Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00388)

At 08:22 PM 4/11/97 -0400, you wrote:
>In message <334E3BA6.7D9C@sprynet.com>, Bart Lidofsky
><bartl@sprynet.com> writes
>>       My uncle used to live in an Indian section of London, and people called
>>it "the nigger area". In Victorian England, it was a commonly used term,
>>certainly racist, but not always derisive (for example, those who had a
>>"white man's burden" form of racism used it, as well). And note that
>>"white man's burden" racism also existed in a number of prominent
>>Theosophists, including Alice Bailey and Clara Codd.
>
>I used to live in London, and my parents are Londoners (going way back
>in my mother's case, though my Dad's family came from Scotland
>originally).  I was brought up recognising the term 'nigger' as applying
>to African, West Indian, and occasionally Asian Indian people, though it
>was usually used for the first two.  I was told it derived from 'Niger'
>as in 'Nigeria' on account of the slave trade.
>
>The term was not usually used in a derisive way, but certainly in a
>'racist' way, as the the belief of the common people (blame Darwin) was
>that Africans etc. were a 'lower' kind of human being.
>
>This was reinforced by the fact that blacks had little or no hope of
>getting a decent education in England, except in the very few cases
>where someone had enough money to pay highly for it, as happened with
>Krishnamurti and Nitya.
>

   Krishnamurti flunked matriculation exam and never was able to get into
University in England.

   In those days, there were two classes of people from India who got higher
education in England. First are the children of very affluent in India and
second are those few bright young men (rarely women) who went on a
scholarship especially after being recruited for Indian Civil Service.

MKR


>Chinese were called 'Chinks' and Vietnam and countries in that part of
>the world were generally unknown quantities, and their inhabitants
>stayed at home.
>
>There was little malice among ordinary people towards those to whom
>these terms were applied, and there was a kind of unspoken and mutually
>agreed 'apartheid' in effect.  The Limehouse (East End) area of London
>was known as Chinatown (viz. the jazz number "Limehouse Blues") and the
>different racial types kept to their own areas by and large.
>
>Maybe this was partly due to probable English hypocrisy, in that slaves
>were not allowable in England or the UK, but *were* shipped via English
>ports to the Americas, where as we know too well the Southern States
>did, and some of their inhabitants still do, persecute, denigrate (and
>worse) anyone of a different color.
>

>Alan the Pinky
>---------
>THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL: Working for a New Age:
>http://www.nellie2.demon.co.uk/
>E-mail: TI@nellie2.demon.co.uk
>