Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Pot shock
The Independent wags a severe finger at the USA for its KKK membership. AMERICA UNMASKED! it cries.
Big article. Big finger. Pointing.
On the other hand, in terms of proportion:
USA population: 303,824,640
KKK membership: 6,000
Membership of KKK as proportion of population: 1 in 50,637
UK population: 60,943,912
BNP membership: 12,500
Membership of BNP as proportion of population: 1 in 4,875
Conclusion: UK ten times more racist than USA.
Result: The triumphant meeting of pot and kettle. (Hat-tip, as I should have said, to Snoop, right there.)
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8 comments:
Hmm... Which means another thing, by the way: we both read Independent. Shame on us ;-)
Och Snoop, forgive the lack of a hat-tip. It's coming up.
To be sensible for a minute, I think one has to compare like with like. The comparison drawn between a so-called bona fide political party and a secret society is hardly valid. It's about as valid as comparing the percentage of people in the Freemasons with the percentage of people in the Tory party.
The Independent was trumpeting the KKK story as 'the true face of America' or some such twaddle. It is worth pointing to Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and now Obama as people in positions of power beyond any such attained in the UK.
The BNP is not a secret society but it did rather resent having the names of its membership exposed.
And the enormous fall inn the membership of the KKK, though mentioned in the Independent article, was not going to be allowed to stand in the way of a nice 'America racist' story.
So bugger the similarities or differences.
Very sobering statistics. It would be interesting to see the ones from the US broken down by State. How would the UK compare with the Southern States, for example?
How would Alabama compare with the West Midlands?
I think that doesn't take into account all of the other hate groups in the USA (SPLC tallied up over 800), it is probably understating the total in the US.
That may be so, Modernity, but I expect there are other hate groups in the UK too. And I still resent the cheap rhetorical point o the article, which did not mention, as I recall, other hate groups.
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