Time This Racist Rag Was Shut Down?

[Svejk]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/28/white-people-smug-leaving-london

[Svejk]

Before you decide, the title and tone of the article have been toned down from overt to casual racism.

[mastercraft]

No, not at all, keep it going. Freedom of speech.

[Svejk]

She does think that, db. She also finds it unpleasant to be 'surrounded' by white people in London.
Can you imagine changing white to brown?

[Svejk]

Freedom of speech would be fine and dandy, mc. Except it appears to be a one way street nowadays.

[Gromit]

It is nearly 1am when I am reading this, and I have had a gallon of beer, but I cannot work out what you are objecting to.

It is about White Flight. White people upgrading from the inner city to somewhere nicer to get away from the immigrants. The writer, obviously not a white person, seems to think that the white people leaving is not good for the area. You can either agree or disagree with that, but it is hardly racist to publish the article.

Perhaps in the morning you will have calmed down, or at leat explain why you think a national newspaper should be closed down for printing this Opinion piece.

[Svejk]

Perhaps, gromit, you can read the article again, in the morning when you've sobered up, and you'll understand it.

[Svejk]

And I'm as calm as a cucumber.

[Gromit]

No, not at all a racist article.
Standard Guardian fodder.
I don't really like London so I disagree with the article which essentially is saying London is a great place (it isn't). So the argument the article is pushing, that London is great because of its diversity doesn't work for me. But the artcle isn't racist because it has a go at people who leave London.

And just because I don't agree with the article doesn't mean the newspaper that published it should be shut down.

[fiction-factory]

Maybe I'm getting a different article on my link.
I can see that the paragraph "The smells and the songs are familiar here, and I am in close contact with people who look a little bit like me and are angry about the same things. I can exist, for the vast majority of the time, without being looked at and without reacting to that look, without questioning myself, and without being the only brown person in the room." would be deemed racist if the word BROWN was replaced by WHITE

[retrocop]

methyl
Kingston-on-Thames. I hope you are joking. I live between there, Sutton and Croydon. If I wanted to do,say, Christmas shopping I would forget the Royal Borough and Croydon.
Last Christmas shopping I did in Kingston I felt constantly threatened by glaring,hooded black faces on every street corner. I kept my hand firmly on my wallet for fear of being mugged. Kingston is a affluent part of Surrey and is a muggers delight. Croydon usually delights in a drive by shooting most days of the week.
About 30 years ago a friend lived and worked in New Malden which is included in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. He said the only immigrant you might see was Linford Christie. Now New Malden looks like a North Korean refugee camp.Immigrants tend to migrate any where except Scotland it seems to me. :-)

[retrocop]

Having re read it I believe Aisha Mirza is saying that London is her comfort zone because their is safety in numbers and boy there are numbers. Other parts of the world it would be almost described as a Ghetto. Glad she feels safe in the Capital. Most older white people do not share her comfort.
Give her credit she almost avoided using a term I hate. Black!!! I understand that is the preferred word but obviously,like me, she sees more Brown faces which seems a warmer and less negative colour to use.

[Svejk]

I must be reading a different article as well, ff. Along with all the black, brown and even yellow? letter writers below the article who think it's a disgrace.
You, gromit, seem to be the only person in Britain who thinks the author is missing white people. Given her twitter 'hashtag' # whitepplrannoying./ it wouldn't seem very likely, would it?
Or from the article;
///, in my experience the cost of living surrounded only by white people is worse.///
Personally, I would say that if she wants to live somewhere surrounded by brown people and finds white people so objectionable, try Bombay or Calcutta. I'd certainly contribute to a fund for her airfare.

[Gromit]

The writer does not want to live surrounded by only brown people or only white people. She is saying the mix of both, or rather all cultures, is her preferred way. She is attacking the white people for leaving because it is making the place less diverse.

[Gromit]

There is a lot wrong with the article and I do not agree with any of it, but I am failing to see the racism. She is critical of white people for leaving, but that isn't racist.

[naomi24]

As has been said, had the word 'brown' been replaced with 'white' it would have been deemed racist.

[douglas9401]

What a lot of self-serving guff. I can't be racist cos I'm not white.

[Svejk]

You are reading something into that article that no-one else in the country is seeing. I have read pages and pages of the comments below the article and not one of them has suggested what you are suggesting. You need to face up to reality, gromit. Some brown people are racists.
I don't blame the writer, she's obviously mentally ill. You're idiologically blinkered and can't seem to help yourself. But the Guardian has no excuse for printing such garbage.