Tales of Home

They could at least have kept the tokens down to 1 each, to have 4 of the 7 be white.

I thought I saw a bunch of cute Scottish kids. Reminded me of when the local news came to school and we'd line up awkwardly and shy to take a group picture.

{{ They are a bunch of cute Scottish kids, no argument there. But for an article that the photo is supposed to be illustrating about the make-up of Scotland from the census results, it's not in the slightest bit representative of the make-up of Scotland. It's giving a false image of Scotland - in reality we are not that diverse, not even close. That photo is not only wrong in presenting the size of the minority groups in this country, looking at it you'd assume the minority were the white people given they are outnumbered 5 to 2. I mean I know we have a Pakistani First Minister, but we didn't elect the whole of Pakistan!  And I dont believe for one minute if a Pakistani newspaper went to one of their local schools to take a photo about their population, it would be 80% white kids in it. Nor should it be, nor should we be so ashamed of our own that we hide them away in favour of other ethnics groups. For once in our media I'd like to see fair, real, fact based representation especially in a news story which is about pure facts- national census statistics. Their own photo to illustrate Scotland's population ignores the facts about Scotland's population they wrote about in the very article it's supposed to be illustrating.}}

Nyeah... I see what you mean. But in my view that is 7 kids holding 7 numbers and not intended to be a visualisation of percentages. But def a visualisation of diversity. 

A pie chart would be far more ethical than lining up children to represent whites and not whites. I'm sure BBC is very aware of that.

{{ It's also a choice, whoever took the photo would have to deliberately gone and picked those kids, and only chosen two white, at a school where the majority, by far, would be white. So there is a deliberate choice here to present this image in this particular way, emphasizing diversity. My problem is not that diversity is bad, but that it's just not true. We are not a very diverse country, much like Norway which seems to have similar levels of the population black, about 1%.
And I cannot imagine other cultures doing this, I can't imagine an African school hunting about for white kids for a representative photo of Africa, or China putting out a picture of their country's kids with 2 Chinese and 5 Europeans.
Representation good. Over-representation risks having as many bad side effects as under-representation. }}

I suspect the not so hidden agenda here is cute/fun picture with broad appeal + dry facts makes for more readers than dry facts + dry facts.

{{ Theres more to it than that. If they just wanted a cute fun picture they'd not have gone out their way to find non-whites, they'd just have grabbed the first bunch of kids close at hand and got them to pose for it and not cared what colour they were, to get a majority of 5 to 2 you'd have to go look for them. And as only 3% of the population is ethnic it's not got huge broad appeal on that front. It just looks, odd. If there were 4 white and 3 ethnic it would still be somewhat overrepresented but understandable, its throwing the bias so far out from reality is a problem. Especially for a news channel. I can remember the days when a news outlet deliberately staging a photo to give a false impression of news was a scandal.}}

Why are 4 of them Asians? The BBC is turning into the ministry for misrepresentation. Its actually worrying that they are straight up lying and rewriting British history.

If that picture says that 5 of 7 of the Scottish population are non-white, then the picture also says that 100% of Scots are children.

Edit: I'm am quite sure BBC has a policy of giving non-whites more than their apparent 3,6% allowed media appearance.  Being this mad at school children seems a bit odd to me. Sorry, being mad at BBC for showing too many brown school children, seems a bit odd to me. Clearly they are allowed to excist, but seeing too much of them is uncomfortable.

That is an outsiders view of this and based on the image and info provided here.

What is at stake here is misrepresenting ethnic roots and history. The point is it is a political choice not a natural choice. Those children were chosen as a political statement that approves of the denial of reality. The reality being that 99% of Scottish kids are white. Therefore, those kids are not a neutral fluffy let's all live in a rainbow Coca Cola advert, but a deliberate agenda by Useless Humza and his mates.

{{ I'm not mad at the kids, far as I'm concerned you don't even have to even be born here, being brought here as a baby or toddler, if you grow up here, live here, you're as Scottish as the rest of us. That is not the issue, it's about how as Western society we are handling diversity in media, particularly in news where it doesn't even belong. It's not the job of the news to present political agenda, its supposed to report on it.

The basic issue here at core is acclimatisation, it's getting a dominantly white race used to seeing black and Indian and Asian faces, to try to make people comfortable with the idea in order to cut off trouble before it starts.

