[istjohn]

This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents. Meanwhile chicken tikka masala is hailed as Britain's national dish. I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility.

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar and please don't cross into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[aspnet_dev]

> This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the world while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of their parents.

This old nonsense. This is the problem people like you will constantly bring up the past and won't let anyone forget about it. None of the people that were involved with that are alive today. Also BTW every country and people have invaded and colonised one another if you go far back enough in time. Are we going to start blaming the Italians for Caesar massacring the Celts and the Gauls? When do you want to stop? 50, 100, 500, 1000 years?

> I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a British sensibility

When did I claim I had a problem with people having another flag up? I didn't say that. I said the labourers in the pub tend to and it has nothing to do with xenophobia (which is you basically euphemism calling them/me racist btw).

If you re-read my comment I actually said that someone would just claim it was racism and not actually try to understand what the real issue is. You did exactly that and you didn't even direct it at the right person. You can never have a sensible discussion about these issues because mid-wits will scream racism almost as it were some Pavlovian reaction.

BTW I am actually a xeno-phile. I actually have lived all over the globe and have only recently come back to the UK.

[istjohn]

Flop on the field all you want, no one called you racist. Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to identify with their own culture while also embracing a new one is aptly described as xenophobia. If you want to have a sensible discussion, lets start by engaging with what is actually said instead of what we wish was said.

[throwaways885]

Read the comment again.

> Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived here their entire life to display a flag other than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross.

That's not anti-foreign culture, but it is insulting to be born in the UK and not see it as your homeland. Or would you be okay with me raising a British flag in India and claiming I was British, if my parents happened to move there before I was born?

[aspnet_dev]

You actually implied it heavily by calling me xenophobic. You know full well they are synonymous. I am not stupid, so don't play silly games with me please.

> Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to identify with their own culture while also embracing a new one is aptly described as xenophobia.

Nope. I never insisted that at all. I never even mentioned foreigners. You keep on twisting what I am trying to explain and trying to pervert it into something you wish it to be.

I said that this sub dividing people in the *same nationality* by *race* is an American import to the UK (and from what some of my Belgian and French friends have told me) a import into some parts of Europe as well. It isn't typically done in the UK, France, Belgium and I suspect it is the same in many of the other European countries.

Then I said that working class labourers (not all of them white btw) don't like it when 2nd/3rd or 4th generation immigrants aren't patriotic or don't try to assimilate (like their parents did). I then said these concerns / complaints will always get hand-waived away by people as "racism" when the real problem is a feeling of disrespect. Just like you have.

It got nothing to do with xenophobia as the people I am talking about are British.

> If you want to have a sensible discussion, lets start by engaging with what is actually said instead of what we wish was said.

I do. So if you could actually respond to what I said and refrain from this behaviour (which you are now accusing me of) that would be great. Pointing the finger at me, when it is actually you is disingenuous.

[dang]

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying to avoid that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[aspnet_dev]

The whole story is flamebait. If you don't want it here you should have removed the story.

[dang]

Virtually every story is flamebait to somebody, so 'why bother' arguments that justify going straight to hell can't be valid.

How HN works is that commenters need to resist provocation and focus on substantive, thoughtful discussion no matter how divisive the topic is. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. This is something we're working on learning to do as a community. Most commenters in this thread are demonstrating that it is possible. Accounts that fuck with that process by casually setting fires or stoking them are particularly harmful, so please don't do that here.

In terms of whether an article is on topic, the criterion is not "might someone take it as flamebait", but "is it intellectually interesting and substantive enough to support thoughtful discussion". More explanation about that if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....