risk. I'm sure that some Romans moved to Britain and that some of those Romans had darker skin.
While it looks like the cartoonist who made the picture you quote was trying to portray a Roman soldier (and doing a pretty bad job of it, e.g. bronze muscle cuirass on a Roman legionary!) and there were a lot of Roman soliders stationed in Britain and some of them would have had families there and some of them would have retired there (hard to tell intended age from a cartoon, but he might be old enough to have served for long enough to retire) and some of them might have had darker skin (although AFAIK the legions stationed in Britain were all European), I think there would have been some Roman civilians who moved to Britain. There were some good reasons for doing so. Earlier on, there would have been good opportunities in the new province of Britannia as it was mostly Romanising. Lots of building work, for example, both civilian and governmental. Later on, there were times when it might be prudent for a Roman to get as far away from Rome as possible while remaining in the empire and Britain fitted that bill. The reign of Commodus comes to mind.
If they were depicting a very small minority of Romans in Britain having darker skin, it would be historically plausible.
The "British" companies you refer to are Indian now. But I guess you're OK with people who aren't British abusing their employees as long as you can blame it on Britain.
You're just another irrationally prejudiced person trying to rationalise your irrational prejudices. Nothing new there.
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Who cares? Its a picture, people are obsessed with colour.
Man of Honour
People who care about truth care. Lying about the past because it's politically useful to do so is not a good thing. Nor is obsessing over skin colour, which is another part of the reason why some of us object to lying about the past to change skin colours. You're targetting the wrong people - the people who are obsessed with skin colour are the ones presenting a false history for that purpose.
By the way, a large part of the problem in getting accurate information on the subject is that many people in the past were not obsessed with skin colour. For example, we know that some people migrated from north Africa to England in the high medieval period, but we have hardly any idea how many because it wasn't considered of any importance. It's only mentioned in passing in some accounts of journeys and from a few human remains from the period.
Associate
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I agree fully with this. As a history graduate I can acknowledge it's a big problem in the field of study with garbage academia.
Certain groups have been trying to hijack race and colour to prove their narrative, as an example that ancient Egyptians were in fact sub Saharan African black, claiming that Western history has white washed them.
I don't really care what colour actor plays a historical role on TV (nobody has a right to that outrage since Laurence Olivier played Othello) but trying to propagandise actually historical events and research is not on.
The truth? Unless you have DNA or photographical evidence, it's just subjecture.
Let's concentrate of the issues of today, this obsession on race seems to me to be getting worse not better. But it seems to be people worried about racism making all the noise, when actual rasism is probably in decline ( in our native population anyway)
Let's concentrate of the issues of today, this obsession on race seems to me to be getting worse not better. But it seems to be people worried about racism making all the noise, when actual rasism is probably in decline ( in our native population anyway)
we won a war. how it happened is immaterial.
Caporegime
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Nearly every country out there has won a war. So what?
Soldato
Accurate. A picture of a roman legion with a few Black faces would not be implausible and might stir some interest in the subject. Depicting one or two legionaries and having them all or half of them be Black is a little... over-representative. It's not really a big deal to me, so long as they're not trying to push an inaccurate view of history. Likely they did it just to generate some discussion or as an interesting point. In amongst a slew of so much political agenda and historical revisionism though, it's a little "hmmm".
And I think they didn't care both because they weren't taught to see race and identity as the same thing and because racism tends to result from widescale migrations, not individuals. If there were mass migration maybe you'd have started to see more racism. But a couple of Black guys show up in your English village and people are more fascinated than hostile. (Naturally, so long as they're Christian!).
Oh, don't get me started on the Afrocentrists. I've had some EPIC arguments with them about Egypt. A while back a tomb of two half-brothers was found. One of which was half-Nubian the other not (different mothers rather than different fathers, I presume). That sole fact when it emerged was like dropping a pig in a piranha pool. Afro-centrists swarmed on it ignoring everything else. Hello - you had Nubia (a Black nation) immediately South of Egypt. And later invaded by Egypt. Of COURSE there were Black people in Egypt. It didn't make it a "Black Civilisation". The other one is one single line lifted without context from Herodotus where he describes Egyptians as being dark skinned. He meant darker than Greeks and goes on to explicitly say they were the same as (iirc) Colchans who we know were not Black and further go on to talk separately about people with actual Black skin "with hair like wool" as another group again. But no, whenever you talk with an Afrocentrist, they'll tell you that a Greek historian said Egyptians "had dark skin".
It's particularly dumb because if they want a historical Black kingdom to create some Golden Age racial narrative (like Zionists and Jerusalem or White Supremacists and Rome), Nubia and Ethiopia and right ******* next to Egypt and were Black kingdoms. Pretty successful ones, too. But I guess Egypt has the name recognition.
Conjecture. And we have good reason to think that there were Black Roman Legionaries. They were just very rare for obvious reasons.
On this, however, total agreement. Especially your final qualifier.
You need a lot more than that as innumerable examples of greater forces being defeated by smaller and more poorly equipped forces attest.
However, I fail to see what this pointless discussion is about. Is it the name of Great Britain? It's just ye olde speak for "Big Britain". What does it matter? You seem to be going off on some weird tangent about trying to suggest Britain winning various conflicts was a given and results from something other than military adeptness. The British forces were able to defeat vastly larger and better resourced opponents for the same reasons the Roman legions were able to do so. Modern tactics, well-thought out logistics and a high standard of formal training and discipline. Most of which was severely lacking in the regions the British Empire took. You want to argue morality, you can do it all day. But the "anyone can win a war" mantra is nonsense.
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When I was young I was taught to be colour blind and treat people as they came. However as immigration has increased and people of the same race or ideology have formed their own communities we are seeing group identities emerge.
What you will inevitably see is politics emerge based on these communities. Muslim majority areas will vote for Muslim MPs canvasing with Muslim issues etc. This will strengthen divides. The only way multiculturalism can work to my mind is that all the cultures answer to the same higher power. In America the higher power is meant to be the dollar, unfortunately in the case of the middle east it has often been a brutal dictator.
Yep non-integration is the real issue. I never saw the point in moving to a new country "for a better life" and then just carrying on with the old ways, with the old problems. Then passing it on to the next generation so the problems never go away.
In the UK we're expected to adapt to incoming cultures, not the other way round. Which is ridiculous and why we have "white flight", whole cities basically drained of wealth and left to decay (like Bradford or Luton).
In the UK we're expected to adapt to incoming cultures, not the other way round. Which is ridiculous and why we have "white flight", whole cities basically drained of wealth and left to decay (like Bradford or Luton).
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Soldato
The State of Texas is currently seeing an influx of Upper Middle Class people from California. Who having wrecked their own state with their politics are blissfully moving to Texas to escape their mess and simultaneously trying to repeat the process. It's nuts.
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In what way is California a "wrecked state"?