Now in the 60's and particularly the 70's this role was fulfilled by the media, drama and in particular sitcoms. Love Thy neighbour, Rising Damp, Alf Garnett, and a slew of others where the basic premise was black person moves in and the main character is a racist, but it's the racist who is the butt of the jokes. It used humour to get people used to an idea - racism was comically bad. And it was very effective. So effective American sitcoms repeated the trick by turning most of the named shows above into US versions, and then in the 90's they did it again, only this time it was getting people used to the idea that gay people existed, Will and Grace and the amount of gay characters who appeared in shows like Friends, Frasier till the 'gay character' was just another stable of a sitcom cast, shows which dominated global sitcoms at the time and all got people used to accepting these groups as just people.
And that worked too.

It worked because it was gentle, it took people along with it and showed the human person under the name tag of black or gay, rather than lectured them, but still made the point that racism/homophobia is laughably stupid and makes no sense.
And above all it was relatable, because sitcom characters are stereotypes, so good chance though exaggerated you knew someone like that in your real life.

Now back to this photo. It does not bear a relationship to real life, as Figg points out it's set up to make a point, the same point those 70's and 90's sitcoms were making essentially, but I know from my own reaction and that of others, it annoys rather than normalises.
And it's because its not relatable, I had Indian friends growing up, this town has always had a strong Indian group, every corner shop in town, and in fact in a three mile radius bar one, is run by Indians. But I could still count the Indians (and Blacks) I see day to day on one hand and I wouldn't need all my fingers.
The photo lacks relatability, it's so obviously at odds with the average person's daily experience that it got no credibility. It feels like you're being told a deliberate lie, and when that happens, even if the lie is being told for a good reason, the most common response is to resent being lied to.
The message not only doesn't get through, as it's not being listened to the moment the listener is offended, often then the message is also rejected out of hand. The worst outcome.

Forcing people to accept diversity by lying to people abut diversity will not work, and it's all the worse when it being done by a news outlet, especially a national broadcaster. They are supposed to be neutral, that should include not featuring politically motivated photo's that are so out of kilter with reality. As I said before, I could understand a bit of over representation if you've only 7 kids, 3 ethnic, 4 white say, to show that there are these other nationalities in the country but white is still the most common, but when you push it so far out of kilter with reality and make the white kids the minority it falls apart. Too many they start to look like they are only in the photo as the 'token' white kids. Which is just as bad as putting in 'token' black kids.

You only have to look at the trouble Disney is in financially as their films flop on culture grounds, the heavy-handed lectured morals of Jodie's Doctor, and countless other examples filling youtube and other social media with nasty people who thrive because they are preying on a natural human reaction people have when confronted with something forced on them that is not relatable to them. Unlike the methodology of the 70's and 90's people are not being led to understand a thing, they are being told they have to accept it and they don't understand it, because you can't when what they show you and tell you is not the same as reality around you. It creates a discord. So what a lot of people actually get is a sense it's not true but they are being forced to say it is. It has the opposite effect than desired, and it's only helping what is already a worrying trend in the rise of the right in the UK and Europe who can prey on the notion the left are forcing you to agree with everything they say or else you will be ostracised from society. That's the very great risk, that something as simple as a photo of some kids can be just a small piece in a much broader part of a way of presenting diversity in media that is doing more harm than good, and may in fact be pushing people in the opposite direction. And if that happens catastrophe is coming to certain groups in our society. }}

I think it is far more sinister than that Petty, downright lies are being told, black kids are being told that not only did they 'build' the civilization, but they were also 'always there' in Britain. They are being told, through critical race theory which has infiltrated education, that white people are born racist, they have white privilege, and they are not told that the British ended the slavery trade. If you look at Candace Owens, her history of slavery was a shock to many Americans, they are not told the truth. This is done to stoke up racial hatred, as are the many race grifters on TV including Lenny Henry and David Olusoga who make money out of racial diversity. 90% of British adverts are now featuring black people, Khan is reported to say that a publicity photo for London featuring a white family does not 'represent London'. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but what does all this mean? These acts are not neutral, nothing is neutral these days, it's carefully orchestrated. Even small issues like the recent incident in Peckham where an Asian shopkeeper prevented a black woman from stealing from his store had the BLM lot outside shouting about white supremacy.

No, critical race theory is NOT being taught to children in schools.  That's a conspiracy theory.  There is some of it floating around in higher education, but not in history classes.  It's a public policy stance, one of many.

Maybe it's not being taught now because it has been banned by some states. But it depends on who you speak to, I guess. Conservatives say the indoctrination is under the radar.

https://unherd.com/thepost/report-critical-race-theory-is-endemic-in-british-schools/

There IS a strong movement to address racial issues in the classroom, and this may include concepts of white privilege, race based mitigation, etc.  This is not critical race theory which is focussed on structural components of government (though it's mainly cultural not government) that may favor one race over another in ways that may not be immediately apparent. One such example in America is public school funding that depends on local taxes, so rich (primarily white) neighborhoods have better funded schools than poor (primarily black) schools.

