You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the episode only works as a metaphor if the exact same thing that was happening in the episode is happening in reality. Is the RyanAir incident institutional segregation? No. Is it a sign of underlying issues, though? Hell yes. I'll have to dig up the statistics again, but there was a study done a few years ago on the major airlines in the US that demonstrated people of color are more likely to be asked to give up their seats on a flight than a white passenger. (i.e., the refusal of white passengers to move seats was treated as normal, expected and their right; the refusal of passengers of color was seen as obstructionist, entitled and rude). Again, it's the racist attitudes at play. Hell, there are many districts in the upcoming election where black voters are being disproportionately struck from the voting rolls. Did a Georgia court just call BS on one instance? Yep. And that's great. Is it still happening elsewhere? Yep. It's happened during our last two elections and seemingly no one is too interested in doing much about it.
The point of the episode is about the insidiousness of racism. It's not just the racist policies of the town and the bus, it's racism itself. There are multiple reasons why your "people are people" argument is something that sounds good but is really just a form of entitlement and conscious ignoring. Race is a social construct, but it's one that's been a social reality for the oppressed for a while. And that reality has ramifications that are still being felt in the US, the UK and many, many other places.
Entitlement?
Lol. I won’t even begin.
America is a different place to the UK. It’s history is causing its present.
That git on the Ryanair is a product of very different things. A different history causing the present.
Confusing the two is part of the problem for the UK today, because American culture and history is world pervasive through the media and Internet. That’s why we have street gangs based on the ones in America springing up, and nutty right wing fruitcakes basing themselves on something they saw in the Blues Brothers. It’s why people like Bannon are suddenly world celebrities.
Entitled?
I believe people are entitled to equality.
Start telling people that one group has something you should have, and maybe they are stopping you having it, and that’s just fermenting hate. That’s how it’s done. Tell the poor white folk the black people are getting al the council houses, tell the poor black folk the whites are taking all the jobs. Then sit back and enjoy the power rush when they fight each other to bloody death, and hate for the colour of their skin, why the ones at the top sit in their ivory towers and parcel out the farmland to whoever they like the look of, lining their pockets on the way.
I wonder what would happen if people just saw people, and stopped with silly ideas like ‘entitlement’ and ‘privilege’ which are just ways of putting a little more strife in, another way of putting a nice broad sweep across some group or another to other them, and make it OK to treat them as something deserving of less respect than yourself. My grandparents generations didn’t have shoes, depended on church handouts, got the shit bombed out of the crammed buildings they called home by the Nazis. I went to school and was friends close enough to be considered family by people whose grandparents and parents were from all over the world, and we lived in the same estates, went to the same schools...we liked the same stuff, ate and drank together, because that’s what communities do. Friends. Family.
Now we segregate in all but name, because that makes us nice easy voting blocks, demographics, statistics. Because you can make group x angry at group y with so easy a set of little insidious ideas. Usually by telling a group with very little, that another little easy to identify group...skin colour...language...religion...what have you....has more than you, and be careful, because they are taking it and have always taken it and will always take it.
Maybe they even have it easier than you, getting those things, because someone up there likes them more than your group. Maybe you can talk about how their ancestors were savages who pillaged things, or enslaved people...most every civilisation did it at some point after all, some still do in some parts of the world. So that’s a nice open goal for stirring the pot. Ring fence what’s ‘yours’, your culture, your land, anything really. Do not share. Sharing leads to taking after all.
See how easy it is?
The ‘right’ have done that to great effect at the moment, and the ‘left’ have done it too. And it’s been going on a long time, and ends badly. They just pick different groups, and each ‘side’ denigrates any grievances the other has.
And no one ever gets to stop and just be people rubbing shoulders with other people for very long before it gets stirred up again. Because it’s a nice easy route to power...through armies, through voters, through taking a street here a town there, a piece of land...for people that have power or want it badly enough.
The point in Rosa is that people don’t have to accept that. There is one massive change the story makes with graham. Now instead of being someone part of the system, or a racist, it’s someone doing something to help bring about a positive change (funnily enough, in a place and time not their own.) which is an interesting (if mostly unrelated to this reply) thing to think about. He does it because he believes in equality.
Or we can be all divisive, and say genuinely believing in equality is ‘entitlement’ and that it’s ok to make assumptions, broad sweeps, about a persons motivations, aspirations, experience, background, everything, all on the colour of their skin (which doesn’t even bloody exist online. Or used not to. No one actually ‘knows’ anything about anyone online.)
It must be said though...one thing the episode does highlight is how pervasive the evil of segregation in that time and place became, that people on the other side of the world, who have nothing to do with it, can be caught in its nasty little orbit as the world get smaller and varied cultures all get subsumed under a larger whole, difference something not to wonder at or find intriguing, but something to be stamped out or othered if we can’t use it to make money or get power.
Us sods at the bottom who try to get along do t have a hope really do we? Somethings always waiting to turn us against each other again because we look different, or smell different, or eat bacon, or bhajis, or jellied eels, or don’t eat these things. We mustn’t dare eat or wear something from another culture, we aren’t entitled to share with each other after all. Boxes are neat, and so much smaller on the inside.
End of rant. For real this time.
Be nice to each other. It’s much better.
Pretty tiresome. Do you think that was the message Doctor Who was trying to leave us with this episode?
