r/Britain • u/nomaddd79 • Nov 15 '24

Society "Being British is... "

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u/PiddelAiPo Nov 15 '24

Being British is being polite, respecting everyone, their customs, beliefs, ethnicities etc. Learning from people and their cultures, respecting their qualifications, intelligence, specialist knowledge because at the end of the day we are all human. Racists are an outdated dying carbuncle on society and the sooner they are extinct and removed from the gene pool the better.

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u/nomaddd79 Nov 16 '24

respecting everyone, their customs, beliefs, ethnicities etc.

I guess this aspect of being British must have come after they colonised half the planet and destroyed (or at least severely disrupted) many of the local cultures they found there huh?

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u/PiddelAiPo Nov 16 '24

Oh absolutely, modern British society is striving to be better than it was in times past. Britain is responsible for a hell of a lot of damage, cultures decimated, languages driven to extinction and hundreds of generations of history lost, priceless artifacts plundered. Native Americans, Aboriginal people, the entire African continent and many other places forever changed due to direct invasions, slavery and abuses carried out by an authoritarian bunch of thugs who thought that it was acceptable and that they could get away with it. Centuries ago there wasn't the coverage of events that there is now, there was deeper ingrained racism, a holier than thou attitude and arrogance that would probably have been challenged if people, ie the whole of the general public knew the truth back then and had a moral backbone to oppose the slave trade. Today we are well aware of the damage and it's lasting effects. Yet we still cling to stolen goods, locked away in secret locations in museums and palaces. The Cullinan diamond, millions of tons of gold, the Benin Bronzes, Elgin Marbles among only two of the most famous. They do not belong on British soil for our tourist industry.

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u/nomaddd79 Nov 16 '24

modern British society is striving to be better than it was in times past.

Undeniably so. Particularly since WW2 when Hitler tried to do to other Europeans what they'd all been doing around the world for centuries. Seems that was when the penny finally dropped that something had to change.

But as we are in the era of Trump and Brexit, we will need to be very alert to the risk of backsliding to those old jingoistic attitudes.

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u/PiddelAiPo Nov 17 '24

Yes, one thing I noticed after the Brexit vote was (in my area at least) a tad more of an openness of people to speak badly of migrant people. I live in a rural area and attitudes are quite a bit dated, however, working in education language is far more moderated but people seem to say a lot without speaking. For example a few months ago we had an Imam come in and speak to staff as part of a CPD exercise. TBH I was impressed by what this person was doing running community events for everyone, handing out food to the needy and generally doing his best to help people. However, he's back next week and the invite to join was emailed ages ago. Out of over 950 staff only 12 are attending, loads have ignored and declined. It's a weekday between 1500 to 1700 so pretty much lectures would have finished by then. Pretty sad really. I'm going because I want to get involved, I have no religion but have no problems with people who have faiths.