Talk:Yo-less

When Yo-less is transported back to 1941, he's horrified at being called "Sambo". Oreo that he may be, what are the chances he hasn't encountered any expression of racism in 1990-something Blackbury? Doesn't his rejection of any internal "blackness" stem from the racism he mentions his grandfather endured? Maybe he's just afraid of being stuck in a society where it's that casual and common.
Around that time the squadron that became known as the Dam Busters had a dog called "Nigger". In 1955 no one worried yet about using the name in the movie, although I see they have to edit that in modern showings in Britain. --Old Dickens 03:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The Daily Mail recently gave away a DVD of The Dam Busters. Given the Mail's robust atitude towards what it considers to be excessive political correctness (it has supported Mrs Thatcher's daughter, who it considers has been victimised by evil Left-wing agitators trying to get at her mother, over certain unfortunate remarks Carol recently made about a black tennis player), I'll bet the N-word has been left in. I will check! Hollywood proposed a remake of this film - I wonder what Guy Gibson VC's dog would be called in a politically correct age?

Also, if the Blackbury conurbation is based on North Manchester and the Lancashire hinterlands, as the weight of association seems to have decided, then a few bits of local colour, if I may use such a word. The sort of post-industrial Northern town on which Blackbury appears to be based (or which Narrative Causality apppears to have assigned) is indeed a hot-bed for racial tension. Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Blackburn and Burnley have all flashed into flame and seen major or minor riots and inter-racial violence in the past few years. The far-right British National Party is picking up the pieces in a political vacuum where the Tories are despised, loathed, and perceived as destroying traditional heavy industry in the 1980's. Labour is seen as having deserted the aspirations of normal working-class people and as having no interest in anywhere outside London save at election-time. In particular, the Labour Party is perceived as having ignored and belittled the aspirations of the white working classes as beneath its collective notice. Slowly, steadily, a Fascist political party is gaining from the failings of the big two political groupings in Great Britain, winning local council seats in areas such as the old Lancashire textile and industrial belt. These areas have large immigrant communities, originally attracted by the cotton mills and textile industry, when the area had one prior to the 1980's. Now as depressed and post-industrial as anyone else, this doesn't stop immigrants being seen as a hostile parasitical force sucking up State resources and given preference over native whites in just about anything.

However, Yo-Less has probably lucked out here: being Afro-Carribean in an area where there are very few black people, he probably doesn't even register on the radar and is disregarded, as the ethnic and racial fault-line falls between White British and Asian (ie, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi). In parts of Bury and Oldham, there are, in fact, effective ghettoes now where people of the opposite racial type do not go. (Yo-Less would probably go there anyway - and saunter down the street disregarded by everyone. He's the sort). --AgProv 10:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Does Yo-less not have a real name? I can't find one. --Old Dickens 14:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)