The problem with CRT is that the structures that perpetuate disparities that may have stemmed from overt racism are not themselves inherently racist, and should not be labelled as such.  The problem with those who incorrectly say that CRT is being taught in schools are that they are trying to push the idea that if the things that are perpetuating the inequalities of racism are not racist, then we don't have a race problem.

I think both can be resolved.  If we look at the effects of racism in the past (such as lack of higher education) and design programs that are focussed on allowing access to higher education in a race blind way, then everything is being addressed.

But that's still not the entire picture.  Minority kids have often said it makes a difference to see someone who looks like them in occupations they otherwise would never have considered.  Society should be concerned about racial disparity and see it as an indicator of things to be addressed.  If reaching out generally to poorer communities will address the racial disparities then so much the better.  The thing is, I don't think there WOULD be any outreach to poorer communities if racial disparity was not driving it.  So you can't ignore race when formulating policy.  It's a marker that lets us see inconvenient truths.

{{ Some helpful Scottish slang, well assuming you can understand the teacher enough for it all to make some sort of sense that is!



A wunner if A shud tak tae writing ma posts doon a wee bit mair liek A'd probably soond tae yi if yi actually met me! Mmm maebaes naw, if A'm geing it laldy wi the Scots yi'd jist git fair scunnered wi it or start gieng us the dingy. Or worse a gud skelp!  }}

Now they are claiming they built Stonehenge. wtaf

https://themessenger.com/news/childrens-book-stonehenge-created-by-black-britons

{{ well it's certainly taking some, em, liberties.

The Mesolithic people were thought to be dark skinned, but with blue eyes (they were humans so they most likely had shagged some Neanderthal on the way north), Cheddar Man is the famous example, and though there is some debate over the exact genetic makeup the general consensus is they were a dark-skinned people.
They were replaced with the folk of the Neolithic and the Beaker people at the end of the Neolithic period, and they were the ones who actually built Stonehenge ( we think, though it was also probably already a sacred area and may have had an existing wood structure). And as they too were human they also are thought to have shagged the darker skinned Mesolithic folk out of existence as opposed to killing them, and the Neolithic folk were from the regions around the Mediterranean they definently weren't white. But they almost certainly weren't black either, just not modern British white, and nowhere near that special shade of ultra cold white bordering on blue of the Scots complexion.
So I'd say they were severely stretching a nugget of truth.

But its not all nonsense, 'The children's book also claims that by the Middle Ages, Britain was a diverse mix of groups, including original British migrants, Celts, Romans, Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Africans, and Normans.' Is pretty much accurate, you can find DNA traces of all those people in our population mix somewhere. They found sub-Saharan in the DNA of Scots. But the way its worded does rather give the impression (especially Id think to its target audience of 7year olds) they were all diversely living together, rather than thousands of years apart and never meeting each other.}}

{{ Been a tad, damp, in my neck of the woods of late, to say the least.
The only road in and out, over the Rest and Be Thankful currently looks like this-



Some lucky folk, including a mother and child in the car all got away unharmed, but the risks of being either buried in your car under a mudslide, or swept off the road and off the mountainside are worryingly real. }}

I see that the rainiest season is yet to come.

{{ It's been bit wild last week or so, we've had a months worth of rain (and thats a Scottish month) in one day, every day for a week! Today is a bit better, its merely windy and drizzly. But at same time it's unseasonably warm still. When we are normally starting to dip into single figure temperatures we are still in double figures.

This is close as I could find to me, Gourock on the opposite side of the Clyde- }}

{{ seen this for real once before as a kid, its super freaky, especially standing on it- }}

wow that's weird.

wtf!  
Dog doesn't seem perturbed. God love the knuckleheads of the world.

{{ When it happened as a kid we were all on it, it's too cool and weird not to see what it's like. Plus it's safer than it looks, the root lattice, plus all the grass, plus all their roots, plus all the moss, plus all the mulching down dead leaves and all the soil enmeshed in, where that dog is standing there is about 2-3 feet or more of solid ground under it all lifting at once. It takes the entire top turf layer with it plus its soil. The main danger is if the wind is actually strong enough to rip the whole piece up and take the entire thing toppling over. So you don't stay around it long, and youd not go near if it was only one or two trees, as they are likely to just rip right over, but if its a big group like this, yeah you stay long enough to 'have a shot' on it }}